PayPal has unveiled Mobile Checkout, allowing people in Australia to buy movie tickets, flowers and other goods on-the-fly.

The internet has already brought the world’s shopping malls into the bedroom but now shopaholics can satisfy their impulses with a few button presses while walking home or riding a bus - as long as they have a PayPal account.

PayPal Australia product director Dinuke Ranasinghe said people had long been able to surf the web on their handsets but there had never been an easy way to make payments.

Keying credit card and other details into websites manually was cumbersome using a mobile keypad, while shopping via the mobile provider’s "walled garden" portal, which charged purchases to the customer’s phone bill, was largely limited to ringtones and wallpapers.

Ranasinghe said merchants had largely avoided mobile commerce to date because of the telcos’ prohibitive fees, which added as much as 50 per cent to the product prices.

With the PayPal system merchants setup their own mobile website, bypassing the telcos, and are charged up to 2.4 per cent of the sale price and a flat fee of 30 cents per transaction.

Mobile commerce gets a PayPal boost - Technology - smh.com.au

The mobile phone has long ceased being a simple two-way communication device: today’s handheld is a mini personal computer, complete with multimedia players, maps, and Web browsers.

Now researchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) want to push the phone farther. They have developed software that turns a phone into a thoughtful personal assistant, one that helps people find fun things to do. The software, called Magitti, uses a combination of cues–including the time of day, a person’s location, her past behaviors, and even her text messages–to infer her interests. It then shows a helpful list of suggestions, including concerts, movies, bookstores, and restaurants.

When a person first opens a phone that has Magitti software, she will instantly see a list of recommendations. If it’s noon, the software might suggest local restaurants. If it’s 3 P.M., it might recommend a nearby boutique for shopping. If it’s 9 P.M., a list of pubs might appear. Over time, these recommendations will change as Magitti learns more about the user’s behaviors and preferences.

The software employs artificial-intelligence algorithms that have traditionally been used in research to make tailored recommendations. If, for instance, a person prefers to eat inexpensive lunches and more-expensive dinners, Magitti will pick up on this (by comparing the GPS location of the restaurant with a database of establishments) and offer up corresponding recommendations.

Source: Technology Review: Smart Phone Suggests Things to Do

Why iPhone does not support 3G? I am not sure whether Steve Jobs said that 3G might cause battery issues, but here is an interesting discussion on whether 3G cause battery issues for iPhone. Obviously, the issue is not battery related but presence of 3G network in USA. As pointed out in the post, if Apple had released in Europe, it would have definitely considered 3G. Read on. | Link to Article | )