Imagine you’re in the NYC subway. You have to get across town and your train is about to leave. You sprint over to a kiosk and navigate through a complex series of screens to find the right pass. It is taking forever. You fumble as you attempt to insert your cash because it is not recognizing the magnetic strip on your credit card. Finally you receive the ticket as the last train pulls away! Enter mobile ticketing.

Check out the video above to see how mobile ticketing works in Japan. Ok, maybe not, but in all seriousness...

What is Mobile Ticketing?

Mobile ticketing refers to someone who purchases a ticket and stores it on his or her phone for later use.

What Does The Future Hold?

Juniper Research predicts that 2 billion mobile tickets will be delivered in 2010 and 15 billion by
 2015.

What Are The Benefits?

1. Reduced costs of ticket printing/mailing.
2. Improved consumer convenience.
3. Reduced infrastructure costs.
4. Increased revenue by increasing accessibility to tickets.

What Technologies Are Being Leveraged?

1. Barcode – once you purchase the ticket, you receive a barcode that’s displayed on your screen, which is scanned at the station.
2. SMS – a text message with either a redemption code or a link to a barcode is delivered to your phone.
3. Applications – an iPhone, Blackberry or Android app that allows the smart phone owners to purchase tickets.
4. Contactless RFID and NFC – similar to “wave-and-pay” systems that many credit card companies have employed. These both require the phone to have an actual chip in the phone.

Near Field Communication, or NFC, is the latest and standard and is being quickly adopted by the subway system in Japan and some European mass transit systems. NFC is certainly the future of mobile ticketing. In fact, Apple filed a patent for it to be used on the iPhone, integrated with an app that would allow you to book your entire travel itinerary via your phone!

• Mass transit
• Airline check-in
• Cinema ticketing
• Concert/Event ticketing
• Trade shows
• Consumer voucher distribution

What About Vending Machines?

Take a look, getting junk food just got a whole lot easier.

The Social Reach

What has not been touched upon is how this could allow retailers to increase revenue while making it easier for customers to share their experiences. The future of mobile ticketing is indeed bright.

Additional Links

Card and Chip Suppliers to Offer Open Transport Ticketing Standard

Juniper Research's Whitepaper: Mobile Ticket to Ride!

Expanding Mobile Ticketing Globally

Juniper Research: 15 Million Mobile Tickets by 2014

Mobile Ticketing in a Central London Station

Heard of Flock?
It’s a browser that integrates social networking and media services. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Gmail, you name it…if you love it, chances are Flock does too.     

I checked out the beta way back in 2006 — it seemed like a fantastic idea that was too far ahead of its time. After a few weeks, I just stopped using it.   

So what’s changed?
We now have many sophisticated social networks and media services that most (if not all) of our friends use regularly. Flock has evolved right along with them, winning a bucket of awards in the last two years and now boasting a huge install base. In October of 2008, Flock came out with v2, a very stable release with an amazing set of handy tools to pull all your social groups together.

Why look again?
Personally I’ve become fed up with jumping around from one tab to the next for all things social. I want to control how I see things. Everything needs to be in one place.

Time to revisit Flock.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID_t-omG4aY

I set Flock as my default browser about 3 weeks ago. I hate to admit it, but this time around I was instantly pulled into its world. At first, I just let it tell me when it detected a feed. Then I started hooking all of my accounts up, one after another. Since then, it’s been social browsing nirvana every day! 

The People sidebar.
This is one of my favorite features of Flock. The People sidebar shows all my friends who are logged into Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and Twitter (it even orders them by who updated stuff last).

That alone is certainly handy, but it’s only the start. Next to their profile pic is a little media icon. Click it and a media bar opens in the top of your browser with all your friends’ recently uploaded pictures, video and other stuff inside. 

But wait, there’s more! Let’s say I’m browsing the web and find something I want to share with one of my friends. All I have to do is drag an image, MP3 link or whatever from the page onto them in my sidebar. Instantly, another tab opens in the browser, revealing the familiar Facebook or MySpace email form. That’s it. Sent. Shared. If I want to share it with everyone, I click the star button on the address bar and Flock bookmarks it on my Delicious account.

The wrap.
There is so much more to say about Flock. In the meantime, check it out for yourself. Oh, and be sure to leave us your thoughts in the comments.