Street Fight Daily: Apple’s NFC Alternative, Google Faces ‘Street View’ Lawsuit
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology
With iBeacon, Apple is Going To Dump NFC (GigaOm)
When iOS 7 is released next week, retailers and other large indoor spaces are going to be able to use a technology called iBeacon to send data over short distances to iPhones. The technology opens a door to new set of applications such as indoor maps and in-store marketing and it might kill NFC (near-field communications), the wireless technology most linked with mobile payments.
Local Media Companies Need to Decentralize to Survive (Street Fight)
Terry Heaton: As applied to information technology, centralization is an error that needs correction. The concept of centralization is counterintuitive to the network, because the network sees every node as equal. The real business opportunities are all local, not in bundling everything together to create scale in order to accumulate digital pennies.
Google Loses Appeal in Street View Privacy Case (Reuters)
A federal appeals court rejected Google bid to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of violating federal wiretap law when its accidentally collected emails and other personal data while building its popular Street View program. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to exempt Google from liability under the federal Wiretap Act for having inadvertently intercepted emails, user names, passwords and other data from private Wi-Fi networks to create Street View, which provides panoramic views of city streets.
9 Ways Merchants Can Upgrade the In-Store Experience With Hyperlocal Tools (Street Fight)
If brick-and-mortar retailers want to compete with e-commerce competitors, they have to make the in-store shopping experience better for their customers. Nearly half (48%) of shoppers surveyed by Cisco said they are currently using, or would like to use, a smartphone to shop while inside a store. Here are nine ideas for how retailers can tackle the issue from top executives in the field of hyperlocal marketing
Yelp’s Newest Weapon Against Fake Reviews: Lawsuits (BloombergBusinessweek)
For years, some small business owners have alleged that Yelp wields the threat of negative reviews to convince local businesses to buy advertising. Now a San Diego lawyer is accusing Yelp of suing him in retaliation after he won his own legal claim against the company and began recruiting other businesses with similar grievances.
Ford Continues Its Bring-Your-Own-Navigation Push With Sync Support For TomTom (PaidContent)
Ford is bringing its Ford AppLink connected infotainment services to Europe, starting with the Ford EcoSport compact SUV. As part of its announcement last week, Ford listed a raft of new developer partners that will populate the new Euro-Sync with apps, including Hotels.com, Spotify, Glympse, Audioteka audiobooks, Wcities’ Eventseeker and Cityseeker. But one app in particular was notable: TomTom.
PayPal Beacon Disruptive, NFC May Be Toast (Sceenwerk)
Greg Sterling: Earlier this week PayPal introduced a mobile payment solution (called Beacon) that could make NFC largely irrelevant in the US market. I believe PayPal Beacon, Square Wallet and similar “hands free” approaches are the future of mobile payments in this country — much more than NFC.
Patch Editors Will Be Working Harder, Not Smarter (Romenesko)
Local Editor: During a conference call last week, all Patch editors were told that each site should have 11 posts per day, per site. Since most editors are now responsible for two or three sites, this would add up to either 16 or 24 stories per day, an obviously impossible edict to follow given the oft-slow news cycle of small towns, plus the fact that there are only so many hours in the day.
Yoyo Raises $1.2M To Launch New Kind Of Mobile Payment And Loyalty Platform (TechCrunch)
Mobile startup Yoyo announced it’s raised $1.2 million in a seed round to launch a platform designed to create a faster, simpler way to buy goods, via a mobile app, which also combines with an automatic loyalty point collection system. They plan to target high-volume, low-value transaction retailers. Think of the Starbucks mobile app and apply it to all retailers.