Starbucks, which started celebrating Christmas with a nice tech piece (the coffee giant launched a mobile device app which animates characters on seasonal red cups in the U.S. and Canada), is planning to continue to enhance consumer experience with technology next year with introduction of it mobile app payment system to the UK market on January 5, 2012. The new service comes on the heels of the recent announcement about the upcoming launch of the My Starbucks Rewards program across the country.

While Target is returning its ‘Christmas Chump’ with a bunch of Black Friday tips and other companies and retailers are offering new great deals over the period of pre-Christmas sales, Seattle’s Best Coffee is supporting employees who have to be at their working places almost 24/7 these days, especially shop staff and delivery men. The brand is inviting retail people along with other employees at work on Black Friday, like police, fire and medical workers, to order a free coffee sample on its Facebook page to get extra energy during the hot shopping season, which this year starts on November 25.

Starbucks is officially kicking off its Christmas campaign by introducing the whole pack of festive offerings. Last week, the brand introduced its Cup Magic application, encouraging consumers in the U.S and Canada to animate the characters on Starbucks Christmas cups by pointing mobile devices on them. Now, the brand has launched the dedicated mini website merry.starbucks.com to help its consumers “make the season merrier with the ones they love”—in the online hub, one can learn more about the company’s winter offerings, get the link to the AR application for iPhone and iPad (it will be also available Android-powered devices soon), create an e-card and send it to family and friends via e-mail or Facebook.

Starbucks is bringing more fun to consumer experience this holiday season by launching its first major augmented reality smartphone app featuring five Starbucks Holiday characters from the brand’s red coffee cups, Christmas Blend bags, in-store and more. This app, developed by Blast Radius, will be launched on November 15—it comes as a hilarious addition to the range of Starbucks’ applications, which includes the mobile payment and Card e-gift apps. It will allow consumers to play with the animated characters (they perform somersault and jumps when get tapped on) and win a prize for activating all of them (so far, the brand doesn’t unveil what exactly it will be).

illy has been blending art and coffee for decades, and one of the most striking results of such a mix is its illy Art Collection, which now includes a plethora of state-of-the art coffee cup sets and cans created by the greatest international artists of our time as well as by aspiring talents. The range, which includes over 70 series of coffee cups by Jeff Koons, Francsis Fod Coppola, Jan Fabre and Tobias Rehberger to name but a few, now welcomes the cups with blastful designs created by Neapolitan artist Francesco Clemente, who now lives in the USA, and a the second can of 2011, designed by Alioum Moussa, who is an eclectic and multidisciplinary artist from Cameroon.

Starbucks is not only launching new social programs and introduces innovative products to its range, but it’s also doing everything possible to provide the consumers with better in-store experience with a range of features. One of them is My Starbucks Rewards initiative, which was started back in 2009 and is already running in the U.S and Canada, now is about to launch in the UK.

For its 40-year long history, Starbucks has released a plethora of products, which were appreciated by millions of consumers, and it seems to be hard to surprise them with something new. But the new blend is truly innovative: yesterday, on October 18, company presented Starbucks Blonde Roast, the lightest coffee roast ever sold within the chain, continuing the brand’s commitment to offer its consumers products that fit their tastes (like it was with the introduction of Starbucks VIA Ready Brew instant coffee). With the new offering, the company also introduces new coffee packaging organized by roast—there’ll be blonde, medium and dark varieties.

In just two weeks, Starbucks has launched three initiatives, aimed at providing support to local citizens and businesses—two in the U.S. last week, and one yesterday in Japan. The international coffee retailer announced the establishment of the Starbucks CUP Fund (Caring Unites Partners) in Japan, created to help affected partners and employees in the country’s recover after the natural disaster, which shook the country on March 11. According to the press release, CUP will provide partners in need with “cash grants based on their needs and situation.”