We began our Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things series yesterday with a look at barcode scanning . We wrote that smartphones are increasingly being deployed as readers for barcodes - in particular via apps available on iPhone and Android. These applications, such as RedLaser on iPhone and ShopSavvy on Android, allow you to scan a barcode on a product or object and get more information about it. We noted however that RFID tags are more functional and flexible than barcodes. While barcodes are cheaper and getting traction in the U.S. with the QR format, the potential for RFID tags is even greater. Apple knows this and if rumors are to believed, RFID will be integrated into the iPhone 4G later this year. Sponsor RWW's Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things Series: According to a number of believable blog reports , RFID is set to be a part of the as yet unannounced iPhone 4G. Apple holds a patent for a touch screen RFID tag reader and is said to be testing an RFID-enabled iPhone currently. So RFID could be a feature of the iPhone 4G as soon as Spring 2010 . As MacRumors succinctly explained in November, mobile phone usage of RFID technology will come in the form of Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC is a new standard based on RFID and it has three use cases: the phone as an RFID tag; the phone as RFID Reader; and peer to peer communication (P2P) between two NFC-enabled phones. The first two use cases are most interesting. Using the iPhone as an RFID tag means it can be a deployed as a payment device (similar to a credit card), identity card, security device, and more. This type of functionality is already happening in Japan, where the RFID Suica chip is installed in some mobile phones. Using the phone as an RFID Reader allows the iPhone to interact with RFID-enabled objects in the real world. Check out this prototype from a Norwegian research organization called Touch, using the iPhone as a Media Player: Timo Arnall from Touch noted in a follow-up post in November that RFID and NFC peripherals are beginning to be released for the iPhone. 2010 could be a great year for RFID in the consumer market, if it is to be a feature of the next iPhone. Expect to see it in Android devices too. Will mobile phones provide the tipping point for adoption of the Internet of Things? We've seen now that mobile phones are a big driver of consumer adoption of both barcodes and RFID tags, so we wouldn't be surprised. Discuss

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iPhone as RFID Tag & Reader: Coming Soon

Two of the biggest trends we tracked last year were Mobile Web and Internet of Things . In a new series on ReadWriteWeb, which we're calling Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things , we'll explore how these two important trends are converging and look at some cutting edge example products. We start with barcode scanning... Internet of Things is when everyday objects become connected to the Internet, via technologies such as RFID tags, sensors and barcodes. One trend we saw expanding in 2008-09 was mobile phones being deployed as readers for barcodes . Sponsor Increasingly, smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices offer applications that allow you to scan a barcode on a product or object and get more information about it. The Technology Barcodes are similar to RFID tags, in that they both hold data. RFID tags are generally more functional and flexible than barcodes . Also RFID tags can be read/write, whereas barcodes cannot. However the big advantage for barcodes is that they're cheaper, therefore we're more likely to see scanning as a consumer activity ramp up in the U.S. via barcodes. The most popular form of 2D barcode is the QR Code (the QR stands for "Quick Response"), which became popular in Japan and is now gaining traction in the U.S. and other markets. The Products In a series of posts written over September 2008, Sarah Perez analyzed the then burgeoning " scannable world ." As Sarah explained, barcode scanning is not a new technology on the Web. One of the first examples was :CueCat , a cat-shaped barcode reader from the late 1990s. It linked a user to a website by scanning a barcode in an article or other printed matter. CueCat never took off because it required a separate piece of hardware, but now in 2010 smartphones are the hardware . There's also no shortage of software circa 2010, such as ScanLife and the NeoReader app described in Part 2 of Sarah's Scannable World series . A variety of other barcode reading apps are listed in Part 3 of that series. There are a variety of use cases for barcodes on the Web. They include Semapedia.org (a non-profit project that aims to augment the physical world with Wikipedia data), QRContact (contact management via barcodes), and barcode wearables such as p8tch ("Think of it as a TinyURL you can wear"). But none of these is likely to become widely used in the mainstream, at least in the near future. What Will be The Tipping Point? In Japan, barcode scanning is already a popular activity thanks to the culture of using mobile phones for just about everything. In the U.S., where the Mobile Web took longer to ramp up, barcodes are yet to catch on. However there's one market where barcode scanning could become a mainstream activity in the U.S. and other countries. No, not magazine publishing - although there are valid advertising use cases there. We're talking about scanning retail products using your mobile phone . By the end of 2009, a lot of barcode scanning apps had gained popularity in the iPhone and Android, in particular. In November we listed our picks for scanning and other mobile shopping apps to test over Black Friday. There is no clear winner yet in the shopping scanning market, but here are some applications you may want to try: RedLaser (iPhone app getting rave reviews ) ShopSavvy (popular on Android) The Amazon Mobile app ; see also SnapTell , owned by Amazon StoreXperience CardStar pic2shop Point Inside ( good review on CNET ) CompareEverywhere (Android) ZXing Barcode Reader (Android) Thanks to followers of @rww on Twitter , who suggested some of those. Will Consumers Adopt Barcode Scanning? As well as adoption by retailers, another big question is: will consumers want to interact with real world products using their mobile phones? I suspect they will, once they begin to see compelling reasons for doing so - which will probably involve getting the best deals and being able to do advanced shopping comparison very easily. Finally, it's worth noting that Google is active in barcodes . Google's Favorite Places program allows local businesses to put a sticker on their products which features Google's logo, a scannable barcode and a message reading "We're a favorite place on Google." Barcode scanning and its applications will grow during 2010, meaning more and more real world data will be connected to the Internet and accessed on your mobile phone. There are many apps trying to entice consumers to wave their mobile phone in front of products, so let us know your favorites in the comments. Image credits: clevercupcakes ; Stan ; ScanLife Discuss

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Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things: Barcode Scanning

Twitter's Japanese partner, Digital Garage , will soon introduce a micropayment system that will give Twitter users the option to charge for access to their tweets. According to Media magazine , users will be able hide access to images, external URLs and text behind a paywall and other users would only be able to see this content if they either paid for a monthly subscription or through a pay-per-tweet option. Twitter itself will take a 30% cut. Sponsor Kenichi Sugi, the COO of Digital Garage Mobile, announced this new business model at mobidec2009 earlier this week. The paid accounts will go live in January 2010. Twitter's Japanese subsidiary has always been somewhat different from Twitter's main site. Twitter Japan already offers advertising options, for example. Japan is also the only market where Twitter offers its own mobile application and mobile video service . Don't Pay for Twitter - Pay for Accessing Tweets According to today's reports, which still lack a lot of detail, Twitter users will have a number of options to pay for these account. According to Media magazine's Anita Davis , users can pay monthly subscriptions with their credit cards and the pay-per-tweet options could be "charged to credit card, convenience store top-up cards or carrier billing for Twitter-on-mobile users." Overall, this looks like an interesting business model for the Japanese market. Instead of charging its users directly for the use of Twitter, this option gives content producers the option to charge for their work. This new payment system will also give news organizations the option to experiment with delivering paid news, for examples.. Would You Pay To Access Premium Tweets? In the rest of the world, however, Twitter is more likely to make money through charging for premium accounts that add new features (analytics, verified accounts, etc.). Image credit: itmedia.co.jp Discuss

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Twitter Japan Will Allow Users to Charge for Access to Their Tweets

Over the past decade, Amazon.com and eBay have continued to dominate the online retail market in the United States. However, there have been signs that more social and distributed forms of online shopping are gaining traction. eBay, in particular, is beginning to lose ground . In this post, we review the past decade of e-commerce and the key trends. Advances in recommendations technology, together with the emergence of social media and mobile commerce, have combined to change the way e-commerce is transacted. Sponsor This is the third in a ReadWriteWeb series looking back at some of the key trends of the past 10 years. We previously covered the online music industry and the democratization of news media . Recommendations Technology Advances Over the past decade the online retail industry has seen great strides in the use of recommendations technology . Amazon has consistently led the field in this, with its sophisticated blend of personalized, social and item recommendations. Many of the retail recommendations in use today rely on implicit user data . These systems typically track user data, which is then analyzed with a set of usually proprietary algorithms. The end result: recommendations for users. Earlier this year we looked into Baynote's recommendation system : "Baynote observes real-time user behavior on a site and looks for implicit, emergent patterns. It uses collective intelligence and an affinity engine to analyze the data. Common behaviors which it tracks include page refers, queries, mouse movement, time spent on a page, peer behavior." Other similar recommendation technologies we've profiled include MyBuys , ATG and richrelevance . Social Media Takes Retail to Blogs, Social Networks As with nearly every other industry, shopping sites have increasingly used social media to promote their wares. According to Shop.org's recent eHoliday Study , 47.1% of retailers surveyed will be increasing their use of social media this holiday season. Specifically, more than half of retailers have "added or improved their Facebook page (60.3%) and Twitter pages (58.7%)" this year. Nearly two-thirds (65.6%) have "added or enhanced blogs and RSS feeds" over the same time period. One result of this has been a big increase in implicit social recommendations data across social networks and blogs. Another trend with ecommerce sites is distributed sales. Anyone can embed an Amazon store into their blog or social network these days. As Kurt Collins of social commerce vendor Cartfly told us in December , this won't replace "end destination e-commerce" - but it will "augment sales tremendously" at the edge of the network. Mobile Commerce Arrives, Albeit Slowly... The growth of mobile phones has been a big trend this decade. However, as Sarah Perez wrote in September, mobile commerce in the U.S. market has struggled for momentum. According to data from eMarketer , more than 70 million U.S. mobile phone users will access the internet from their devices this year. Despite this, the m-commerce market remains immature. In an April 2009 survey by RIS News , privacy and security concerns are still at the forefront of both shoppers' and retailers' minds. There is some promise that mobile commerce will finally gain traction in the coming decade. Mobile payments firm Billing Revolution found that on-the-go consumers are happy to purchase small ticket items like pizza and movie tickets, for example. One market that has shown strong signs of mobile commerce growth is Japan, according to Morgan Stanley . See also our analysis of mobile payments . Conclusion New recommendations technologies make it easier every year for consumers to find what they want, social media has driven a lot of retail activity to small websites and social networks, and mobile commerce has slowly but surely gained a foothold in e-commerce. These are just some of the trends in e-commerce over the past 10 years. While Amazon.com and eBay continue to be the giants of online retail, the Social Web and advances in web technology have both had a big impact this decade. See also: Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Online Music Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Democratization of News Media Discuss

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Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: E-commerce