Consumers with medical conditions can rest easier with the debut of an ID card that uses SMS, or text messaging, to alert emergency medical workers of patients’ histories.

Called InvisibleBracelet or iB, this is how it works: Consumers sign up online for a $10 annual membership, and after receiving iB cards (which can be carried in wallets, on key fobs, or attached to a bag), they can use the website to program the cards with information about illnesses, allergies, and conditions, as well as one’s emergency contacts. Should a medical emergency occur, first responders will receive a text message with the patient’s information.

Continue Reading

If news of Visa and Bank of America, MasterCard’s mobile PayPass, Google and Paypal, or Apple possibly developing NFC technology hasn’t convinced you that mobile marketing technologies will soon become deeply intertwined in banking, take a look at the winner of the research firm Juniper Research’s 2010 Future Mobile Award: Wells Fargo & Company.

A press release today from Juniper proclaims, “Wells Fargo was chosen based on its multiple platform strategy and continued service innovation such as the recent near real-time warning of potentially fraudulent activity.”

Wells Fargo allows customers–whether their operating systems are iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or even Palm– to access their accounts in several mobile ways: By sending a text message to a short code; by going on the bank’s mobile website; and by using mobile apps.

The financial institution also offers an SMS alert program for its credit card customers. Those who sign up get a text message every time their Visa card is involved in a transaction, alerting customers to potential unauthorized use of their accounts.

Continue Reading

For those centered in the mobile advertising game, the next few months could prove to be very interesting.  With big moves planned by Apple, Google still waiting in limbo with its AdMob purchase and the FTC waiting in the wings to rain on the parade, things could get tricky.

The first big move was Google’s purchase of AdMob, which is now under intense scrutiny by the FTC for anti-competitive issues, even though it seems Apple will soon have a leg up with the introduction of its so-called “iAd” mobile advertising platform.  What’s interesting is that Google is pushing hard for Apple to debut its plans, in hopes that it will get the FTC off its back by proving that Google is in no way set to dominate the mobile ad space.

In some ways, Apple’s plans with Quattro Wireless are more anti-competitive in nature than Google’s plans with AdMob- only because Apple dominates the mobile apps business at the moment.  By making it easy to implement its own advertising by way of its development SDK for iPhones/iPods and now the iPad, Apple can effectively lock-out (without formally doing so) all other competing ad-networks.

Google, on the other hand, has no such plans and even promotes openness through its mobile initiatives.  The only problem in the eyes of competitors and the FTC is Google’s reigning dominance in Online advertising, which many fear will trickle down to its mobile ad business as well, even though AdMob first specialized in iPhone-centric ad-units, go figure.

Even so-called competitors are starting to let the FTC know that there’s really nothing to worry about with Google’s purposed intentions with AdMob.  4INFO, a leading SMS marketing company, even sent a letter directly to the FTC stating that it sees no problem with the acquisition and that it actually promotes competition instead of hindering it.

Continue Reading

Starhome, a company specializing in a wide variety of roaming services and solutions, today announced that its “Gateway Location Register” (GLR) has been given the green light by the GSM Association.

The solution, which provides network infrastructure with intelligent roaming capabilities to monitor, manage, optimize and maintain service for inbound roamer traffic, had been under fire by the GSMA who deemed it as a hostile means to maintain roamers in an operator’s network- considering it to be an Anti-SoR (Steering of Roaming) solution.

In today’s announcement, Starhome indicated that the BARG (Billing and Accounting Roaming Group) of the GSM Association has given it the all-clear after further review and persuasion on behalf of Starhome itself.

Operators want inbound roaming traffic, as it provides increased revenue opportunity, and Starhome’s GLR solution helps carriers gain and optimize that usage.  The company provides the solution to tier-1 operators and has 65 live installations running, proving to the GSMA that it works and is within their guidelines.

“Operators can now feel confident of using Starhome’s Gateway Location Register as a means to increase their inbound market share,” commented Shlomo Wolfman, co-founder and COO of Starhome.  ”Starhome has always maintained that its Gateway Location Register is a legitimate solution to manage and optimize operator’s inbound roaming traffic; we are happy that BARG has confirmed this.”

PayFlex Systems, which administers nearly $1 billion in employee benefit transactions per year, today announced a new mobile app as part of a larger mobile application platform dubbed PayFlex Mobile.

The new app is intended to bring various benefit-oriented information directly to employees, allowing them to access and act on all elements of their personalized healthcare financial benefits including Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) from anywhere and at anytime.

“The early response we have received from our customers has been exceptionally positive,” said Robert Natt, PayFlex CEO. “The ease of use on a 24/7 basis and the ability to check your account balances, while also seeing past claim history are some of the more prominent features that our clients and prospective clients have raved about.”

Compatibility was key during development, as the app will work with more than 300 mobile devices, or approximately 90 percent of the worldwide market.  This allows consumers to easily access and act upon their personalized information, on-demand, whether they’re at home or in their physician’s office, pharmacy or hospital.  Since PayFlex works with such a broad range of companies, placing emphasis on device compatibility was a smart move.

The application will initially be piloted at several large PayFlex customers and is expected to be generally available in the early summer of 2010, with future apps coming down the pipeline eventually.

As mobile apps across all major platforms continue to flourish, a missing link has been a comprehensive mobile billing solution that works across all of them.  Bango today released a solution to hopefully fill that void with its new in-app billing solution that works seamlessly across Nokia/Symbian, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and iPhone.

The new solution is completely open, giving developers complete control over the experience from how they charge consumers to pricing and currency, allowing them to sell content, virtual goods and add-ons from within their app, opening up a wide range of commercial opportunities no matter the platform they’re using.

App developers can collect one-time payments or start ongoing subscriptions within their app using operator billing, credit cards or even PayPal.  The goal is to provide consumers a simple and consistent application payment experience on operator networks as well as over Wi-Fi.  The new solution is aimed at developers who would rather have greater control over in-app billing and purchases, rather than relying on app stores to provide the functionality.

A recent study by Bango itself found that 45% of developers plan to monetize their apps directly, outside of app stores, making the case even stronger for an independent third-party solution.  Though Apple and Google will undoubtedly launch their own in-app billing solutions that are tightly integrated with their corresponding app stores, as more and more platform become popular for development, a third-party solution that works across all of them will become more attractive.

While location is in the spotlight these days, most apps and services revolve around geosocial or other mainstream concepts.  A new app launching from Hoovers aims to build on the location-aware mobile aspect when in comes to sales, prospecting and lead-generation in the B2B segment.

The app, dubbed “Near Here,” provides sales and business development professionals access to location-based business information on millions of companies in the United States and Canada in real-time. Easily viewable on a map or in a list, users can refine search results to meet their specific requirements by applying several criteria, including multiple ranges of revenue and number of employees at a particular location, multiple industries or a simple keyword search, and they can save those filters for future searches.  The search area is adjusted by moving the map or changing the search address.

Based on the data provided, users can quickly and easily place a phone call to the company, visit the company’s Web site, get step-by-step driving directions and even find local competitors.  Users also can sort companies in ascending or descending order by annual sales, company name or total employees, and bookmark their favorite locations for future searches and favorite companies.

Within the app, users can retrieve key data points on any business or organization in close proximity to their current location, including annual sales, primary industry, number of employees at any given location, key contacts and titles and much more.  Users can easily get a clear picture of the businesses around them and determine whether or not it’s an attractive lead to pursue.

Continue Reading