Street Fight Daily: Square Unveils New Hardware, PayPal Offers Cash for Registers

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.

Square_Logo_PortraitSquare Unveils Hardware for iPad Registers (New York Times)
Square, the payments start-up, on Tuesday morning introduced new hardware to accompany its cash register software for iPads. The product, called Square Stand, can connect to other accessories like a receipt printer, cash drawer and bar-code scanner

How Long Will Local Web Video Be Held Hostage by the ’30-Second Spot’? (Street Fight)
Terry Heaton: The 30-second spot will be the ruin of those in local media who shift this old television workhorse to the Web. Local media companies rarely run anything less than 30 seconds, because that’s what advertisers want to buy, but this is a grave error — it spits in the face of the one who has clicked through to watch a short video.

PayPal’s Cash For Registers Tries To Outdo Square And Groupon With Its Own Bid To Rule The Register (TechCrunch)
PayPal today announced Cash for Registers to encourage merchants to switch to PayPal-powered point-of-sale solutions. The program is part of the payment giant’s bid to be the kingpin among local merchants looking for lower-cost ways of accepting credit card payments.

How Marketers Can Help Both Merchants and Consumers Win With Local Search (Street Fight)
Joe Morsello: For the sake of local businesses and local searchers, marketers need to come to the rescue. vSplash estimates that there is a $3.2 billion opportunity for local marketers to help clean up local search and help local businesses with their digital marketing efforts. And in that number there is some low-hanging fruit — especially for marketers that already have a foothold in local markets.

Facebook, Waze at Odds Over Liquidation (YNet)
The chasm between Facebook and Waze over the future of the navigation company’s development center in Israel is deepening and impeding a possible acquisition deal. The social network giant insists on relocating some of Israeli navigation company’s employees to its San Francisco headquarters, while Waze executives are adamant about not leaving the development center in Israel.

Getting Points for TV Part of Mobile-App Loyalty Programs (Bloomberg)
Walt Disney and Target have signed up with Shopkick, which created a mobile app that gives points to shoppers for entering stores or buying products. Viggle software offers points for “check-ins” while watching TV shows, while Kapture Life Inc. members can earn rewards by shooting and sharing pictures of food or products.

Our Pivot: How We Went From Failure To Successful Exit In 12 Months (Forbes)
Eli Portnoy: With $1.4 million still in the bank and a business idea that clearly had no legs, I made the decision to “pivot.” I flew out to NY and met with our lead investor, IA Ventures, and walked them through a detailed account of everything we had done with ThinkNear and all that we had learned.

A Cloudless Atlas — How MapBox Aims to Make the World’s ‘Most Beautiful Map’ (Wired)
MapBox is a mapping startup that offers users a platform for making custom maps based on OpenStreetMap and other open data. To understand why it was so eager to scoop up Loyd, we need to do a little demonstration. Open your favorite map site (Google, Bing, Mapquest and Yahoo will all work for this) and switch to satellite view. Zoom out all the way. See anything weird?

How Apple Location Data May Stalk iPhone Users (Mashable)
An Australian computer-security expert has created an application that lets anyone see the locations of the last three Wi-Fi access points used by an Apple iPhone or iPad — information that could be used to deduce where the iOS device user lives. Melbourne-based researcher Hubert Seiwert’s iSniff GPS, now freely available for anyone to download and use, combines three different Apple iOS features.

New Google Maps Features Leak Ahead of I/O (TheNextWeb)
There’s been speculation that Google will launch a revamped version of its Map service at Google I/O this week, and, according to new screenshots that leaked this morning, we can expect to see revamped platform with a new user interface and integration with more Google services. Interestingly, it was described as “a map that gets better with use”, which indicates that Google Maps will now track user behavior and history in order to further customize and personalize the app’s general functionality.

Applebee’s Drives Foot Traffic Via Targeted Location-based Mobile Campaign (Mobile Commerce Daily)
Applebee’s is enticing consumers to visit its locations through a new location-based mobile advertising campaign that incorporates menu items, a store locator and gift cards to bolster engagement. The company is running the campaign within The Weather Channel’s iPhone app.

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