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Kings of Convenience – Samsung and BlueVia work together

May 16, 2013 Leave a Comment

Today we are pleased to announce that the Korean King of consumer electronics Samsung will be the first OEM to integrate directly with our billing capabilities via the BlueVia payment APIs.  The global agreement allows Samsung Hub and Samsung Apps’ customers to purchase apps and music, video, books, games and learning services from their devices by simply charging the payment to their phone bill or prepaid credit, avoiding the need for a credit card. The agreement covers both Samsung tablets and mobile devices.

The ease and convenience of direct to bill payments has been shown to increase sales of digital content through mobile devices. This is especially the case in the developing world where the penetration of credit cards and even bank accounts is low.

BlueVia is committed to making operator billing available for its customers across as many devices and platforms as possible. The agreement with Samsung joins other similar agreements with companies including Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

“Samsung is committed to ensuring that our customers have choice and convenience when purchasing content on our devices,” said Lee Epting, Vice President of Media Solutions Centre Europe for Samsung Electronics Europe. “Our partnership with Telefónica Digital allows us to deliver yet another easy and convenient purchasing experience to our Samsung Hub and Samsung Apps customers.”

We echo your sentiments Samsung, making payments easier for the customer is what it’s all about.

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Arduino GSM Playground 29th April at Telefonica Digital!

April 16, 2013 Leave a Comment

Dan talking about the new Arduino GSM shield


Last month Arduino launched a new GSM shield in partnership with Telefonica. The aim of the GSM shield is to power the next wave of the Internet of Things, by enabling truly mobile prototypes. We’re really excited by the GSM shield and from the feedback online we know you are too, in fact Christian Krmec got in touch to tell us about what he has been doing Christian recently purchased a GSM shield and following Dan’s instructions has created a GSM enabled temperature sensor:

I built a simple  temperature sensor with LM34CZ precision Fahrenheit temperature sensor with Arduino Uno,Gsm shield and send information to Cosm.I modified the code CosmTempSensor2.ino connectioInterval = 900000 I added 500 milliseconds.The results can be seen below and here:https://cosm.com/feeds/8526 (sensor_reading) where you can get an updated feed and graph of the temperature in my living room.

Christian Krmec has created a GSM Temperature sensor

We love to see the community using the shield, if you’ve made something tweet it to our twitter account and we’ll feature it on the blog! Speaking of community, we’ve been working hard both online and in person to raise awareness of Arduino’s awesome new GSM shield, last week we demoed the shield  at the Internet of Things London meetup and today we’re happy to announce our next event - the Arduino GSM Playground!

The Arduino GSM Playground all is about spending some quality time with the GSM Shield, learning how to make  cool GSM enabled hacks and of course eating some pizza! We’ll have experts from o2 Labs, BlueVia and maybe even Arduino themselves, so you’ll be able to find answers from to all your Arduino questions!

Places are limited to just 30 for this event to ensure everyone gets hands on time with the shields, so you need to be quick, you can sign up on eventbrite!

 

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Windows 8 Developers Workshop: Madrid April 16th

April 3, 2013 Leave a Comment

Our good friends at Movilforum together with Microsoft and Qualcomm, invite you to be part of the new wave of mobility by attending the Windows 8 Developers Workshop!.

Learn how to make apps in Windows 8, experiment with the wealth of new APIs for developing modern applications.
Discover the different elements of user experience and design principles used in new modern style applications for both consumer and Business apps in Windows 8.
Acquire knowledge of how Microsoft development tools increase the productivity of developers and integrate seamlessly into agile development models.
Differentiate your app with AllJoyn for P2P-based communications and make your app more creative AR apps with Vuforia.

Details:

• Madrid_ April 16, 2013. From 10.00 to 14.00.
• Microsoft Ibérica (Paseo del Club Deportivo, 1 – Centro Empresarial La Finca-Building 1-28223 Exeter-Madrid)

AGENDA

10.00: Introduction Microsoft and Movilforum
10.05: User Experience in Windows 8 applications for developers, Jesus Serrano
11.02 Coffee Break
11.30: Modern Application Development UI for Windows 8 – Boris Armenta
12.30: Development Tools for Application Modernization Gomez-Javier Lozano
13.30: Unique mobile experiences with AR and proximity comms Grabiel Treiband (Qualcomm)

To attend this event you have to register at: http://movilforum.com/windows8/

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Developer Economics 2013 Survey out now!

April 3, 2013 Leave a Comment

Developer Economics is a detailed report by Vision Mobile into the world of mobile app development. The report is now into it’s fifth year and Telefonica is proud to be a gold sponsor to enable this crucial research document to be freely available to everyone. If you’ve not read Developer Economics before we highly recommend it, each report is based on the responses of over 3,000 developers and supported by detailed qualitative interviews. Each response is reviewed, analysed and compiled into a research document that can help developers better understand the complex nature of their industry. We’re sure that you will agree that a year is a long time in mobile. A lot has changed in 2013 – like the arrival of a new innovative web powered mobile platform and to find out what matters to developers Vision Mobile has now opened the survey for Developer Economics 2013!

We believe Developer Economics is the most comprehensive report for the business of mobile app development, some of the highlights from last year included:

  • Developers focus on iOS and Android but are keen for a third platform to emerge
  • 38% of developers use advertising, but in app purchases is close behind at 26%  and growing
  • 74% developers create apps for 2 or more platforms
  • Windows Phone is struggling to maintain developer interest with 47% of developer planing to adopt Windows Phone (down from 57% in 2012)
  • Tablets are now a mainstream screen for developers: more than 50% of developers are now targeting tablets, with iOS developers most likely (76%) to do so
  • Smart TVs are still a niche platform for developers, as no clear leader has emerged

As if taking part in one of the worlds leading developer surveys wasn’t enough, if you take their 10 minute survey you may even win a prize!

We hope you take part in the survey and are looking forward to reading the next Developer Economics report to find out what has changed and what matters to developers worldwide.

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Firefox OS App Workshop April 20th!

March 28, 2013 Leave a Comment

This summer marks the launch of Firefox OS as the first Firefox OS phones unveiled at MWC this year will become available to consumers in several countries. We know that consumers are going to love Firefox OS, and they will be looking for great apps to install from Firefox Marketplace!

If you know how to build mobile app experiences with HTML5 and JavaScript, Mozilla is looking for you. Firefox OS, like the web is intended for all users wherever they. Mozilla is keen to meet developers who can write apps in Spanish, Polish or Portuguese! If you’re fast and focused, this is the time to take first-mover advantage.

Mozilla will be hosting three hands-on technical workshops for skilled web app developers take place in Madrid, Spain, on Saturday, April 20; in Bogotá, Colombia on Saturday, May 18; and in Warsaw, Poland on Saturday, June 1. We hope to announce more workshops in more locales later in the season.

You must apply to attend: We’ll ask you to show us your JavaScript expertise and/or past experience building web apps and working with web APIs.

Who Should Apply

Mozilla looking for small teams or solo developers with solid ideas and strong web development skills. If you’ve already built a successful PhoneGap, Chrome, webOS, Blackberry WebWorks app, or other open web app for mobile or desktop, Mozilla would love to work with you on migrating your existing app or building a new one. Mozilla engineers and tech evangelists will help participants complete an app or port an existing one to the Firefox OS phone and into the Firefox Marketplace.

Please apply now if you’d like to attend any of these workshops. Mozilla will be reviewing applications as they come in, with a focus on our first locations and will get back to you as soon as possible.

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Digital Wallet Foundry

March 18, 2013 Leave a Comment

We are live from Digital Wallet Foundry, which is running all this week from Modern Jago in the beating heart of Shoreditch. As you may know from our earlier post about it, Digital Wallet Foundry is an event all about how we can disrupt the payments sector. There are many players in this space but no single company or idea has achieved market dominance, this means there is a world of opportunity to the person or team that cracks the payments nut.

Day one features a wealth of speakers from banks, startups and operators alike which will give attendees all the information they need to take part in the rest of the weeks activities – getting together and creating payment solutions! Our own Ricardo Varela took to the stage and offered an entertaining talk about how operators can help businesses monitise their product.


Ricardo highlighted that demand is incredibly high from developers and companies for friction free and cross platform payment solutions. Businesses such as aggregators and app store providers do not want to integrate with hundreds of payment companies. The reality is that thousands of hours are wasted negotiating with multiple payment providers when that time is far better invested on their product. BlueVia is designed to offer friction free payments, companies need to conned to just one API, which enables them to connect with millions of customers in multiple markets worldwide. Mobile payments via BlueVia are atypical in that there is no fixed service charge (like credit or debit payment processors) only revenue share with each payment made, making it cheaper and easier for businesses!

Ricardo closed his talk by neatly surmising the ideals behind BlueVia :“BlueVia is the Visa for Direct to Bill, it is an enabler for aggregators and business and helps to save time and access customers”.  We are looking forward to the rest of the event, keep up with all the events by following the official hashtag, #DWF

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Digital Wallet Foundry: This Monday @ModernJago

March 15, 2013 Leave a Comment

Stripe, Square, MasterPass, digital wallets it feels like everyone is looking to disrupt the payment industry. But here’s the interesting thing, in-spite of the hundreds of players – no one has emerged as king of the hill. That means there is a multi billion opportunity for the taking, the challenge is finding a way to access it. Creating an idea for a market that is ripe for disruption is only half the battle, you need to be able to execute it too.
That’s where Digital Wallet Foundry can help.

Digital Wallet Foundry its a week long event dedicated to giving help on everything from coding to agile project development to business planning. If you’ve got an idea, you can ‘sanity check’ with help from thought leaders and industry experts.

Speaking of payment experts Ricardo Varela Head of Head of Customer Development for Direct to Bill Payments at BlueVia will be speaking at the event on Monday and had this to say:

“The economy created by the app stores and digital content is likely to exceed £1billion in 2013 and expected to grow more than 10 times that over the next 3 years.  The operators can play a role and enable billing via direct to bill APIs, we at BlueVia can facilitate the market to grow by making it as seamless as possible to integrate globally for developers. We’re creating an ecosystem for Payments aimed at growing revenue for developer and content owners and tackling the challenges that this brings.  By participating in this event we aim to talk with the community about what we are doing, as this is also a new paradigm for most, and take feedback from the community to understand their challenges”

It doesn’t matter if you’re a one man band or a leader of a team of hundreds, if you have a wallet idea (or want one) this event is for you. What’s more, if expert advice, great speakers and week long support wasn’t enough, there will also be awards and recognition for products developed and/or conceived during the week.

We’ll be attending the event on Monday, hope to see you there!

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Meet the new Arduino GSM Shield!

March 11, 2013 1 Comment


Arduino, at its core enable you to make something amazing, but getting information from it often requires a ethernet, USB or wireless connection. This is great if you are close to your project or have suitable infrastructure near by, but what happens if you’re setting up something in a remote location? Being the awesome makers that you are, you can hack something together but what if you want something a little more compact, or need a plug in solution?

Meet the Arduino GSM Shield!

The Arduino GSM Shield enables you to add international mobile data connectivity to your Arduino, meaning that you can control it from anywhere!  With the GSM Shield you can connect to your Arduino over the internet and receive data back easily, it opens up a whole world of opportunity. The GSM Shield costs just €69,00 + tax and is available on the Arduino Store today, with local retailers to follow in due course.

 

The GSM shield has been developed in partnership with Telefonica one of the largest mobile operators in the world and a leader in M2M communications. Each shield is bundled with a SIM that has a specially created an international data bundle plan that offers makers super cheap data rates and covers the following countries:

EU: 

Spain, Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Malta

Latin America:

Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela

USA:

USA

All you need to do is insert the SIM into the holder on the Shield, activate it on BlueVia, read the documentation and you will be ready to go!

Main features:

  • Shield with GSM/GPRS connectivity.
  • Includes modem, SIM holder, antenna, and a connection for a bigger antenna
  • Quadband
  • Shield capabilities
    • Data: TCP & UDP, as server and client
  •  Comprensive software library
  • TCP connectivity, following the same structure than Ethernet library
  • Power management allows the Arduino+shield to run through the USB connection power

Technical Specifications:

  • Modem: Quectel M10
  • Quadband 850/900/1800/1900MHz
  • Antenna: Calvus A10340 SMD
  • Power: 5V taken from Arduino
  • Peak current < 400mA
  • SIM type: Mini SIM
  • Used Arduino pins: 2 and 3 (communications) 8 (modem reset)
  • Capabilities: Voice calls, SMS, GPRS
  • Maximum data speed: 85.6kbps
  • Control via AT commands or Arduino library-
  • Analog audio interfaces: two channels
  • Echo cancellation and echo suppression. Noise reduction.

We’re really excited at the potential of the Arduino GSM Shield and the opportunities it creates for seamless M2M Communications worldwide. We hope you join us on this journey and if you make something using the shield we want to know! Send us a tweet or send a video and might just feature it on the blog or the Arduino YouTube Channel!

 

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This week on the blog: BB10, DPMB7, FirefoxOS and Windows Phone!

March 8, 2013 Leave a Comment

Friday afternoon already? This week has flown by and its been a bumper week on the blog!

All in a great week, and the next one is look pretty good too :)

Have a great weekend!

Tom

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Windows Phone is the next app store to integrate with BlueVia Payments in Germany

March 8, 2013 Leave a Comment

Windows Phone, now available with carrier billing in Germany!

If you’ve been a reader of this blog over the last few months you’ll know that we’ve been talking a lot about mobile payments and in particular direct to bill payments. There’s a reason for that - direct to bill makes developers and businesses money. It does so by making it incredibly easy for users to purchase content, customers do not have to worry about entering credit card details in to their mobile device, with carrier billing they literally can pay and go (or pay and download in this case). As with all these things, make something amazing and crucially make it easy to make payments and customers will use it.

But don’t take our word for it, in 2012 we connected other app stores to the BlueVia Payment API in Europe and have seen transactions grow over 50% month on month. In short customers love mobile billing and are willing to repeat the payment process.

Which is why today we are pleased to announce that Microsoft is connecting the Windows Phone app store to the BlueVia Payment API in Germany!

With over 15 million o2 mobile customers, Germany represents a significant market for Microsoft, and gives their new Windows Phone platform a huge boost for both customers and app developers. By offering a low friction and simple payment experience through the BlueVia Payment API, we can help drive better conversions and help attract more developers and customers to the platform.

Robert Erdmann, Head of Direct-to-Bill & Enabling Services at Telefónica Germany had this to say on Microsoft connecting to Telefónica Germany:  ”We are pleased to be working with Microsoft, they alongside partners such as Google clearly demonstrate the opportunity presented by carrier billing”

We are really excited by our payment API and are working hard to connect as many App store providers as we can so that more customers can enjoy the simple, easy to use payments that it enables.

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