Category: Technology News

New Yorkers may soon use mobile payments for parking tickets

| January 6, 2015

The Department of Finance for the city is looking to take advantage of the ubiquity of smartphones.

The Department of Finance of New York City is now seeking to develop a mobile payments option to help to boost collections on the tickets that are issued for traffic camera and parking violations.

This could prove to be a large and successful venture, considering that enforcement agents issue 8-10 million tickets per year.

The Department of Finance (DOF) is exploring options for mobile payments for tickets for parking and traffic light violations that would give drivers the ability to use anything from debit and credit cards to Apple Pay, PayPal, or even Bitcoin based transactions. This effort is in response to a request made by the city to obtain information for the development of a system that would accelerate the process of collecting from parking tickets, which brings in approximately $600 million per year.

Using mobile payments was one of the technology channels that appears the most promising to the DOF.

Mobile Payments - Parking TicketThe brief from the department explained that “After an internal review of DOF’s current payment channels and of recent developments in contemporary payment technologies.” It also went on to say that the department feels that emerging tech could offer a way for drivers to quickly and conveniently pay their parking tickets by way of smartphone, tablet, or other forms of mobile devices.

At the moment, the parking tickets that are issued by traffic enforcement agents and NYPD officers can be processed online, through the mail, or in person. The NYC.gov online payment site is not currently mobile optimized, and using it comes with a convenience fee of 2.49 percent.

The proposal from the Department of Finance would develop a mobile payments based system that would provide a single click option. Using that tech, the tickets could be scanned or photographed in a way to be able to process it while also taking “advantage of new technologies and extended public access to government.” It will simply make it easier and faster for the recipients of these tickets to get paying them over with.

Wearables could soon be worn on the ear, not the wrist

| January 5, 2015

Although smartwatches and augmented reality glasses have appeared to be a promising category, new players are coming.

Wearables have been appearing on the market in many different forms, with several devices coming in the form of smartwatches, as well as smart clothing, headsets, and other types that can be attached to the body in some way.

Some predictions, however, are now starting to say that wearable technology worn on the ear will be the next wave.

According to the IDC Asia Pacific associate vice president for big data, analytics, and software, Craig Stires, “There’s some interesting information you can capture through the ear. We’ve been looking at things like wrist wearables, but the ear can capture things like oxygen levels, electrocardiograms, and body temperature.” This has opened up the opportunity to develop wearable technology that would be able to perform at a very impressive level. It would also mean that an entirely new sub-category of these devices would open up.

It has been predicted that hearable technology wearables could be worth $5 billion by 2018.

Wearable technology may be worn on the earThat forecast was made by the Wifore Consulting chief technology officer and founder, Nick Nunn. The prediction of this U.K. firm would mean that the hearable category of wearable technology would be worth the same amount as the entire industry of these devices at its present level.

Fans of wearable tech enjoy the ability to use these devices in a kind of “synced lifestyle”, where their devices integrate perfectly into their daily life. According to the PSFK research firm’s “Future of Wearable Tech” report, which was issued in 2014, that mentality has helped in the development of devices that can be worn on just about every body part. Moreover, it has also brought the worlds of technology and fashion into the same environment.

However, Hunn has stated that there is one primary factor which may be overlooked by brands offering wearables, so far. That is that “Sound drives the bulk of our technology use.” Moreover, the only type of wearable technology that has already fully gained social acceptance and mainstream use is earbuds. As a result, he feels that it is those devices that will soon be experiencing a “revolution in capability”.