Walgreens is giving California and Michigan users of its Web site and mobile application round-the-clock access to doctors in its latest deep dive into the growing mobile health space. The service, which will be gradually rolled out to other states and markets, lets users consult virtually with MDLive certified physicians who can also prescribe medication for a range of acute conditions. 

Bravo Brio Restaurant Group, the parent company of Brio Tuscan Grille, has joined forces with Paytronix to offer a new Eat, Repeat, Reward loyalty program on its updated mobile application that also leverages enhanced employee training tools. After launching the frequency-and-spend system in its Texas restaurants and seeing successful results, the restaurant group rolled out an updated mobile app that consolidates all loyalty messaging and data, such as how often a specific individual visits the restaurants and how much he or she spends.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd revealed on Monday that users of its financial services affiliate, Alipay, are increasingly utilizing smartphones to make online payments. Alibaba’s online payment arm is processing 54 out of every 100 payments made through mobile phones, the Chinese e-commerce retailing company reported. The figure, recorded up to October this year, reflects a marked improvement from 22 out of 100 people in 2013. This is a clear indication of the fact that the Chinese smartphone market – comprising 500 million users - is gradually shifting to mobile payments.

Four large banks and eight other financial institutions in Australia are planning to build a more efficient network for real-time payments. The target is to make the new network robust enough so that transfers can be made both from mobile devices and fixed computers as well. With the new network in place, businesses would be able to receive money at the moment of purchase itself instead of waiting for days and sometimes even weeks. Swift, a Belgium based company also known as Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication system, is building the new network in Australia.

Scotch whisky brand Johnnie Walker’s leveraging of  Uber’s capabilities to discourage partygoers from drinking and driving by offering 250,000 kilometers of free rides points to the ride-sharing service's potential for marketers as adoption continues to grow. Safe driving campaigns serve as a way to build brand loyalty and awareness, such as AT&T’s It Can Wait program. These actions enable brands to emit a positive ambiance, elevating their reputation in consumers’ eyes.

Early next year, Paris-based company Ubudu is launching in the U.S. what it says is the first implementation of mesh beacons, called uBeacon Mesh. Before seeing how this could change the beacon landscape, let’s look at how standard beacons work. Imagine that standard beacons — small electronic devices, of which Apple’s iBeacon is the best known implementation — are like beacons of light, shining a signal to let you know where they are. Retailers mount them on ceilings or walls in a store. At intervals, the beacon broadcasts very small packets of data via Bluetooth Low Energy that simply say, “Hi, I’m here,” …

Starbucks’ plan to begin using Apple’s iBeacons in its premium coffee stores next year blends the coffee retailer’s leveraging of mobile with its emphasis on upscale lines of java, although it must tread carefully in the technology space to avoid alienating customers. Starbucks said it would bring out iBeacon technology in the coming year to allow customers at its premium-coffee Roastery and Tasting Rooms to access information about freshly brewed coffee via smartphones.

Several Miami-based Centric Consultingmobile developers landed a top prize in an international competition hosted by Citi. The team's platform, BlueBeak, allows users to send money to friends, who can then withdraw the funds from an ATM without a debit card.

Visitors to the National Slate Museum and the National Roman Legion Museum, both in Wales, walk around exhibits that might be difficult to interpret without some help. Photographs and artifacts are often hard to put into context (such as a Roman device that was a valuable tool at one time, but appears to be merely a small gray stone today). Printed material posted on exhibits and on walls do not do the exhibits justice, the museums' curators say, since there generally is insufficient space for the volume of content, and it is difficult to tailor information for each specific type of visitor—such as …

The Belgian city of Antwerp is poised to lead the pack of “smart” cities as it leverages public QR codes posted in shops and stations to disperse travel information to smartphone users. The city has seen success after implementing uQR.me’s generated QR codes in Belgian transit systems for riders to scan for arrival and departure information, among other travel features.