Oh, mighty Isis!

As a Gen X outcast, I recall the joy of Saturday morning cartoons of the late 1970s -- Batman, Scooby Doo, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear. But also the live action adventure series Shazam!, which chronicled the exploits of Captain Marvel, and its sister series Isis.

Isis was about a young teacher who finds a necklace that transforms her into the mythical goddess Isis when she utters the incantation, "Oh, mighty Isis!" As Isis, the woman could fly and command the elements of sky and earth.

All I really remember about the show is Isis in flight, with her arms extended out in front of her. The rest is a complete blank, probably because the episodes weren't memorable. (The show only lasted one season.)

This is the dilemma of the new Isis -- a brand new mobile contactless payment network at the point of sale. It is made up of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The big three telecoms are trying to leverage their 200 million U.S. wireless phone subscriber base to transform themselves into a payments network like Visa and MasterCard.

Isis is going to use Discover's network of 7 million retailers to develop its own Isis branded network over which smart phone payments will be made.  It's a bold but problematic undertaking because V/MC are such entrenched, well-known brands that operate powerful, worldwide networks. Of course, the card brands also have designs on mobile payments, with pilots in the works that seek to circumvent the power of the telecoms.

So, will Isis soar or bomb? It is very much an open question that hinges primarily on how consumers want to pay with their phones. Remember, Isis was kicked off the air back in the late 70s because not enough kids like myself watched the show. If not enough consumers opt to use Isis, 30 years from now we'll be strolling once again down the hazy corridors of memory lane.

The 'Shakespeare' App

Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media delivered a provocative and inspirational keynote address at the PayPal DevCon held in San Francisco last week. One point he drove home was that developers should take advantage of the sensor capabilities of smart phones. He mentioned how a phone can sense the unique gait of its owner; thus how we walk can be used as a biometric authenticator. Or how, when two phones running the same Bump application are touched together, a P2P payment is automatically made. So apps can be developed to utilize the "sensitivity" built into smart phones.

My thoughts naturally turned to apps useful for writers. What novelists and poets do is filter the material world through their senses. So why not an app that sharpens or extends that ability?

A Bluetooth-enabled camera can be attached to the rim of my glasses. My phone recognizes when I pause to look at something and snaps a picture of it. Then my phone is also keyed to laughter, since laughter means something interesting was seen, heard, or said. Any time the phone registers laughter, the phone records the audio of that, and the conversation around it. Finally, throughout the day my phone records my breathing and heart rate.

At the end of the day, the app compiles all this information into a multimedia presentation that I view on my phone before I go to sleep. I see all the highlights of my day, all the interesting things I've seen and heard but perhaps have not really registered because I was too preoccupied or distracted to take notice. The audio and video is cued to a graph of how my body responded to the various stimuli over the course of the day. 

In the end, this biofeedback loop helps me experience my day with more clarity than I brought to the initial experiences, and maybe I fall asleep realizing how rich my everyday, humdrum life really is. An app like that couldn't help but enhance my capacity to experience and recall the world. It would ultimately result in better writing.

When many of the apps developed for mobile devices end up distracting users from the real world, my "Shakespeare" app would do the opposite. Anything to make my morning commute a little more interesting.

The revolution will be monetized

Advances in smart phone technology, coupled with recent actions by mobile payment technology providers, the payment card brands and mobile telecom companies, points to a time in the not-so-distant future when consumers, as well as merchants, will transact without cards or cash, but simply with their phones.

With my background in covering the payments industry, I hope to bring you the most up-to-date information on this exciting and profound transformation in the way we think about and pay for goods and services.

Remember, the revolution will be monitized.