Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Identix (IDNX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Buck who wrote (14537)	8/25/1999 1:36:00 AM
From: steve	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26039

Hi Buck, Good to see ya! I hope this brings some action, <VBG> and it was on the news. S U M M A R Y Both cell phone and machine translation technology took giant leaps forward last week. Smart Card, Smart Phone Commentary By Mark Anderson Special to ABCNEWS.com LET'S CALL THEM ‘E-PHONES' I have been writing about bringing authentication, and therefore e-commerce and Net transactions, to cell phones for a couple of years now — either by using smart cards or, eventually, biometric techniques such as fingerprint recognition. Since authentication is the key to providing e-commerce through wireless phones, let's just call these “e-phones.” You are going to see scads of them in the future. Last week saw another big step toward the first commercial models of the e-phone, with an announcement by France Telecom of a mobile e-commerce trial using smart-card-enabled phones among a group of participating banks and retailers. The two-step purchase process entails obtaining data from vendors of products and services on the phone, via voice or text, and then conducting a secure purchase by inserting a smart card into the phone, entering a personal identification number and executing the transaction. The presence of the card makes it unnecessary to transmit the PIN beyond the phone. The smart card itself recognizes the PIN and allows the transaction, making it, France Telecom claims, more secure than most Internet transactions. The phone being used in the trial is a Motorola StarTac-D, one of the smaller phones on the market. Motorola's director of mobile commerce business, Joachim Hoffman, released news of a similar trial set for Britain in the near future, with Barclaycard and cellular provider BT Cellnet. A U.S. trial is possible by years's end. Bringing this capacity to cell phones will provide a step-function change in the type, number and value of transactions on the Net. Let's look for early European adoption of this technology in the first half of 2000, with the United States about 6-12 months behind, at least. Don't forget, in the United States, we're still wondering what smart cards are. I would add this application to the pressures leading to a breakout for these devices in the next 12 months in the U.S. market. more.abcnews.go.com steve ps, The phone... Message 11053890