Aisle by Aisle, an App That Pushes Bargains

Major retailers are working with a new smartphone application that tracks and offers promotions to shoppers as they move from outside the store, to counters, to cash registers — even inside the dressing room (now that’s persistence).

The app, called Shopkick, will be available on Tuesday for the iPhone and in the fall for Android phones. And with five major companies supporting it — Macy’s, Best Buy, Sports Authority and American Eagle Outfitters, along with the Simon Property Group, the prominent mall operator — it is getting a big introduction.

Customers with the Shopkick app will get points (called kickbucks) for entering a store. Pick up a putter at Sports Authority, and points drop into the app. Stop in the dressing room at American Eagle, and more points arrive.

The points are redeemable for gift cards at the retailers, along with music downloads or credits toward Facebook games. It takes a lot of points, however, to earn even a $5 gift card, although the stores say they may adjust the point system to make points more valuable.

Whether shoppers will get a kick, so to speak, out of being followed — and pinged from one floor of a store to the next — remains debatable. What retailers see as sophisticated marketing, privacy advocates see as intrusive. Shopkick knows “where you are, what you buy, your spending habits, passions, excesses,” Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said via e-mail.

Unlike apps like Foursquare, Shopkick tells retailers when users are inside, not just near, a store.

“That’s unusual,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester Research. “Will it lift sales? That remains to be seen, but everyone is eager to experiment.”

The app lets stores “influence their behavior,” said Mikael Thygesen, who is the chief marketing officer at the Simon Property Group and the president of its Simon Brand Ventures division. Simon, along with the other companies using Shopkick, will install it in stores in and around New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles initially, with Chicago to follow next week.

Before introducing Shopkick, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, Cyriac Roeding, tested how willing consumers would be to “check in” to a location in exchange for a reward — in that case, money for charities. That app, called CauseWorld, was introduced in December 2009 and was downloaded more than 550,000 times in its first five months, with almost $1 million going to charities so far. Ms. Mulpuru called it “a success story of the retail-app world.”

Shopkick goes further.

On Monday, Mr. Roeding stood on a slim strip of sidewalk on 46th Street in Manhattan, trying to avoid Times Square tourists as he demonstrated the app. As he stood a few yards from the entrance to an American Eagle Outfitters store, the app showed him all the nearby stores where he could check in — including American Eagle or the tiny candy store nearby. For each check-in — which did not require him to actually go inside — he could receive 0 to 2 points.

That was fine, but “foot traffic is so important,” Mr. Roeding said. “Why does no one ever reward anyone for visiting a store?” By actually going inside the American Eagle store, the app told him, he could earn 35 kickbucks. The app knows someone is in a store by listening for an audio transmitter placed in each participating store; the phone’s microphone picks up the signal, which people cannot hear.

Once inside, Mr. Roeding swiped through offers: a 15 percent discount, a sale on jeans. Enter a dressing room — once a shopper tries on clothes, sales rise, retailers know — and posters on the walls offer points for scanning the bar code.

“It’s the first reward programs for desired behaviors,” Mr. Roeding said.

Shopkick earns a small fee for each kickbuck a customer earns. If a customer buys something after using the app, Shopkick gets a percentage of the price.

Right now, it takes a lot of kickbucks to earn anything — a $5 gift card at American Eagle requires 1,250 kickbucks. And retailers limit the number of eligible visits each day, so someone cannot sprint in and out of Best Buy all afternoon.

Soon, the retailers say, they hope to become more sophisticated, giving points or promoting items based on sex or age, where people live, how frequently they shop or their buying history.

The companies can even weave in rewards-card numbers, as Best Buy is already doing. With that, “we have the ability to target down to even an individual level,” said Mike Dupuis, the vice president for marketing and operations at American Eagle Outfitters Direct, the Web and mobile division of American Eagle.

Privacy advocates like Mr. Chester said that was problematic, especially given how that data could be combined with other available information about consumers, and that Shopkick’s privacy policy was too broad.

“What appears to be a relatively harmless trade-off of your information for rewards or discounts is really misleading,” he said.

Mr. Roeding said he believed that because consumers had to turn on the app, the privacy problems were minimal. “The device does not detect your phone, the phone detects your device,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/technology/17app.html?ref=business

Suicide Bomber Kills Dozens in Attack on Iraqi Army Recruits

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber struck early on Tuesday at an army recruiting office here, killing dozens in the first major bombing of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan — a period made more fraught than in previous years by the looming deadline for American forces to replace their combat mission here with a training role.

Iraqi soldiers at the scene of the attack said only that dozens of civilians and security force personnel were caught in the explosion near the Bab al-Muadham, on the east side of the Tigris River near the former headquarters of the Ministry of Defense. Soldiers said they had pulled 40 bodies from the debris, and an official from the Ministry of Interior later said that the toll so far was 48 dead and 129 wounded.

Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, forgoing water, food and cigarettes, has in recent years brought an escalation of insurgent attacks in Iraq.

But this year has particular significance as Ramadan coincides with the weeks leading to the American military’s Aug. 31 deadline to reduce its troop numbers in Iraq to 50,000, shifting from combat operations to a mission designed principally to train and assist Iraqi security forces.

That number is down from the peak of more than 160,000 during the buildup of American soldiers here in 2007.

Both Ramadan and the American deadline, thus, were likely to provide impetus for attacks by insurgents seeking to exploit the persistent uncertainty surrounding Iraq’s political affairs and security situation seven years after the American-led invasion of 2003.

Firefighters sped to the scene Tuesday, where some soldiers said that the bomber had caught them by surprise. The attack was the bloodiest single assault since July 18, when a suicide bomber attacked among former insurgents who had switched sides to fight alongside American forces. More than 40 people were killed as the former insurgents lined up outside an Iraqi Army base to receive their paychecks.

Outside a blue-domed mosque near the scene of the attack on Tuesday, Sergeant Muhammad Hassan, 28, said the latest bomber had clearly intended to attack the Army recruits. With his uniform stained by blood from the victims he had dragged away, Sergeant Hassan said: “I was here from the early morning. We searched everybody. One exploded himself among a group of soldiers and recruits.”

He added: “The recruiting has been going on for at least a week, and this was the last day. We were not expecting it because it was the final day.”

Pvt. Younes Ali, 24, said that the bomber timed the explosion just as an Iraqi Army brigadier in charge of recruiting arrived to take the identification papers of the would-be recruits.

“All the recruits were sitting on the ground,” Private Ali said. “When the brigadier arrived they were ordered to stand up. Immediately after that, the bomber exploded himself.”

Private Ali said he had seen the body of the bomber, who was a brown-haired man with green eyes in his mid-20s. Half his body was blown away. Three hours after the explosion, he said, part of the area was still sealed off because two sticks of explosives had apparently failed to explode. The attack was the latest in a series of shootings and bombings, as insurgents seek to take advantage of the Iraqis’ failure, after five months, to form a national government, and to test Iraqi forces ahead of the American deadline, now just two weeks away.

Zaid Ali, 20, one of the would-be recruits lined up outside the former Defense Ministry building, said he had come every day during recruiting to get a job with the Iraqi Army and that security forces had on previous days checked people for their identity cards and papers at 6 a.m. On Tuesday, however, they asked to see papers around 7:30 am, he said. His account suggested that the delay in collecting identity papers had allowed a larger crowd to gather, offering the bomber more potential targets.

Hussein Kamel, 21, another would-be recruit, said he had slept overnight outside the recruiting center.

“I was sleeping on a piece of grass nearby and at 7:30 a.m.,” Mr. Kamel said. “There was a young long-haired green-eyed man who came down the street. He joined us in the line. When the military police came and asked for identity papers, he blew himself up immediately after they asked him.”

Mr. Kamel said there was confusion after the explosion. He said the security forces took cover behind walls and began shooting, endangering the rest of the recruits.

Jobs in the Iraqi military are highly prized in a faltering economy where work is scarce. Recruits can earn over $500 a month, and there have been reports of people offering bribes to get into the security forces.

Mr. Ali, the would-be recruit, said, for example, that minutes before the explosion on Tuesday, a group of 10 tribal sheiks arrived at the former ministry accompanied by about 50 of what appeared to be their own followers who were ushered inside the building, even though others had been waiting for days.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/world/middleeast/18iraq.html?_r=1&hp

G.O.P. Seizes on Mosque Issue Ahead of Elections

WASHINGTON — Republican Congressional candidates on Monday intensified efforts to inject the divide over construction of an Islamic center near ground zero into the midterm campaigns while the Senate’s top Democrat said he objected to the mosque being built there.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader and a Democrat facing a difficult re-election fight, said through a spokesman that those who plan to erect the Islamic center should look elsewhere. That separates Mr. Reid from President Obama’s support of the developers’ right to build the center.

“The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,” said Jim Manley, a top adviser to Mr. Reid. “Senator Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else.”

In a number of releases and statements, Republican House and Senate candidates challenged Democrats like Mr. Reid to make their positions clear on the construction of a mosque and community center about two blocks from the site of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City.

“Ground zero is hallowed ground to Americans,” Elliott Maynard, a Republican trying to unseat Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat, in West Virginia’s Third District, said in a typical statement. “Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?”

Republicans said Mr. Obama’s defense of the right of the developers to pursue the project showed that he was out of touch with average Americans.

“It is very troubling to see President Obama again turning a deaf ear to the thoughts and concerns of a majority of Americans,” said James Renacci, a Republican candidate in Ohio’s 16th District, who said people at a recent public meeting were furious about the mosque proposal.

The remarks were a rare instance in this campaign season when Republicans have strayed from a focus on economic issues in their push for substantial gains in the House and Senate in November. The intensity of their attacks showed that they do not appear worried about the risk of being seen as intolerant or not supportive of the right to freedom of religion.

Some leading Democrats said it was the president’s role to stand up for constitutional rights in the mosque dispute.

Representative James E. Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat, said Monday that “articulating the constitutional principles” on which the country was founded and “calling for tolerance on the part of all of its people” were part of “a presidential act worth exercising.”

Privately, many Democrats were not pleased that the issue had been thrown into their laps during the summer recess as they believed they had been making inroads by talking about how some Republicans support privatizing Social Security. But strategists said Democrats could counter the Republican offensive by labeling the mosque dispute as a local issue and saying Democrats remain focused on the economy.

Some also said the White House should not have put lawmakers on the spot in the first place and could have been better prepared for the president’s statement, lining up religious and community leaders to offer support for the right to build the mosque and undermine Republican attacks.

Other Democrats said they did not see the fight resonating strongly outside New York and did not expect it to become a defining campaign issue.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat who represents the district that includes ground zero, said he doubted that the fight over the mosque would inflict much damage on fellow Democrats in the November elections.

Mr. Nadler, whose view is that the developers were entitled to build the mosque at the selected location if they choose, said, “Ultimately I suspect that once this simmers down in a few weeks, people will realize that everybody’s liberty is at stake here.”

The planned community center, perhaps 15 stories tall, would be built in three adjacent buildings two blocks north of ground zero, though one building, owned by Consolidated Edison, has yet to be sold. The other two are all but vacant now; worship services are already taking place in one of them.

The developer, Sharif el-Gamal, a real estate investor born in New York, has said the center would include meeting rooms, a prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium and a pool. Two mosques, founded in 1970 and 1985, are already within several blocks of the proposed center. They are so busy and crowded that a search was begun for more space.

Before Mr. Obama spoke out, leading Republican figures like Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House, and Sarah Palin, the party’s 2008 vice-presidential nominee, had been voicing opposition to the Islamic center. That caused other Republicans to warn that the party risked a backlash and was alienating the nation’s Muslims.

But Mr. Gingrich showed no sign of backing down on Monday. “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington,” Mr. Gingrich said on the Fox News program “Fox and Friends.” “We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.”

Democratic campaign officials accused Republicans of exploiting the Sept. 11 attacks, noting that their outrage over the Islamic center came just weeks after many House Republicans opposed a new medical program to monitor and treat emergency workers and others suffering ill effects from exposure to hazardous materials at ground zero.

Katharine Q. Seelye contributed reporting from New York, and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/us/politics/17mosque.html?hp

U.S. Said to Plan Easing Rules for Travel to Cuba

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is planning to expand opportunities for Americans to travel to Cuba, the latest step aimed at encouraging more contact between people in both countries, while leaving intact the decades-old embargo against the island’s Communist government, according to Congressional and administration officials.

The officials, who asked not to be identified because they had not been authorized to discuss the policy before it was announced, said it was meant to loosen restrictions on academic, religious and cultural groups that were adopted under President George W. Bush, and return to the “people to people” policies followed under President Bill Clinton.

Those policies, officials said, fostered robust exchanges between the United States and Cuba, allowing groups — including universities, sports teams, museums and chambers of commerce — to share expertise as well as life experiences.

Policy analysts said the intended changes would mark a significant shift in Cuba policy. In early 2009, President Obama lifted restrictions on travel and remittances only for Americans with relatives on the island.

Congressional aides cautioned that some administration officials still saw the proposals as too politically volatile to announce until after the coming midterm elections, and they said revisions could still be made.

But others said the policy, which does not need legislative approval, would be announced before Congress returned from its break in mid-September, partly to avoid a political backlash from outspoken groups within the Cuban American lobby — backed by Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey — that oppose any softening in Washington’s position toward Havana.

Those favoring the change said that with a growing number of polls showing that Cuban-Americans’ attitudes toward Cuba had softened as well, the administration did not expect much of a backlash.

“They have made the calculation that if you put a smarter Cuba policy on the table, it will not harm us in the election cycle,” said one Democratic Congressional aide who has been working with the administration on the policy. “That, I think, is what animates this.”

Mr. Menendez, in a statement, objected to the anticipated changes. “This is not the time to ease pressure on the Castro regime,” he said, referring to President Raúl Castro of Cuba, who took office in 2006 after his brother, Fidel, fell ill. Mr. Menendez added that promoting travel would give Havana a “much needed infusion of dollars that will only allow the Castro brothers to extend their reign of oppression.”

In effect, the new policy would expand current channels for travel to Cuba, rather than create new ones. Academic, religious and cultural groups are now allowed to travel under very tight rules. For example, students wanting to study in Cuba are required to stay at least 10 weeks. And only accredited universities can apply for academic visas.

Under the new policy, such restrictions would be eased, officials said. And academic institutions, including research and advocacy groups and museums, would be able to seek licenses for as long as two years.

In addition, the administration is also planning to allow flights to Cuba from more cities than the three — Miami, New York and Los Angeles — currently permitted. And there are proposals, the officials said, to allow all Americans to send remittances or charitable donations to churches, schools and human rights groups in Cuba.

Some analysts said the measures were partly a response to pressure from an unlikely alliance of liberal political groups and conservative business associations — led by Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — who have been pushing Congress to lift all restrictions on travel to Cuba.

Others described it as a nod to President Castro’s stunning decision last month to begin releasing dozens of political prisoners.

“It’s a way of fostering greater opening and exchange without a bruising battle with a much-needed political ally in an election year,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior policy director at the Council of the Americas. “But it can still be legitimately couched as a way of supporting democracy and human rights by allowing independent exchange and thought.”

As with everything concerning Cuba, the new policy seems fraught with complications. President Obama, who came to office promising to open new channels of engagement with Cuba, has so far had limited those new openings to Cuban-Americans, partly because of political concerns, and also because his administration’s attention had been focused on more pressing foreign policy matters, including two wars.

“I don’t think the administration believes this will produce palpable change in the short term,” said Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations. “But it’s a way over the long term to allow Americans and Cubans to have contact, even as their governments continue to hash out a lot of seriously thorny issues.”

High on the United States’ list of issues is winning the release of an American contractor who was detained in Cuba nine months ago when the authorities said they caught him distributing satellite telephones to Jewish dissidents. The contractor, Alan P. Gross, had gone to Cuba without the proper visa as part of longstanding program by the organization Usaid, in which development workers conduct activities aimed at strengthening groups that oppose the Castro government.

“We’re dealing with a relationship that’s so contorted, it would take another 50 years of incremental steps to pull it apart and reassemble it in a constructive way,” said Robert Pastor, a professor of international relations at American University. “Even then, we’re having trouble taking baby steps, when what we need is a giant leap.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/world/americas/17cuba.html?hp