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HUD for Performance Sailors

When it comes to sailboat racing, the difference between winning & losing is the ability to adapt a carefully orchestrated plan to the ever-changing natural & competitive environment, faster than the competition. The key is having the right info at the right time. The Afterguard system provides this info by combining fighter style HUD with boat instrumentation data to give the best situational intelligence & performance metrics at a glance, on a small display mounted on sunglasses made for the harshest of environments.

StartSequence: at a glance the user will know with certainty how the boat is tracking to the start line, freeing the crew to concentrate on the speed build and competition for the perfect star. This is made possible by the intelligent time-to-kill metric that uses the boat’s current heading and speed to calculate the exact amount of time the boat must kill before crossing the line precisely at the gun.

Performance Dashboard: this displays the relevant information to any given crew member, from the helmsman to the trimmer. Metrics include boat speed, speed over ground, wind angle, wind speed, polar targets, heel and depth.

Virtual Tactician: this feature removes the guesswork associated with making a mark or clearing a boat. By tracking the user’s gaze and combining it with the system’s data the user will be able to make split second tactical decisions with relying on a hand bearing compass, lines marked on the deck or other basic means. Simply put, the user will be able to look at another boat and gauge whether they are ahead and whether there is room to cross.

Designer: Afterguard

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Yanko Design
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(HUD for Performance Sailors was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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VeriFone retreats from mobile payments, says acquiring users ‘fundamentally unprofitable’

VeriFone retreats from mobile payments, says acquiring users 'fundamentally unprofitable'

After joining the mobile payment bandwagon last spring with Sail, VeriFone is ready to scale back its efforts in the venture. "Our experience through 2012 with tens of thousands of these micro-merchants tells us that the standalone economics of micro-merchant acquiring are fundamentally unprofitable," the firm's CEO, Doug Bergeron, said in a quarterly conference call. According to the head honcho, the cost of wrangling up new business users through ads and the like "will never justify the razor thin-margins produced by merchants with infrequent volumes and extremely high attrition." As a result of those costs and the risks of fraud associated with payments, the outfit will be handing off the user recruitment side of Sail to banks and "merchant acquirers," and plans to sell some of the platform's related assets. Despite the company's retreat from mobile payments, Bergeron considers the only way others could survive in the space is to provide merchants with auxiliary services, such as digital wallets, which competitors such as Square have begun to dabble in. VeriFone may have soured on mobile payments, but it's highly likely we'll see others give it the old college try as well.

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Via: Reuters

Source: Verifone Q4 2012 Earnings Call Transcript (PDF)

VeriFone outs Sail mobile payment system, gives Square the evil eye

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VeriFone has decided that calling out claimed security holes and focusing on enterprise-level payment options aren't enough to take on Square. Sail goes more directly for Square's jugular, using its own plug-in dongle to handle major credit card payments in your local coffee shop or a mid-sized outlet. The VeriFone party trick comes through having multiple payment options, where shopkeeps can either choose to pay a flat 2.7 percent cut of every sale, or shell out a $10 monthly fee to lower the transactional take to 1.95 percent. Programming interfaces will let you hook in deals from social networks, too. And as you might expect, the company is still keen to tie Sail to its traditional payment systems, opening the door to NFC readers as well as other payment hardware that isn't quite as mobile. Stores with iPhones will be the only ones using the free Sail mobile apps and readers at first, but Android- and iPad-toting entrepreneurs will have their alternative to Square or PayPal Here as soon as the end of May.

VeriFone outs Sail mobile payment system, gives Square the evil eye originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 May 2012 09:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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