cross pond high tech

One card to store them all.

Square, the fastest-growing mobile payments company in the U.S., has just closed its latest financing round, the start-up told in a short announcement on its website. No details are provided, but according to various sources the company has raised $200 million at a $3.25 billion valuation. By comparison, in its previous funding round last year, Square had raised $100 million at a valuation of $1.6 billion. Since then, the company’s processing volume has grown exponentially and its staff has more than doubled.

Last month (7/2013) Apple quietly acquired [1] a relatively unknown but highly innovative electronics company called Passif Semiconductor Corporation.  The Oakland California company was formed in early 2007 with the aim to create extreamly low power chipsets that directly relate to local adhoc communication networks.  One example is Bluetooth and another example in limited form is NFC.
Nerd Detour
The name Passif is a play on the word passive.  In electronics,  active components have the ability to produce gain, or amplify a signal, and passive components do not.  The basis on how Passif’s primary devices work is using Capacitors and they are passive electronic devices.
Founder Inventors, True  Innovation
Passif Semiconductor has been quietly innovating and have been applying for US patents by founders Benjamin W. Cook, Axel D .Berny with Jason A. Trachewsky.  The company had discovered a very novel and potentially spectacular way to “harvest” energy from all of the wireless signals around us, including WiFi and Cellular signals and to use this to power small and very inexpensive devices.
Batteries Not Included And Not Needed
This means that quite complex nano devices can sit out there and not need to have a true battery and will never need to be charged just by harvesting the huge amount of energy that is floating around us in just about every environment.  Costs drop to almost zero if batteries and charging systems are not needed for these nano devices.