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Google launches NFC based Google Wallet Payment System

With Near Field Communication becoming a standard in Mobile devices, Google today launched its NFC based payment system Google Wallet with a limited availability. The payment system is pitted against traditional credit cards and debit cards, and your mobile device as a single repository for all your credit card/debit card information. As the name states, it is meant to replace your wallet and provide more security.

Also known as  Contact less payment System , At present the software is available for Google Nexus 4G devices which are NFC enabled. It supports Citibank’s Master cards (with Paypass) and works on Sprint. But Google is expected to launch the service with other banks /VISA/Discover later this year after the current pilot.

Though Paypass is already in use with credit card, Google wallet will eliminate the need for you to take your credit cards outside your home. And in future might even replace plastic credit cards with virtual ones. But it remains to be seen how soon the adaption of this technology is.  But Google also have a incentive for the users of Google Wallet, it has worked with many vendors for providing more offers to users. Along with the Google Wallet , Google has launched Google offers to encourage the use of its payment system.

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Godaddy 4GH Hosting review

I have been a godaddy hosting customer for nearly 4 years. My sites have been running pretty smoothly with them and have been a happy customer. I have a shared unlimited, Virtual dedicated and 4G hosting with them.

Couple of months back when my unlimited hosting account was getting too many sites I happened to see the new 4G plans in godaddy site. It appeared very enticing, godaddy said they are increasing almost all the parameters for 4GH compared to the existing ones, the number of connections was 4 times the current limit, more memory and more performance was promised albeit some minot inconvenience like missing couple of  options like Frontpage server extensions, Java and Cold fusion.  For most PHP sites these wont adversely affect, and anyway Java hosting in the shared environment is very bad without a private JVM.

When I tried to upgrade my account to 4G, I couldn’t as I had enabled Java in my account. So purchased a new  4GH deluxe account and chose a Asia pacific server, as the sites I was planning to host were targeted at Indian Subcontinent. So was expecting the setup to be complete in quick time, but my account was not available for next 24 hours.. system was showing that it was still under processing. With my regular shared hosting setup time is usually in minutes not hours.

Said to myself that it must very complicated setup, then switched my first site over to 4G after removing from unlimited shared hosting account. And was waiting and waiting for 12 hours and site had gone completely offline, change of plans and went back to my reliable regular hosting. Raised a incident with godaddy, and put a parking site on the account to see if the issue is getting resolved.

After a day godaddy replied back saying that everything is normal, it usually takes 24-48 hours for hosting to get resolved ???? DNS was pointing to the new server but it was not directly to hosted files. Next day they said the server have so much pending in Queue but everything will get processed. Meanwhile in my Regular shared hosting, it took 1 hour to set up the site and it was back live.

Whereas 4G was still processing my request. Finally got it after 72 hours, and the site speed looked Ok. Later when some of my friends complained the newly setup sites aren’t loading at times, I found that during peak hours the site was crawling and timing out many times. This site itself doesn’t have many visitors, and I had hosted  only one site on the account, and it was a plain wordpress blog, the traffic was just 2% of their maximum advertised !!!!.

Without bothering to deal with customer service decided to close account and open a 4GH plan based on a US data center, but the setup still took longer (24-48 hours) and the performance is not all that good. 4GH is definitely slower than godaddy’s regular shared hosting, and the processing time for changes is very frustrating. So the 4GH mostly appears to be a gimmick from godaddy, Im guessing they are trying to reduce their cost by moving customers to cloud based servers and they are not providing a good quality service at that.

Well its early days for the cloud based hosting, where higher availability and scalability are theoretically possible, but it needs to be seen if  web hosts are really ready for the switch.

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Blackberry (RIM) facing a Grim future with BES

Blackberry Manufacturer , Research In Motion is facing a tough challenge in the Mobile Device space, with competition from Apple and whole bunch of new Device vendors powered by Android.  And its device fortunes are tightly coupled with Enterprises continuing to use BES for Mobile email.

Though RIM has brought out quite a few new devices in the recent past like the Blackberry Torch, still its Device space is pale in comparison to Apple or Android Ecosystem. Though RIM allowed BES client softwares for other Mobile devices in the past, it ceased this practice in hope of growing its Handset business. But this could backfire in the current scenario.

Most of the big enterprises use Microsoft’s Exchange server or IBM Domino, and there are others  who use simple POP/SMTP, or IMAP service through vendors like Google. And Blackberry devices provide a way of accessing the mails through its BES – Blackberry Enterprise Service and BIS – Blackberry Internet Service. BES is a costly affair , the data plan costing 3 times than an regular basic data plan. For instance ATT charges $15 Minimum data plan for iPhone and other smartphones, whereas a blackberry with BES needs a Minimum data plan of $40.

Cost being one factor, But the device adaptation is another.  With so much fanfare and push for devices running iOS and Android, many enterprises are thinking of allowing the device access through less costlier services like Exchange ActiveSync (from Microsoft), which needs a basic data plan. My employer recently , silently rolled out Active Sync  access to enable  Iphones and iPad’s in particular, a decision pitched by Some Senior Managers who wanted to use iPhones.

With feature set of Microsoft Active Sync increasing rapidly with Active Sync 12 (currently 14), and licensing with Apple and Many Android device Manufacturers,  RIM is facing a bleak future.  If RIM doesnt move fast and introduce new compelling features or reinvent its Device segment  it is going to be very tough  ride.