Contactless payments for mobile phones

Mobile phones may be about to replace smart cards for card payments, avoiding the need to carry a wallet full of plastic cards as well as a mobile phone.

The next generation of mobile phones may be equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) contactless communication technology incorporated into their removable SIM cards.  Since a SIM card is issued to a user by a network operator, it can be used to identify a mobile phone's user.  As an interim measure, phones may be provided with RFID tags to perform a similar function.

Try these links:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12478643
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13457071
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13467141

Please leave a comment if these web pages are unavailable to you, stating the country from which you are attempting to access them.

Feedback

When you read Cambridge IGCSE Computer Studies Coursebook with CD-ROM, please use the Comment facility below to let me know what you would like to see improved in a future edition.

Also, please let me know what extra resources you would like to see on this blog.

Optical Character Recognition

You don't need your own OCR software to try this out. Use the search engine criterion "online ocr", to find a number of free websites to which you can upload a scanned image of some text.

If you have no access to a scanner, you can still generate your own test image by entering some text in presentation software such as Open Office Impress or Microsoft PowerPoint. You can then export or save the file in JPG or other image format.

Concept keyboards

For an interesting example of the use of touchscreen concept keyboards, you could take a look at www.omniqare.co.uk/iQare/. My mother could really benefit from such a user-friendly computer, except that she is blind.

How could we design similar computers for people who have visual impairments?