Strolling around Mobile World Congress back in February, yes I’m very late posting, I stopped by the Visa booth to see what they had going on in the way of NFC (Near Field Communication).  I was offered a private briefing with with Bill Gajda the head of mobile banking for Visa, I jumped at the chance to say the least.

I asked Bill to talk to me about anything he wanted, not just the normal fluff.  So we started chatting about some of Visa’s current goings on and a little about the future.  Bill envisions a world where our phones work as our credit cards, no surprise there, right.  But he went on to explain the level of security and procedures that they’re planning on using and they currently use.  For example when you plan on paying for a product and you have to activate the application on your phone, not just touch it to the pay terminal.  Once the app is active you still have to press a button to authorize the transaction and then the app goes dark.  Meaning it can’t be used for another transaction until activated again.  This all means that someone can’t just bump into you while you’re walking in the airport and skim your credit card information off your card.  And yes this has happened to me twice now.

I can currently go to Chase Bank and get a credit card from them that has an NFC chip in it.  But according to Bill in the near future you will (hopefully) be able to get a phone that has an NFC radio/chip built in and be able to download the Chase (for example) app.  I imagine we might start off with a white labeled Visa app, we’ll just have to wait and see.

I’m personally very excited about this technology and hope we can start using it soon.  I just don’t know how fast it will catch on because of the lack of support by companies with the point of sale machines.  They will have to get all new machines in many cases and this is quite costly.  On the other hand if Visa wanted to front the money and come out looking like a forward thinking company it might just be able to pull this all off and become the leader in NFC for credit card transactions.

UPDATE: Oddly enough Visa has stopped supporting their mobile app as of September 23rd.

Hours before I was flying home from Israel recently Dvir Reznik had just flown back to Israel from Amsterdam I believe and I was anxious to meet up with him.  He is the head of marketing at Onavo, it’s one of the most likely companies I see succeeding in the next 12 months.

Onavo is solving a huge problem for people with smart phones, data consumption.  There are limits on almost every plan you can get here in the US and Onavo compresses the data that’s being used, so 100mb may only consume 40-60mb over your phone.  Don’t ask me how they do it, I would have to turn you over to the Mossad if you found out.  But in all seriousness you should watch this video on your computer while you’re downloading Onavo on your iPhone, 3G iPad or Android device.  It has kept me from going over my allotment of data every month since I’ve installed it.  Keep in mind this is great for when your traveling to keep your roaming bill down as well as when you’re at home and don’t want overages.

I’ve been writing about Truphone since 2007 and I suspect using it even longer.  I was called the biggest Truphone fan by Ewan MacLeod back in 2007 or 2008.  I wish I could remember when they launched but boy oh boy was it amazing back then. Fast forward 5 years (I’m guessing) and you know what I’m using now?  A Truphone (now called Tru) sim and you know what, they are a legitimate MNO, mobile network operator.  They have their own towers and everything, small as it may be, it’s growing.  Well their sim card has evolved and changed and I think I’ve had every iteration of it.

Just days before I left for MWC ’11 back in mid February I was graced by a new sim card.  At the time, from my understanding it was 1 of only a dozen or so in existence.  Well the beauty of this sim card was not that it could make calls, use data or send/receive SMS but that it could do all of that IN A BLACKBERRY.  Yes that’s colossal news.  It’s the first time that I’ve known any international roaming sim to support BlackBerry use.  I could be wrong though. Anyways, I was in a BlackBerry phase and couldn’t imagine going to Spain without using my BB as usual and this sim made that possible without incurring ANY roaming charges.  This was amazing, I tested the sim before I left the US and it worked great but the real test was going to be on the ground in Barcelona and low and behold it worked just as it was supposed to.

This new sim in my opinion opens up a whole new angle for Truphone, they can now go after the business user who is tied to a BlackBerry.  I had a very nice set up for the week I was gone.  I had my Phone.com (a client) phone number forward to my US Truphone number so I could receive calls like normal.  I got all kinds of business calls while I was there without ever skipping a beat in service.  And to make calls I used a combination of my Truphone sim plus I was running the Phone.com Mobile Office app which allowed me to make calls using just a tiny bit of data via my Truphone sim.  It is a setting in the Mobile Office app that sets the app to call back your phone versus calling through.  It’s not complicated and saves a ton of money.  I had the best of both worlds using Phone.com and Truphone. One of the nicest parts about the Truphone sim is that you get 2 phone numbers, 1 US number and 1 British number.  I used my Phone.com number for business but was able to give my UK number out so friends in Europe and England could call and text me on it for cheaper then to a US number.  Europeans are much happier to call a UK number and Americans feel the same way about calling a US number.  And in my testing I could receive text messages on both Truphone numbers. There are many more benefits to the Truphone BlackBerry sim but I won’t go into all of them.  I will say thank you to Truphone and give their service and sim card 2 very big thumbs up (as usual for them).  It worked for me flawlessly and I can’t imagine traveling without it ever again.  If anyone travels abroad much I would even suggest transferring your regular cell number to Truphone and just use their sim all the time.  Check the rates in your country but it’s definitely something to think about.

Samuel Keret the VP of Biz Dev at Waze (one of my personal favorite companies in the mobile space) gives us a few minutes.  Thank you to Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review for letting me film during his interview.

Waze has been doing some amazing things for a while now and from the inside stuff that I hear about them, it’s only getting better.  My source, not Samuel, was going over some numbers and it’s darn impressive.

As I fly home from a long week of meetings, parties and the over abundance of mobile phones I think I’ve seen the future. I imagine this is the same all over the world and in many industries and that it will trickle down into the general population.

Every year I see a trend and find that I’m noticing 1 phone stands out more then the rest in that it’s more commonly seen during MWC being used by the mass of people there. I will say I’m still shocked at how many feature phones I see at this show from people in the mobile industry, it’s amazing and not in a good way. Last year it was the HTC Nexus One (that could have been because Google gave a ton of them away at the show) and the year before that it was the Nokia E71 and the year before that it was the Nokia N95 and N95 8gig. Every year I see lot’s of iPhones but they’re not everywhere like you might imagine if you live in the US.

Well this year was unique. The device to have was not a phone. The most popular device to have that I saw was the iPad. It seemed like everyone had them. Some people told me they had a laptop in their hotel room to get serious work done and others said that that’s all they brought with for computing. Now here’s the interesting thing. It wasn’t just the iPad I noticed, it was a combination. It seemed like many of the iPad users had a BlackBerry to compliment their iPad’s. With the iPad you get all the greatness of iOS and it’s similar to an iPhone but with the BB you get a great email experience enhanced by the QWERTY keyboard and battery life of the BB. It’s a match made in heaven and I can definitely see why people go for it. Additionally BB’s use much less data then an Android or iPhone which is great when traveling abroad.

I see this as a combo that might last an entire year we just might see it back at MWC again as the combination to have. Or maybe it will be a BB combined with a Rim PlayBook.

Stay tuned for much more MWC ’11 coverage.

A friend of mine is doing a project and asked if she could post about it here and I said yes so here it is, enjoy and welcome Julie as my first guest poster.

I had a great chat with Di-Ann Eisnor of Waze back at Mobile World Congress over a month ago then we got to hang at CTIA and I’m just now getting around to putting up my content from the trip.  I really like what Waze is doing and if you haven’t checked them out be sure to do so.  It’s an amazing social mapping program that creates the maps from the trips it’s users take.

Thanks for your time Di-Ann and best of luck with Waze.

Here’s a video I took at MWC showing the new Skype client working Symbian.  It was a huge scoop when I took this video.

Spending time in the Nokia suite at MWC in Barcelona I got to chatting with the maps guys and I learned something interesting thanks to Rita alerting me to the data usage issue.  Ovi Maps can be used out in the field entirely without a data connection. Yes you read that right, no data necessary to run Ovi Maps. The key is sideloading, meaning you load the maps before you head out the door onto your phone. By doing this your handset is fully loaded with the maps and anything that you would search the map for, including directions and services like restaurants and movie theaters.

I got a chance to get a few words from Dan Marinescu-Gava of Nokia who told me a few very interesting facts.
1. Nokia can put all of Ovi Maps, being most of the world (but not all) on about a 5gig memory card.
2. The entire United States is only about 1.4gig
3. All of Spain is only 194mb

Here is Dan talking a little about Ovi Maps

Being my second trip to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress I have a bit of advice.  If you or your company needs access to 3G or needs to make phone calls/sms, I suggest Yoigo.  I got my Yoigo sim last year at a store called OpenCor.  It is just a few hundred yards/meters from the entrance to MWC.  If you walk out of the congress and make a right on Gran Via it’s about 2 blocks up.  The address is Gran Via de les Corts 407-409 and it’s on the left side.  You will need ID to purchase the sims, I used my US drivers license.  One thing to note, MAKE SURE TO SET THE PREFERED LANGUAGE ON YOUR PHONE BEFORE YOU PUT IN THE YOIGO SIM.  Otherwise it will switch it to Spanish, I learned the hard way.

Anyways, I got mine last year for 10Euro and it came with 10Euro on it already.  I also added 10 more and was set for the entire week.  The rates as of last year, to the best of my understanding are as follows
1.20Euro/day gives you unlimited 3G
.12Euro to all Spanish numbers
.30Euro for all international calls
.00 for Yoigo to Yoigo calls
.10 SMS to anywhere including Spain
.30 MMS to anywhere including Spain

This seems like a very good deal to me at least.  Last year most of us had some call and 3G quality issues on the first day of MWC but after that it was fine.  It seemed like they had to catch up to the influx of all the new subscribers.

I highly recommend Yoigo.   If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.

UPDATE: OpenCor along with MANY other establishments in Spain are closed on Sundays.  So don’t plan on picking up a sim or top up cards from them on Sunday.