how does this work again?

poll

uellim — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 01:21:28 +0000

Re-evaluation

uellim — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:16:26 +0000

I was talking to Rob last week on my idea and quite quickly found out that this concept was far from new. Rob introduced me to something called e-money which is widely used in many parts of the world.

Electronic money (e-money) refers to money or scrip that is exchanged only electronically. This usually involves computers and the internet but has recently progressed into being a function for your phone. Based on a survey done in 2005 on how many people use e-money, then 28% of the population in countries that have e-money available are using the service. This prompted me to thinking, if you used your phone to pay for your everyday items, how would you top up your credit on your phone?

I looked around for an answer and finally found this website http://buydirect.mmwallet.com/home/. The process they describe of how to top up your phone credit is time consuming and complicated, not to mention you have to create a completely new bank account with the mobile company, so I tried to think of a new way to make this process easier. What if you could withdraw money from your own personal bank (ie ANZ, commonwealth, St. George etc) right from your phone, to your phone?

Gone would be the days of walking blocks just to find an ATM. The way I am suggesting that these transactions would be secure is through either fingerprint or iris recognition. I look on the net for some phones with this technology and I was relieved to find that this idea isn’t so far fetched. Iris recognition is currently underdevelopment and already some phones have this security device and when it comes to fingerprint recognition, it seems as though a lot of phones have this security system as standard.

Idea questioned

uellim — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:55:49 +0000

I talked to Nat about my idea and he mentioned that it was probably already possible to shop on-line via your phone. Although on-line shopping is most likely already possible from your phone, what I am proposing is that people shop online with their phone and pay with the credit from their phone. This would then allow people with no credit card to buy items off the net without needing a credit card.

Of course there is always the problem with security but what i propose is that to start, you would only be able to purchase items from well known stores, ie. General Pants, HMV, etc. The way this would work is similar to the way that you would select TV channels on your phone. Currently you are able to watch TV from your mobile phone, i’m sure you are all aware of, but you are only allowed to select channels from a specific list of channels. This kind of interface would be similar to the interface that would be used when shopping on-line from your phone. The only difference is that the channels would be replaced with the icons and name of the store.

Looking into it

uellim — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:57:46 +0000

Well I did more research on the topic of online shopping from your mobile phone and paying via your mobile phone and I’m quite surprised to find that there is quite an advanced system already for paying for item with your mobile phone. The advancement in this area will definitely help with the idea I was having with online shopping with your mobile phone. I also found a video of what online shopping may look like in the future which is somewhat like what I thought it would look like except instead of just furniture, which is the focus of the video, it would be with almost every item you could possibly think of buying.

This video illustrates what online shopping may look like in the future.

The next two videos are of the advances that have been made in mobile phone payment, which is quite interesting.

What do you think?

uellim — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 08:04:35 +0000

The concept I’m currently researching has to do with online shopping via your phone. Imagine you’re on the train and you’ve got time to kill. In the past your options would be to play a game on your phone, call/text someone or listen to music/watch something on your phone, but imagine being able to shop with that time.

The interface used for shopping would be completely different from what is currently seen as “online shopping”. It would be more interactive allowing you to see a 360 view of the product you want to purchase etc. I’ll try and illustrate my idea further as soon as I can do so adequately.

The method of payment would be different too, instead of using your credit card or some kind of online banking system you’d be able to pay for the items you wish to purchase with the credit currently on your phone. Each item would have a number you would call if you wanted to purchase that item. When the call was connected your transaction would then go through and a voice on the other end would either tell you your transaction was successful, not successful or if you have insufficient credit to make the purchase. Paying for things with your phone are already feasible, for example, music, parking etc. so it couldn’t be too hard to apply this to clothes, food, toy and other stuff right? I might be completely mistaken here but I’ll look into this further.

With further research, it might even become possible to pay for mundane things, like train tickets, with your phone saving you the hassle of bringing change around with you. I will continue to explore this possibility but for now your comments and criticism is welcome.

uellim — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 02:30:21 +0000

its been a few years since i’ve blogged anything at all and even a few years ago blogging was never a strong point so dont expect anything spectacular. well, first things first aye, why did i pick this template? (i told you not to expect anything…) well between “banana smoothie” and “flower power”, this seemed like the only reasonable template to use. this isnt because i have anything against banana smoothies or flowers for that matter but the description of this template said it was, and i quote “relaxing” and that was enough for me.

well thats all i’ve got right now really…maybe i’ll be hit with a stroke of blogging genius soon…but i wouldnt hold my breath if i were you