Google sadly scrapped its plans to introduce a plastic “universal” credit card that works at point-of-sale as a way to use its Google Wallet service out in the real world, but the company has not given up on its NFC-powered payments solution just yet. The company announced Wednesday evening that the Google Wallet app now works on more phones: the Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy Note II and HTC One on Sprint and the Samsung Galaxy Note II on US Cellular.
As you may have noticed, there’s a looming problem with Google Wallet, and no, it’s not international support. It’s that Google still can’t roll the app out across the U.S. Of the big four mobile carriers here, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile, all but Sprint are backing a competing NFC-based payments initiative called Isis. Though this program is only in pilot trials in Austin and Salt Lake City, it’s clear the carriers are hoping to delay and impede progress of competitive solutions when they can, using regulatory red tape and any other legal loopholes they can find.
In Verizon’s case, the company skirted around the FCC’s 2012 decree which said it couldn’t block applications from download, with a few exceptions. (Initially, the carrier blocked the installation of the application from Google Play entirely.) According to Verizon, the secure element being used in Google Wallet is the issue. The carrier told the FCC that the app requires integration with the secure element on the device – something that makes it different from other m-commerce apps like Square or PayPal. And this is a “secure and proprietary piece of hardware” that’s “fundamentally separate from the device’s basic communications functions or its operating system,” said Verizon.
“Verizon has a straightforward process under which Google or others could launch devices on Verizon’s network with Google Wallet included,” Verizon responded at the time of the FCC inquiry.
In a sense, the carrier is positioning the Google Wallet app as something that requires additional oversight and control because of the way it integrates with phone hardware. Nevermind that the Verizon-backed Isis solution works in almost exactly the same way.
Well, before we all smugly pat ourselves on our backs, consider the awkward truths about contemporary racism replete in Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “Clybourne Park,” the regular-season finale at Long Wharf Theatre, where it runs through June 2.
Deftly directed by Eric Ting, “Clybourne Park” nimbly proposes that the PC Police may have censored speech in “mixed” company, but have only stuffed our unspoken fears and prejudices beneath our “Kumbaya” countenance of acceptance.
“Clybourne Park” is not only a dramaturgical treat, for, indeed, it is expertly crafted, baldly honest and briskly entertaining, but it also genuinely earns its poignancy and humor. It is, furthermore, a delightful acting exercise, as Norris calls upon seven actors to magnificently portray two sets of characters — one in 1959 and another 50 years later.
The fact that all these characters spring from the shadows of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” via Norris’ fertile imagination (save one, Karl Linder, a small but pivotal character of Hansberry’s creation), adds welcome intrigue to kindle our attention.
Ting, whose staging denies none of the play’s splendid subtleties, deals himself a killer seven-card-stud cast, a seamless ensemble in which each actor stands out while maintaining balance.
Daniel Jenkins and Alice Ripley are Russ and Bev, a troubled, married couple living in the very same house that Hansberry’s Younger family purchases at the conclusion of “A Raisin in the Sun.” Linder (Alex Moggridge), the character who, in Hansberry’s play, tries bribing the Youngers out of moving into the titular neighborhood, here tries dissuading Russ from selling to the Youngers, whom Russ doesn’t realize, are African American.
No comments:
Post a Comment