Square mobile credit card processing solution makes taking credit card payments accessible to anyone.

Ever wondered why is it that only companies and business in general accept credit cards as a method of payment? Well a San Francisco company has been asking the same question and has come up with a solution designed to brake that monopoly. The service is called Square Up from a San Francisco company called Square .
One reason behind the statu quo until now may have been the number of red tape and countless fees associated with setting up a credit card merchant account. Now for a moment, forget about all that. According to the New York Times, the Square Up system practically get rid of almost all fees reducing them to a bare bone of a couple: a transaction fees representing 2.75 percent of the total, plus 15 cents.
Concerning the equipment, all you need is an iPhone, Android phone, iPod Touch or an iPad and a half-inch reader attachment if you own any of the Apple devices while Android phones owners whose devices is equipped with a card-swiping slot, do not need any other piece of equipment.
To set up the whole system, you would need to download the app which is free.
Beside the low transaction fees, another beauty of Square Up is the fact that you only pay as you use it; if you don't, you don't owe anything.
To "ring" a transaction, just swipe the customer's card into the slot and have him or her sign their names on the phone's touch screen with their fingers. In case the customer is not physically present, just like any merchant would do, just have them provide their cards' required information.
From that point on, your phone connects to Square's server, process the transaction authorizes the purchase, sends a receipt by e-mail to the buyer and logs the transaction on your personal Square Web page. There, a tidy table that you can download as a spreadsheet, reports your income for the day.
To sign up with Square Up, you will have to provide your bank routing and account number allowing Square Up to deposit your money according to the New York Times.
But there is a little hang concerning the transfer of the money to your account: only the first $1,000 of each week's transaction ends up in your account immediately. Any amount over that may take up to a month pending review by the company's auditors before reaching your account. If you expect to use the service to process amount exceeding that threshold, there is a way to get around that $1,000 limit by providing Square Up with more information about your business when you first sign up.

For more, see NewYorkTimes.com

TuneWiki is a free fun music app that gives a peak at what is popular around.

TuneWiki’s chief charm is the ability to scroll lyrics karaoke-style as a song plays, whether the music is coming from your phone’s built-in payer or from an internet radio station. No more excuse for singing “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy,” during “Purple Haze.” The lyrics are added wiki-style by users, so you might spot some howlers.
Beyond that, the app lets you look at what other users are listening to around the world, or to see what the most popular songs are with Tunewiki listeners. You can see what people near you are listening to, or, on the Android version, you can see where other people in the world are listening to the same song you are at that moment. Songs can be purchased through the site, forwarded to friends, and (except on the Blackberry) you can post what you are listening to on Twitter and Facebook.
There are still bugs to work out and developers are still adding features. They promise that within weeks you will be able to set up a network to see what your friends are listening .

For more, see NYTimes.com

Free Internet calling services for cellphones.

Even if the possibilities have been around for a while, making free international calls via cellphones have remained challenging. Two companies, Skype, the market leader and Fring, an Israel based company, offer the most user-friendly cellphone applications for international calls. But, there are still some hussles and for these applications to be worthwhile, someone has to plan to make a lot of international calls.
For these two applications to work best, they better be downloaded on a phone with WI-FI capabilities with the user staying within the hot spot during the phone call.
For both Skype and Fring, users are assigned an ID or name that they use to dial up with the call going through the service's Internet servers.
Calls made to others members of both services are free while those made to non members using a Skype prepaid account, are at a cheaper rate than the one charged by traditional phone companies.
The Skype cellphone application can be dowloaded directly to a phone using Windows Mobile or to a PC and then transfered to the phone later.
According to the New York Times,"for those without a Windows Mobile phone, Skype recently introduced Skype Lite, which runs on dozens of Nokia and Samsung phones with Symbian software, as well as a few Motorola Razr models. On Skype.com, these users can type in their mobile numbers and Skype will send a message to the phone with a link to download the software."
Skype Lite also runs on the G1, from T-Mobile, also known as the Google phone, which operates on the Android software platform. To get the application,one's only need to visit the “Market,” Android’s app store and click on the free Skype application.

For more, see NYTimes.com

Glympse, a new easy way to share your whereabouts

If you ever been in a situation where you wanted to effortlessly and continuously share your whereabouts with someone or several others, this new mobile application called Glympse by Glympse.com , may be worth giving a consideration.

For now, the application only works with T-Mobile's G-1 phones and according to the New York Times, versions for the i-Phone, Windows Mobile phones, BlackBerrys and other portable devices, are on the work. Here are the basics on how the service works : You download the application from the Android Market which is the G1 kind of version of Apple's App Store.

From there, you can start sharing your whereabouts with anyone with Web-enabled phone or PC. Every time you want to do so, you begin the process by opening the application and enter the phone number or e-mail address of the person or persons you want to share that information. The length of time for which you can be tracked, is by default set at 30 minutes with the option to extend it.

Beside your actual location which is tracked by your phone's GPS system, you can include other information like your destination or your own message or one of the scripted ones.

The last step is to hit the "send" option, and there you are beaming your position or destination like an airplane to a to a control tower.

For more, see techcrunch.com

T-Mobile to be the first to offer Google's smartphone.

T-Mobile has been chosen to be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google's Android software. The phone to be manufactured by HTC , one of the world largest makers of mobile phones, is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, or as early as October.The high-end phone is said to match many of the capabilities of Apple's iphone and other smartphones that run software from Palm, Research in Motion , Microsoft and Nokia to access the Internet and perform computerlike functions.

For more see : Canada.com