ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

Visa Europe launches a contact-less payment system in Turkey. Customers of Akbank with a Blackberry enabled by a microSD card can now pay for goods.

Using NFC technology in a microSD called the In2Pay, the In2Pay card can still act as a storage expansion as well, so users do not give up memory to make use of the service.

Visa will expand this micro-SD programme to include HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia and Motorola phones in the near future while it waits for NFC handsets to gain in the market.

Go VISA EUROPE and microSD

Remember the Y2K, the Year 2000 processor problem that stampeded the IT industry? Now a modernization of HDD formats could create a real hard drive snafu…

Hard disk drive (HDD) processing will shift from the historical sector lengths of 512 to 520 byte increments to increments of 4096 bytes per sector using Advanced Format technology.

The transition to 4096 byte sectors (or 4K) will affect all software and hardware components that interact with the HDD.

When properly optimized, Advanced Format delivers performance improvements over the legacy format. On the other hand, some software apps and other operations that access the HDD may appear sluggish to users if the system has not been optimized to use Advanced Format.

While some of the hard disk drive manufacturers have already begun shipping Advanced Format drives, all manufacturers plan to change the formatting of the data stored on the media to increments of 4K bytes per sector using Advanced Format technology starting January 2011.

Go IDEMA

At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, COO Kevin Turner says Microsoft is going to "build dozens more stores" and is "just getting started."

"Microsoft Stores are an incredible learning vehicle for us," Turner notes. A funny comment if you consider how well the company has automated its customer service to avoid human contact.

If Kinect is a hit in the gaming market…and if Windows Phone 7 devices pull as well as Windows 7 PCs… then these products could pull people inside Microsoft Stores.

To see how serious Microsoft is about retail, there's the Microsoft Retail Experience Center—an invitation-only, 20,000 sq.ft. interactive store environment located at Microsoft main campus.

A retail test lab, it could easily be mistaken for a real electronics superstore. The emphasis is on making the retail experience more connected— connecting stores with one another, with their employees, and with their customers.

Take the shopping cart, with integrated touchscreen. Or Microsoft Tag, a scanning technology that works with cell phone. cell phone. A Surface tabletop computer. RFID tags.

Go to the Microsoft Retail Experience Center

After Best Buy Europe's chief executive of branded operations Paul Antoniadis left, Best Buy Europe appointed Andrew Harrison as COO, reporting to CEO Scott Wheway.

Harrison, from The Carphone Warehouse, will continue to lead The Carphone Warehouse and The Phone House across nine European countries. And now he'll drive Best Buy Europe's Connected World strategy and customer proposition across all Best Buy Europe brands.

Harrison says, "The internet is evolving at a blistering pace and what really excites me is that we have only experienced a fraction of the connectivity products and services that have yet to come."

Go the original Connected World Team