Smartphone ATM's?

Starbucks just launched a new method of payment in their stores, where you can pay by an app in your smartphone without having to take out your wallet! How amazing is this? I think is't great, how many of us have forgotten our wallets at homes and wanted a coffe or a frapuccino and couldn't have it? well it has happened to me.

For me it's amazing how much you can do with a smartphone these days, for example, the other day I was watching the new commercial of Chase, where you can download an app and take pictures of check and they will automatically be deposited into your account.

I think that this is just the beginning for many more options like this to come in the near future, and we should embrace all that this apps have to offer!

Internet Piracy

These days Internet piracy has become like a virus, no one can really stop it. Some countries like France are creating and passing out new piracy laws against users that download music and movies from the internet as well as the Internet Sites that provide these services.

My question is, can governments really stop internet piracy? I think not. Users will always try to find new ways to access these materials with out paying, while the government is closing down 10 sites, 20 more new ones are providing these services. Internet technology advances way too fast for the government and laws to catch up.

There are some attempts from part of the companies such as Google to combat piracy. They recently launched a music service in India to help users search for legal online streams and downloads. If many other would follow these example, like Internet providers, I think that we could attack this issue in a mor effective way.

As long as people don't recognize how harmfull it' s to the creators of the music and movies, they are not going to stop downloading these file illegally. I think the government should really focus on educating people on this matter.

Online Privacy

These days all we hear about is Online Privacy, or Internet Privacy, no matter how you call it's all the same, Privacy Issues within the web; specially in social networking site that have become so popular in the last years. With the creation of Facebook and the continued popularity of MySpace many people are giving their personal information out on the internet, these sites keep track of what people do while they are visiting the site, and save that info for later. Most of us are no aware that we can modify the privacy settings if we want to.

 Recently the FTC released a report on how to protect the user from privacy violations. While this might help just a bit, I think that if you don't want to feel like your privacy if being violated you can follow this simple suggestions from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I'm a firm believer that if you want thing to change you have to do something about it, and not just expect that people, in this case the Government, is going to solve them for you.


I don't know about you, but in my case I still  really haven't felt like my privacy in being invaded, I'm only get junk mail from web sites where I have previously disclosed information. I might be a bit extreme in this point, but like I said before, if you don't want your private information on the web, don't disclose it. For me is as simple as that.

Deal of the day - Who is it for?

Now days everyone is talking about group discounts, since the creation of Groupon many others are trying to create the same business model, create a "deal of the day". But for who does it really works? For big companies or can it also be used and help smaller companies?

Group Price just launched a new service targeted for smaller business and companies. They are offering deals on online softwares that are usually too expensive for this compnaies to acquire. This will help them by allowing samll companies to have online precense, grow and manager their business.

Personally I think that this will help opne a whole new market for this small companies, which didn't have acces to the huge and fast growing online market.

But for some other businesses like retail, restaurants, spas, entertainment, the story goes a diferente way... This Groupon thing is sort of getting out of their hands. Many of these business esare not getting what they signed up for. For example there has been some complaint about people in the same group usisng more that one discount at a time... Is this what you want? Do this companies want to give away their products? I don't think so...

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/groupprice-launches-group-buying-for-small-businesses-111043584.html