Archive for April, 2008
R.I.P. Pay By Touch
Published by Nasreen Quibria on March 31st, 2008Last Wednesday, in a statement lost on many of us in the clamor of the Visa IPO the day before, the biometrics company Pay By Touch regretfully announced that it would be shuttering its doors following nearly six years since its first biometric transaction in 2002.
Several factors were responsible for bringing the company to […]
Apple’s Anti-Catalyst Strategy
Published by David Evans on March 31st, 2008The lastest issue of Wired Magazine has an interesting article on. How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing Everything Wrong. It provides some useful insights into why companies can sometimes do better by keeping tight control over their product rather than operating as a catalyst that encourages other businesses to join the ecosystem. Any […]
Amex Loses the Fob
Published by David Evans on March 31st, 2008American Express is ditching the fob–the contactless slugs with a contactless chip that people could hang off their key chains to pay with. The company line is that people prefer mag stripe cards and Amex is pushing those with a chip. But the reason why people don’t like fobs–MPD found hardly anyone did in […]
What’s Down with Google?
Published by David Evans on March 31st, 2008With Google’s stock down 40 percent since the beginning of the year you have to wonder whether some investors have misunderstood how Google makes money all along. Google’s stock too a big whack a few weeks ago when ComScore released stats showing that number of clicks the search-ad giant was getting were down. What the […]
Piggly Wiggly Gives Pay By Touch the Finger
Published by Karen Webster on March 29th, 2008With its ejection from Piggly Wiggly (not to mention its bankruptcy), Pay By Touch is pretty much dead as a new payment system.
It all sounded so clever. People registered their finger and associated it with a method of payment. Then they could pay at participating merchants like Piggly by pressing their finger on a […]
Media Companies Should Stick to Their Knitting
Published by David Evans on March 24th, 2008Media companies are engaging in a bit of co-opetition as they form ad networks for selling advertising across member properties. (See the recent AP article Media Groups Share Content in Ad Deals.)
Sometimes competitors are getting in bed together because they figure, I guess, that they don’t want to lose the money for selling […]
Visa, Famous Bank Card Association, Dead at 37
Published by David Evans on March 24th, 2008Visa, a bank card association that was formed in 1970, and which endured numerous attacks from class action lawyers, rivals, and government prosecutors, passed away on Wednesday, March 19, 2008, after a long illness. Her death was announced by her investment banker, Goldman Sachs. Survivors include its thousands of issuers, and millions of cardholders. […]
BEBOAOL–Brilliant Stroke or Going for Broke
Published by David Evans on March 24th, 2008Troubled online giant AOL just swallowed also-ran social networking site Bebo for close to $900 million. Given the volatility of the online ecosystem these days you have to give AOL credit for placing such as huge bet on a social networking site that mainly the Brits seem to love, and to Bebo for taking […]
Consumers and Product Choices: Less Can Equal More
Published by Karen Webster on March 18th, 2008eMarketer recently reported the results of a University of Iowa study that suggests that consumers who have only a little information about a product are much happier with that product than people who have more information. It’s kind of an interesting commentary in a world increasingly dominated by information from a variety of sources […]
Carnival of Mobilists 115
Published by Catalyst Code on March 17th, 2008Our iPhone SDK post is included in this week’s Carnival of Mobilists, a round-up of some of the best entries on the mobile industry, hosted by Andrew Grill’s blog.






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