Blackberry 10 Dev Alpha and NFC

Research in Motion recently launched a Dev Alpha device to developers working on Blackberry OS 10 at Blackberry World in Florida. A few of my colleagues are there soaking up the sun and taking in the exciting news.

I think one of the most interesting new features is the Rewind feature for the Blackberry camera. It allows you to compensate for shutter lag by snapping a few frames before and after each shot and allowing you to choose the best one to avoid blinks or photo-bombs...  Neat idea.

Anyway, the real reason I'm bringing up this new Blackberry device and OS is that there is some nice native NFC support with a few options, and I think it's going to be really important to keep RIM relevant when it comes to mobile payments in the next few years.

NFC stands for Near Field Communications and is what allows a device like a phone to communicate (over short distances) securely for things like peers to peer data transfer and of course mobile payments.  Much like tapping a PayPass or PayWave or Interac Flash enabled card on a terminal at a merchant, customers can use an NFC enabled device to securely pay in much the same manner.

Different from a card, an NFC-enabled smart phone can also present offers based on where you are (GPS) or what you buy (transaction history) or even who you know (social graph).  There's obviously a lot of potential for this kind of device, but the adoption has been a challenge for a number of reasons.