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It's here! As part of the Gemalto Contactless Challenge , a Samsung Galaxy S III was delivered to me yesterday preloaded with a Barclaycard app, and some spare cash. From today, for a week and a half, me and Ewan of Mobile Industry Review will be competing against each other in a series of challenges. These challenges includes going through a whole day entirely on contactless, taking the Thames Clipper, buying flowers for the other half using NFC and visiting the Museum of London. We will also have to do a single challenge issued by our readers, so if you feel like sending us on a crazy quest, don't feel shy and let  Gemalto  know. So, is wireless payment technology ready to take off in London? I guess we will find out soon enough. In the meantime, I will be providing updates on this blog as well as tweeting our conquests using the #GemaltoNFC hashtag on twitter.

Shoot! Existential Photography is a special exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery in Soho, London. It examines a popular attraction that appeared at fairgrounds around Europe after the first World War where people would attempt to win a photograph of themselves by shooting the centre of a target with an air gun. A successful bullseye will trigger a camera nearby. It's the ultimate in self portrait photography. The exhibition inspects the number of artists, photographers and general public who celebrates this unique game. On display are works by the Swiss artist  Rudolf Steiner . Steiner would literally shoot a picture of himself, with the bullet hole being the aperture of a pinhole camera, in a series called 'Pictures of Me, Shooting Myself Into A Picture'. Result! A picture of yours truly, holding the rifle wrong... Also on display are self portraits by Ria van Dijk of Holland. Ria van Dijk has been creating self portraits by shooting herself since when she was six...

St. Paul's from Bankside This is a blog post I never thought I would ever write. Funny how a few months can make... See, six months ago I was that guy on Twitter who did not get Instagram, even writing it off as a fad - a mistake that dear Mark Zuck would regret ever making. But after signing up a few months ago out of curiosity, it is now the second most used social network after Twitter. In fact, it will probably soon usurp Twitter as my favourite social network, what with Twitter clamping down on clients and other minor irritations. Proof, if you will, that one should never write things off completely or be closed minded. Giant robots It is actually not difficult to see how Instagram, once I had the guts to try it, easily won me over. Once I got over the initial urge to use the default and, more importantly, optional image filters, I've come to realised that if you approach Instagram as a social platform, it really isn't any different to Twitter. In fact Instagram is mor...

iZettle is an European startup specialising in providing small businesses an ability to use their smartphone as a conduit for allowing payments using a proprietary iZettle card reader. It's a concept aimed at providing small business and merchants the ability to charge customers without resorting to expensive solutions. This is similar to Square in US, only it's a bit more secure as it uses a chip solution rather than magnetic strip and is EMV approved. Yesterday, iZettle, alongside their partners at Mastercard, American Express and EE, announced their entry to the UK market. According to iZettle, 50% of missed sales by merchants are due to their inability to accept plastic. This is true even in build-up areas in London - I can hardly remember how many restaurants and coffee shops I had to give a miss because there was a 'only cash' sign. There are a million card payment in the UK, but 12-15 million iOS devices plus a heck lot more Android smartphones, so this service w...

The Royal Albert Hall hosted the first of this season's Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy orchestra, a worldwide event celebrating the 25th anniversary of the series. The first game was released in Japan on 18 December 1987 by Square on the Famicom (NES) platform, popularising the RPG genre. Since then, 13 main numbered games within the series has also been released, including various none-numbered spin-offs and sequels. The next game in the numbered series would be Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII and is a further sequel to Final Fantasy XIII . It was a great evening, and I have always enjoyed concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. The famous Kensington venue, while traditional in architecture, seems apt for a wide range of performance styles and music genres. In fact, the last time we were there was last year for the BBC Radio 3's Big Red Nose Snow and, before that the Cirque Du Solei's Totem (thanks London Midland!) circus! Anyway the conductor Arnie Roth and the Royal ...

Science Museum does a neat free event at the end of the month called the Science Museum (duh) Lates. It's an evening dedicated to all things entertainment and science. Best of all, it's adults only, meaning, no pesky things known as kids are allowed in. Rejoice! We and a couple of friends decided to check out October's Science Museum Lates, which happened to coincide with Halloween. After braving the freezing October evening and large queues (who would know science would be so popular?), we got in all excited. In addition to the normal Science Museum stuffs, the day also hosted special science of alcohol events and lectures where visitors learned about this history of gin, sake tasting and brewing your own ginger beer. It's not all just fun though, visitors also got to learn about how a typical Friday night is like for London ambulance crew having to deal with alcoholics who don't know when to quit. The resident IMAX theater also featured the Punk Science c...

So, I've just received my polling card for the Hertfordshire Police & Crime Commissioner election. As this was the first I've heard about it, I quickly read up about this reform (after all the national media has not once made us aware that there was going to be an opportunity to elect a local police commissioner). What I found disturbed me. Each candidate for the Hertfordshire police commissioner are affiliated to a political party. Worse still, every single candidates are seasoned armchair politicians with no actual experiences in policing! You know, the type of stuff police are supposed to do like catching robbers, investigating bankers, protecting the people, filling tedious paperwork etc. FFS, even the rosettes are affiliated to the three main UK parties! Policing should be impartial. The last thing we should want as a democratic country is having the police in the pockets of political party with an agenda. And because of the amount of resources needed to campaign...