Samsung announced today that it has partnered with Caesars Entertainment to place more than 4,500 TecTile NFC tags throughout eight of the company’s hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. By tapping an NFC-capable smartphone to the tag, information on various games, entertainment venues, food and more will be instantly displayed on the smartphone.

“At Caesars, we understand that mobile, social, and online technologies are critical enablers of the customer experience,” said Tariq Shaukat, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Caesars Entertainment Corporation. “This installation of Samsung TecTiles will allow millions of our guests with any NFC-enabled device to explore all that Caesars Entertainment resorts and casinos have to offer by simply tapping their smartphone against the tags.”

As expected, TecTiles will be plastered all over slot machines providing users with information like game tutorials, player guidelines, win/loss stats and more. The tags will also be placed near the more popular attractions so users can view show times, buy tickets and get post-show offers all from their phone.

Social media also gets a boost thanks to TecTiles with the tags being placed outside major hotels and casinos in the city. Those who tap these tags will receive a list of the “Top 10″ things to do at each of the hotels and casinos that week. It would be a big help for the clueless tourist.

“Just six months ago we introduced Samsung TecTiles, which were intended to expand how our customers can leverage the Near Field Communication capabilities of Samsung phones,” said Kevin Packingham, chief product officer at Samsung Mobile. “Since then, these programmable stickers have not only changed how consumers interact with their phone, but they have made it much easier for businesses to create unique experiences for their customers using this innovative capability.”

Fittingly, all the TecTile tags will be going up on January 8, the first official day of CES. Those arriving for the annual tech show will probably use the tags far more than the average tourist, but its success could lead to other major tourist spots around the world adopting the technology.

Hyundai announced its intention to create a new prototype at its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany of a new car that uses wireless technologies to control everything in the vehicle. It’s called the Connectivity Concept and it very well may change how we interact with cars by 2015.

Here’s how Hyundai explains the concept:

Shown on Hyundai’s award-winning New Generation i30, the Connectivity Concept allows the user to lock and unlock the car by placing their smartphone over an NFC-tag (Near Field Communication), negating the need for a traditional key fob.

Once inside, the device is placed in the centre console, which then activates the user’s profile by streaming content to the i30’s seven-inch touchscreen. All user content such as music, phone contacts, radio station preferences and individual profile settings are displayed. In addition the device’s battery is recharged wirelessly while in use.

What may be the most exciting concept is that the car can be synced with multiple users via their individual smartphones. When a person’s smartphone is inserted into the car, all of their in-car settings are instantly loaded for a personalized experience.

There’s even more features planned for the technology as Hyundai develops it. The company’s Senior VP and CEO of Hyundai Motor Europe, Allan Rushforth, explained some of the more futuristic advances the company is making with its Connectivity Concept:

“Hyundai’s Connectivity Concept showcases the brand’s philosophy of making tomorrow’s technology accessible to a wide range of customers. With this technology, Hyundai is able to harness the all-in-one functionality of existing smartphone technology and integrating it into everyday driving in a seamless fashion. As the technology continually develops there will be capabilities to store driver’s seating positions and exterior mirror settings, providing customers with a comfortable and individual driving environment.”

The only potential downside to all of this is that it could make car theft easier. There will have to be some serious safe guards in place to prevent would be thieves from replicating the unique identifiers of an owner’s smartphone to unlock the car.

You’re not going to see this kind of technology in cars until at least 2015 though so Hyundai has a few years to perfect it. By then, we may even have Google’s amazing self-driving cars making their way through more cities.

According to a Mobileburn report, the service is only available to a very specific few mobile subscribers. First, the app is only available to T-Mobile customers who have a Samsung Galaxy S III or Galaxy Relay 4G. Second, the app requires a special SIM card and the device must not be rooted. Of the subscribers who meet all of that criteria, only those living in Salt Lake City, Utah or Austin, Texas can get the app. These are the two cities in the Isis pilot program.

The Isis mobile app is AT&T’s, Verizon’s, and T-Mobile’s answer to Google Wallet and PayPal mobile payments. The service will allow users to complete purchases at participating retailers using their smartphone.

Though the iPhone 5 did not include NFC capabilities as expected, the mobile payment investments were already in place and multiple services (including one backed by Walmart and Target) will debut over the next year. T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom has been leading the push for mobile payment investment in Europe.

Google announced today that it will be ending the Google Prepaid Card within the Google Wallet app. The company stated that the reason for the change is that customers can now add any credit or debit card to Google Wallet.

Starting on September 17, users will no longer be able to add funds to the prepaid card or add new prepaid cards to the app. In addition, resetting the Wallet app will cause the prepaid card to be removed. On October 17, the prepaid card will disappear from Wallet and users will not be able to spend any money they had stored on it. Google has also changed the terms and conditions for the prepaid card. Where a $2 fee was applied monthly after 180 days of inactivity, now that time period has shrunk to 30 days.

Users who don’t spend their prepaid card balance by the cut-off date, or who are unaware of the impending deactivation can receive refunds. Google states that it will add information on how to receive a refund to this page on October 17. In the meantime, Google encourages those whose prepaid card disappears after an app reset to contact Money Network, the servicer of Google Prepaid Cards, to receive a refund.

Supposedly, the feature will allow Spotify users to share music with other phones that have the same feature. It is unknown exactly what music the app will allow users to share. Spotify has subscription options that allow users to stream music of their choice. It seems unlikely that such music can be shared through the app, though it should at least allow users to share locally-stored music.

The mobile industry has been slowly adding support and developing the infrastructure for NFC technologies. While high-end Android-based smartphones have had support for NFC for some time now, Apple has yet to implement the technology into their iPhones. Samsung recently released programmable TecTiles NFC stickers to coincide with the launch of its Galaxy S III smartphone.

However, rumors earlier this year that the upcoming iPhone 5 would support NFC caused credit card companies and Walmart to invest heavily in building out digital wallet services. Though more recent rumors call for an NFC-less iPhone 5, this just goes to show how much market power even rumors about an iPhone can have.

“Mobile payments represent a game-changing business opportunity for our industry, and ETA’s mission is to help our member companies succeed in this business,” said ETA CEO Jason Oxman. “Our industry must work collaboratively to ensure that the regulatory and business environment promotes innovation and cooperation. As the trade association of the payments industry, ETA is the hub of activity in mobile payments, and our Mobile Payments Committee will help ensure that consumers and merchants have access to an efficient, reliable and secure mobile payments system.”

In addition to the mobile operators taking part in the Mobile Payments Committee, credit card companies, financial institutions, hardware manufacturers, and software developers will all be represented on the committee. Google, Wells Fargo, PayPal, Panasonic, and every major U.S. credit card company will have representatives on the committee. The Mobile Payments Committee will begin meeting in August and then hold monthly meetings. Jackie Moran, executive director of federal relations for Verizon, will chair the committee.

“As a nascent industry, the mobile payments market is just beginning to realize its full potential as a robust enabler of global electronic commerce,” said Moran. “The Mobile Payments Committee is designed to ensure that the early stages of mobile payments are handled in the best possible way: with insight and ingenuity from all the players – private as well as public sector – involved in the exciting future of mobile payments.”

The mobile payments industry has not yet taken off in the U.S. or much of Europe. With the news that Apple will include NFC technology in the iPhone 5, it’s clear the mobile industry thinks Apple will quickly propel mobile payments in the U.S. and Europe. T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom has been expanding its mobile payment services this year, including a partnership with MasterCard.

Discovered by Game Revolution, a patent was recently granted to Apple that covers a game controller. The controller, as you can see above, is pretty much ripped straight from Sony’s DualShock design for the PSone through the PS3.

What’s interesting is that the controller would connect to iOS devices via NFC. The new iPhone that’s supposedly launching in September will be the first iPhone to feature the communication frequency. That would be a perfect time for Apple to launch the controller to bring core gamers into the iOS flock. It might work too.

Of course, playing a game on a phone with a controller that’s bigger than it makes little sense. That’s why the patent mentions that the controller will be used in conjunction with an iPhone/iPad and the Apple TV. With AirPlay, games can be streamed onto a TV via the iPhone. With a controller, Apple will have themselves a game console that could potentially shake up the market just like the Ouya promises to do.

There’s no doubt that Apple wants to become a major player in gaming. There’s too much money in it for them not to be interested. The only problem is that this controller is not built for the legion of Apple gamers who are only interested in simple, quick mini-games like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. This controller has to get core gamers to switch to something’s technologically inferior to the consoles and PCs of today.

Such a challenge hasn’t phased the Android counterpart – Ouya – at all and it obviously won’t phase Apple. We’ll have to see how gamers react to such a move if, and when, such a controller is launched. Gaming is in a transitionary stage at the moment and anybody with a bold enough idea has a chance to change the industry. Will Apple bring a revolution? Probably not, but it’s still a step in the right direction.

The first video talks up building Android apps with Web APIs. Here’s the description:

Google offers a large and growing set of back-end services, from AdSense to Tasks to Calendar to Google+, that can enrich your app, and increasingly they have a uniform set of APIs. This session discusses how to use them efficiently and securely, including authenticating safely and with good user experience, and describes Android-specific app-level optimizations.

The next is all about Google Cloud Messaging for Android. Here’s what you need to know:

Cloud-to-device-messaging (C2DM) is coming out of beta and getting a new name: Google Cloud Messaging for Android. GCM for Android incorporates the lessons we learned in the C2DM beta, many of which take the form of new features. This session will cover the new service end-to-end and in detail.

Up next should be of particular interest for those who want to take advantage of Google Drive on Android. Here’s the lowdown:

This session goes through how to write Drive apps that synchronize files with Android devices. We’ll also go into how to open files on Android devices, or create new files from this environment.

Last but certainly not least, developers can learn all about NFC and its Android Beam counterpart. Here’s the skinny:

A session covering the developer-oriented NFC features we’ve been adding to the Android platform. Learn how to use Android Beam to add magic sharing abilities to your application, and see what other new and exciting NFC features we’re working on.

According to 9to5Mac, references found in hardware code dumps strongly suggest that the new iPhone will have NFC chips built in. If true, this has massive implications both for the mobile payment market, and for Apple’s announcement regarding iOS 6. During the iOS 6 section of their WWDC 2012 keynote two weeks ago, Apple showed off Passbook. Passbook is a new app designed to provide users with easy access to things like boarding passes, movie tickets, rewards cards, coupons, and so on. The version of Passbook we saw at WWDC relied on bar codes and QR codes for scanning such things. With NFC, though, actually scanning the code wouldn’t be necessary.

What’s more, with NFC integration, Passbook could very easily become a mobile payment app as well. Though Apple has said they aren’t planning to get into the mobile payment space, the fact is that in a way they already are. They’ve already got millions of credit cards on file thanks to the iTunes store. With NFC built into the iPhone, Passbook could simply charge purchases to your iTunes store account. In fact, they’ve already implemented something very like this with the Apple Store app. You can pay for Apple Store purchases just by putting in your iTunes password while you’re in the store.

While this is all still just a rumor, it’s growing increasingly more likely. If Apple really is bringing NFC and mobile payment to the iPhone, they’ll be pretty much the last major mobile platform to do so. Android users have been able to use Google Wallet to make payments with their NFC-capable phones for several months now, and Microsoft unveiled NFC support for Windows Phone 8 last week. While Apple has been known to forego certain kinds of features their competitors include, putting NFC in the iPhone is potentially very lucrative for them. It’s not likely that they’ll let the iPhone be left behind in this area for another year.

There’s an interesting question raised by NFC on the iPhone: will we see a Google Wallet iOS app? After all, Google doesn’t appear quite ready to relinquish Google Maps’s presence on the iPhone. Will they allow Apple to be the only game in town when it comes to mobile payments on the iPhone? The odds are that they won’t. I contacted Google to get their thoughts on the matter, but they haven’t yet replied.

“With millions of NFC-enabled Samsung Galaxy smartphones currently in the market and the arrival of our flagship device Galaxy S III, Samsung saw an opportunity to expand the value of NFC beyond mobile payments,” said Dale Sohn, president of Samsung Telecommunications America. “The launch of Samsung TecTiles is another example of Samsung’s ability to innovate new products and applications that improve the way we use our mobile devices for everyday tasks.”

Sohn might have a point. Discussion of NFC technology has mostly centered around using it to pay for things in stores, yet the technology has the capability to do much more. Part of the reason for this is that NFC is not widespread in the smartphone market. Though most high-end Android smartphones have had the technology for over a year, Apple has not yet embraced NFC. Things are looking up, though, and rumor is that Apple will incude NFC in the iPhone 5. When that happens, the technology will finally take off, which is what Samsung is betting on.

The scope of what TecTiles can enable is quite impressive. First, any phone settings can be changed including volume settings, screen brightness, and Wi-Fi settings. Phone calls can be initiated, text messages can be sent, and Google Talk chats can be started. TecTiles can enable different actions for social networks including Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and LinkedIn. They can be used to give directions, contact information, or open web pages.

The TecTiles can be reprogrammed as many times as needed using the Android app, however locking a TacTile with the “Lock TecTile” option prevents it from ever being reprogrammed, even by the original programmer.

With a little creativity and tweaking, the uses for TecTiles could be quite inventive. One pasted near the front door of a home could enable a “home mode” where the phone’s ringer volume is louder, Wi-Fi is connected, and the phone controls a Bluetooth stereo. One on a desk at work could enable a more quiet, professional mode. A TacTile could be stuck on a business card with Facebook page, Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, and other contact information. Of course, this last idea assumes the person given the card has and uses NFC. Luckily, with Samsung obviously invested in the technology, and Apple beginning to embrace it, NFC should soon be ubiquitous.

TecTiles are now available from Samsung’s webstore or from the physical stores of all major U.S. carriers. The app is available through Google Play.