Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Why Bitcoin is Going to Fail

There have been numerous attempts to establish a currency that will work on the internet - eCash, eCheque, cashU - You name it. Most of them have failed, usually because they did not have the active support of the governments and/or of the banking system. Some might say Paypal is an exception, but it is not a currency, but rather a bridge to the conventional cash and credit card system.

Bitcoin is really an old idea that has been tried many times before and has most of the characteristics of those that have failed. Check out this article that goes into more detail.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Businesses Continue to Find New Uses for Tablets

Tablets are selling well for consumer purposes, but they are used by business in new and innovative ways. Most common is usage by field staff, who need to move between customers frequently or constantly. They offer the kind of convenience and functionality that business needs. In the example from this linked article, Reliance Home Comfort distributed tablets to their field staff with functions that enabled them to access the programs on the main system that they need to service customers. Previously it was a case of entering data in several different software packages from paper based source documents, which took a lot of clicks and time to complete. With the tablets, interfaces were designed that enabled touch entry to all of them from the same app, which not only reduced the number of clicks, but made it all faster to process. In effect they achieved a simple form of systems integration, that in conventional terms would have cost huge dollars to achieve. Check the article here.

Monday, November 04, 2013

The Coming Era of Mobile Payments

Numerous companies are offering or planning to offer apps that allow payments to be made with smartphones. It may signal the end of plastic. Check out this excellent article on the subject.