Tech Awakenings...

I've just had two new tech experiences in the last 24 hours and for a self confessed geek, that is quite an exciting thing.

Contactless Retail Transactions
I got sent a new bank card about a month ago. It's a new 'contactless' card which has the chip and pin standard on it but now also incorporates the new contactless payment method. I stopped into Pret-A-Manger to pick up a coffee and apple this morning to find they are one of the first retail outlets to start using this contactless method of payment. Basically, when you're ready to pay for goods or services, you just hover your bank card in front of the terminal and it wirelessly reads the details from your card and pays for the transaction. No slotting card in, entering a PIN and waiting for it to go through the processing.

Sounds slightly insecure but from what I've read, it can only be used for transactions under £10 so is ideal for those wee things like coffee or lunch and for someone who generally doesn't carry hard currency around, it's perfect. It might even eventually remove the stigma associated with paying for small amounts with debit cards that some people have and stop retailers charging for transactions under £5 or not letting you use cards under that amount.

NintendoDS Homebrew
I was given an R4 cartridge for my DS last year. The most common usage of the cartridge is probably downloading retail games from the internet for use on the machine.

In the last few days I found out about homebrew applications for the Nintendo machine. Homebrew is the the name given to non commercial home programmed games and applications. The R4 cartridge allows amateur programmers to write applications that work on the DS.

I now have a copy of a 2D version of Portal. An excellent conversion of the PC first person puzzler which is one of my favourite games ever written.