Ever since the Nexus S and its nifty little NFC chip hit the market, there’s been speculation that El Goog was planning a foray into the mobile payment arena currently occupied by the likes of Charge Anywhere. Now, it looks like that plan may be in high gear, as the Wall Street Journal reports that Google’s secretly partnered with MasterCard and Citigroup to test out just such a system. According to the publication, the early demo pairs “one current model and many comping models of Android phones” with existing Citigroup-sponsored credit and debit cards, and is using the phones’ NFC chips with those VeriFone readers we recently heard about.

What’s more, a newly-published patent application from the crew in Mountain View may hint at the software behind such things. The application describes a service that sets up Google as a third-party broker who receives the shopping cart info of customers placing orders via a device (including those of the mobile variety), allows them to select shipping and other options, and provides the total order cost. It then collects payment, coordinates shipment, and forwards order information to the seller to complete the transaction. So companies can have Google handle all their payment-taking needs in return for getting a sneak peek at what folks are buying — something that the WSJ’s sources say might be a component of the setup Google’s testing right now — as opposed to other third-party services, like Paypal, that only obtain and exchange payment info with merchants. Looks like Alma Whitten (Google’s Director of Privacy) has her work cut out for her assuaging the concerns such a system will inevitably create in an increasingly privacy-minded populace.

WSJ: Google teams with MasterCard and Citigroup for NFC payments, also files patent app originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Mar 2011 23:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Slide steer is a very versatile piece of machinery. It is used at construction sites basically for the process of skid steering. Slide steering in simpler terms means carrying weight ( the materials ) forwards and backwards from the construction site.

What are skid steer forks?
Slide steer forks are one of the various attachments of a slide steer machine or vehicle. They’re made up of iron or steel and are attached to the slide steer machine or car. Slip steer forks are also known as pallet forks. It looks like a fencing and is used at construction sites. They’re used basically for moving out the pallets on a construction site. Pallets are the flat structures or the portable platforms on a construction site and slide steer forks are used for moving them around on the construction site.

There are a few things a person needs to understand about slide steer machinery are :
Skid steer comes in two types : a full sized slip steer and a mini slip steer. This slide steer can be employed for a larger or larger construction site. On the other hand the mini slide steer may be employed for individual projects that are on a smaller scale.
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Listed below are some of the Tips for purchasing a slide steer and slide steer forks.The first thing a person wishes to decide before purchasing a slide steer and slide steer forks is whether she orhe wants to get it on a new or a second hand basis. Used slip steer and slide steer forks will bring down the costs and if anything problem occurs you can contact the owner for the repairs.Choose the Skid Steer Forks attachments and the type of slide steer to suit your requirements. Spending unnecessarily on attachments that are no use to you is mindless.

Comparing the costs and reviews of different Skid Steer Forks brands which make skid steer and slip steer forks. There are a lot of options available to fit your wishes. Purchasing a slide steer and skid steer forks online is one of the best ways of purchasing it because the selection of skid steer and its attachments is gigantic and stocking such big equipments takes up plenty of space. Thus it’s not possible for the comparatively smaller businesses to load up the attachments of skid steer.

Make sure that you are ok with the hand and foot controls that a slide steer offers. This varies from brand to brand so a person must be careful about this factor before purchasing slip steer and slip steer forks. Thus slide steer forks are one of the most versatile attachments of a slide steer.

Devices straight out of science fiction are entering our lives with regularity nowadays. And although the wonder is gone from the continual shrinking of our phones and media players and the growth of our displays, one field that retains its interest is that of cybernetics. Apart from the name just sounding cool, the idea of replacing or augmenting our mortal frame with machines is too compelling not to pay attention to.

But like all sciences, it is a slow march forwards, widely punctuated with visible peaks, newsworthy items like the Eyeborg guy or a successful cybernetic arm. Even these are transitional states, and despite the fanfare they attract, are each simply one more step along the road.

Here we have an excellent article on the state of vision augmentation technology, and though it conjures images of going to the local Fry’s and picking out a custom eye overlay, the reality is that we are in the very early, yet very promising, first stages of a major technology. We are privileged to witness it as it grows from thesis to lab to workshop to treatment, but we mustn’t be impatient. It will be years before something like this will be available, but the fact that we can even see it on the horizon is reason enough to be thankful.

Having studied the eye and visual system a bit in college, I have to say that I find the contact display idea to be inadequate for its own purposes. Though attempting to work out a non-invasive solution is commendable, it introduces as many problems as it solves. The power and transparency issues become worse as the technology becomes better, and I am skeptical of the ability of the contact to provide enough light to be salient, or for the display to be accurate enough to be useful (or even in focus at all — they suggest a microlens array, good luck with that).

I humbly suggest a micro-projector embedded in the eye; yes, it sounds fanciful, but be honest, it’s no more fanciful than a high-res transparent display using wireless power. With an internal display you can also internalize power, control and storage, and optical qualities are adjustable on the fly (though they shouldn’t need to be changed much after an initial calibration). Plus it’d be much easier to do a display with a usable resolution. Of course, it would take surgery and there’s the risk of rejection, but I think it’s the only option for a truly functional augmented vision system.

Anyway, I’ve gone on too long here. Go check out the article and see what you think. Despite my reservations about their approach, the science is amazing and there is a lot of promise. I’m also proud to say that it’s all going on at (or at least, this article focuses on) the University of Washington, where I (briefly) had the privilege of studying Neuroanatomy. Between this and the HITLab, they’ve got some academic dynamite going on.

More power to Apple and its legion of accessory makers. Asking people to pay $20 to use your own headphones with an $80 MP3 player is ballsy — brass ballsy. Such is the story of the new iPod shuffle, though, and I’m willing to bet that people will indeed pay for an inline headphone adapter.

If so, Belkin’s now got one for $19.99. Called, very simply, the Headphone Adapter for iPod Shuffle, it’s a 3.5mm plug that sits between your headphones and your iPod shuffle, and features the requisite controls for playing, pausing, skipping forwards and backwards, and invoking VoiceOver to hear the song title and artist read aloud.

Can’t fault Belkin for capitalizing on this gaping void that Apple’s created, although the $20 price tag might be a lot easier to stomach if it were, say, $10. Time will tell, though.

Belkin : Headphone Adapter for iPod® Shuffle [Product Page]

Use Any Headset with Your iPod shuffle with Belkin’s New Headphone Adapter [Press Release]

New season, new ball. The three big football leagues—England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, and Italy’s Serie A—begin in just a few weeks, and Nike has developed a fancy, new ball for them that’s loaded with all types of hi-tech goodness that may pique your interest. It’s called the T90 Ascente. Goalkeepers will hate it; flashy forwards will love it.

What’s so damn special about the ball? The Nike bullet points are: “360 Sweet Spot,” “Longer Range,” “Increased Visibility,” “Higher Accuracy,” and “Greater Speed.”

Breaking those down, the “360 Sweet Spot” refers to the way the ball reacts to being kicked. Usually, footballs have a “sweet spot,” like the “meat” of a baseball bat, that you’re trained to hit for maximum speeds, accuracy, etc. Apparently the T90 Ascente doesn’t have a “sweet spot,” per se, rather that the whole ball is a sweet spot. That is, wherever you kick it, the ball will react as if you’ve kicked the sweet spot. Good news for Quaresma. (Why do sports compilation videos on YouTube always have terrible music?)

Longer range? That’s pretty obvious, right? The ball is constructed in three layers, and this somehow makes the ball travel two ball lengths longer than previous Nike footballs.

Increased visibility. You’ll notice the patterns on the ball; it sort of looks like the scanner from Half-Life 2:

Anyhow, the patterns are such that they create a “flicker” as the ball spins. That’ll be helpful on those awful, gray winter days in Liverpool.

If you actually had the ball in your hands, you’d see that its surface is textured to a degree that’s probably a little different than the last ball you kicked. Nike calls it “micro-textured,” which basically lets air flow around the ball more smoothly, creating less resistance, etc. You know, like the dimples on a golf ball.

The T90 Ascenete is also faster than previous balls, traveling at about 22.19 m/s (72.17 feet/s). Something to do with the three-layer construction.

All this talk of multi-layer construction reminds me of the great Razor Blade Wars of the past decade. “Our razor has three blades.” “Well our razor has four blades.” “Ha! Our blade has five blades!.

And, uh, if you speak Spanish, watch this video. It explains the technological wonder of the ball.

Nike has its own video, in English, that I can’t embed. (Though, if I were feeling crazy, I could probably just swipe the Flash file then upload to our CG YouTube account. No thanks.) It’s here if you’re interested.

About 15 minutes ago I wrote “Goalkeepers will hate it; flashy forwards will love it.” But now I see FC Barcelona’s goalkeeper Víctor Valdés praising the ball in that Spanish video. Figures.

We recently saw Virgin Media launch their super fast fibre optic broad band, with the current growth of the internet it is something the UK must do to be ahead in a technological sense.  As the internet expands its becomes more and more about media and large files being displayed to you. so to ultimatley view a website at its best you need to have good connection speeds.

If we cast our minds back a decade, you will remember that we were mainly using dial up connections, if we were still using them now it would probably be impossible to download big giles and watch videos on the likes of YouTube. But currently broadband lets us do all of this at reasonable speeds.

British Telecom though are looking ahead and have recently announced that they will be installing fibre optic cables nationwide. Ofcom has announced that it will not regulate BT’s pricing for next-generation broadband to enable the telecoms giant to make the necessary investment in fibre-optic cabling.

I presume that when this does get rolled out it will begin to be quite pricey for a few years; we all remember how much dial up used to be when it was first released and then how much broadband was. But I definitely do feel that this is a very positive mood by BT, to move the UK forwards we have to have super fast speeds to access things, it will not only make  personal navigation easier but it will make life a whole lot easier for small and large businesses.  Although the cables will cost almost £3 billion to install I am sure that they will make that back in no time whatsoever.

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