There are e-reader apps, like Kindle, Stanza and Apple’s iBooks, through which you can order and read digital books on your mobile device or computer. Read your books in the cloud. After all, if you’re actually going to use a $100,000 SUV to pull a manure spreader, you’ll want to know what the terrain in front of you is like. Too often people drive around looking for the best deal on parking lot fees or an easy pull-in parking spot, when they could just pull into a convenient parallel space on the street and feed the meter. While sensors don’t show you what’s behind your vehicle, they do help when parking or backing up. Autoliv’s sensors and other systems aren’t as easy to drop into an older car. The advantage was that these systems were simple to program. These developments, along with the advent of touchscreen mobile devices and relatively easy access to the reliable broadband Internet connectivity, have made in-store smartphone and mobile-based payment systems a reality. A rt icle h as been created by GSA Content Generator DE MO.
Phone apps let you check email, play games, surf the net, create text documents, access product reviews, find directions and identify music that is playing at your location, among a great many other things. To access those apps, you first must tether the tablet to a BlackBerry smartphone. NBC’s cameras were rolling as President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the fair; the signals moved from the mobile broadcasting trucks to a tower atop the Empire State Building for aerial transmission, and early technology adopters in the region watched the first live TV broadcast. You can even buy infrared (IR) devices that work with mobile device apps so that you can control your TV and other hardware that usually requires an IR remote. Smartphones also have the added bonus of allowing us to quickly share our photos and videos on social networking sites, and there are even photo editing apps so you can tweak and retouch your image before you upload it. Mobile apps and services are coming along to disrupt the traditional cash register. Phones that incorporate Near Field Communications (NFC) allow you to pay for things without your physical credit or debit cards at NFC-enabled payment stations using apps such as Google Wallet.
Major contenders in the mobile payment arena are Square, Intuit GoPayment, Pay AnyWhere, ShopKeep and even PayPal with PayPal Here (which lets you take credit cards and scan checks for deposit into your PayPal account). This gives even the smallest independent store or street vendor the ability to take credit cards. Employees might be wandering the store with mobile devices, able to help customers anywhere. If you aren’t tied to any shows that require a cable or satellite subscription, you might be able to give up cable and partake of the many thousands of hours of entertainment from which to choose online. Lots of people who stream keep their cable or satellite subscriptions, however. Mobile devices catalyzed a major shift in the way most people live their lives. There are other major streaming sites, including Hulu and Amazon Instant Video; video sharing site YouTube; TV channel sites such as HBO Go and Watch ABC; services that allow you to rent movies and TV shows, such as Google Play, iTunes and Vudu; and Redbox, which offers both online streaming and DVD rentals at special vending-machine-like kiosks.
Netflix actually began as a DVD-by-mail service, then moved to streaming and still provides both services. Music has gone through a similar shift, with CDs being supplanted over time by digital downloads, starting with the inception of MP3 compression and music sharing (or pirating) sites like Napster, then moving to paid digital downloads from sites like iTunes and Google Play and now unlimited music streaming through services such as Pandora and Spotify. They can also be used for word processing and accessing business related sites on the road, although their small screens and slower processors don’t make them ideal for some business uses. Before you gather in your safe room, fill up bathtubs and any spare containers with water (the tub water can be used for washing and flushing the toilets). Online payment methods like PayPal are even being accepted at some stores, and for places that can’t process PayPal payments, the service can issue users a debit card.
