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World's Smallest RFID Reader Touted
An anonymous reader writes "Innovision Research & Technology, a UK company, has developed a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader that supports Near Field Communication (NFC), a new standard that will allow electronic devices to interact when "touched" together.
The NFC standard is being backed by Nokia, Philips and Sony. It's meant to let users access content and services by simply touching 'smart objects' and connecting devices just by holding them next to each other. Some services include swapping music and buying movie tickets. Once a connection has been established between two NFC-enabled devices, another wireless technology such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth will be used to actually transfer the data. By adding support for NFC, Innovision says it's getting ready for when mobile users will be able to download music tracks by just tapping their device against a poster."
Does anyone else see this as the first step in making RFID tagging of everything acceptable - "See how our RFID system makes your life easier"
As Largo says - "Dude - the government sent us these RFID tags. It says we gotta wear 'em cos they protect us from 3\/1L"
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Amazing - that would be a great transfer rate if we're talking about full songs. Or when they say "tap" do they perhaps mean "holding their devices against a poster for a few minutes."??
No, we're talking more about tapping your device against the poster in order to get the unique rfid. Then you connect to the wifi or bluetooth wireless connection avaliable, and presumably use a custom protocol to request the song by giving the network the rfid.
to business cards! So, if I am at a conference and I talk to someone doing interesting stuff, we can just have the business cards touch and exchange all necessary contact information. Now that would be really easy. If there were a way to wire this thing to your fingertips, you could exchange the information by shaking hands :)
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
Why is the buying movie tickets example always touted with this kind of technology? Does anyone actually spend that much time buying them to make it worthwhile for boffins to spend millions researching ways to make it a few seconds faster?
Confused! (easily)
Of course, you're right. Almost everything is hackable but... most people don't hack - they buy into the technology and money changes hands. Why else is Microsoft still making billions?
Ultimately, this will be targeted toward consumers - and that's where the money will be made. Hackers and indie artists notwithstanding...
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
"Innovision says it's getting ready for when mobile users will be able to download music tracks by just tapping their device against a poster."
This is right up there with "Imagine, as you're walking down the street, restaurants and other service providers can, get this, beam information straight to your mobile phone!!1!" of yesteryear. I can see the marketoid frothing at the mouth and waving his hands. They just don't get it.
No. Bad marketoid. Your idea is stupid and you suck. Nobody will lug around such a device, certainly not for tapping posters with. Nobody will want to buy movie tickets with such a thing. What people might want to do is on their own time and leisure buy tickets, music, etc. over the net from home. I'm not sure at what stage things are in the US, but over here (north europe) I buy tickets online before a show since I can't remember when, takes all of two minutes. So take your rfid crap and stick it. Shit, why don't you just integrate this with the barcode scanning fridge and webcam "You've run out of milk"-schtik that you dreamed up in the 90's, which, incidentally, was obviously a fucking stupid idea to everyone except to marketoids who apparently don't use their fridges.
See, that kind of inventing metaphors for supposedly retarded users is precisely one of the problems with this industry. If the users have a problem, it's not our product that's got piss-poor usability. We just need a more awkward metaphor.
The problem nowadays isn't that the users are retarded, nor that they're monkeys which need colourful visual aids to understand which buttons to use. And the sooner we get rid of that snotty "user=idiot" attitude, the better.
The same users didn't need any metaphor to learn how to use a TV remote control. Even the most uneducated peasant in the middle of nowhere, has no problem using his remote.
But they don't need to touch their remote to the TV and picture some invisible wire stretched between the two. They can very well understand concepts like "you're pushing a button here, and something happens over there."
E.g., the mouse is probably one of the most successful devices of this century. Even your non-techie grand-grandma has no problem using it, with some minimal showing her how.
It doesn't even try to simulate another real-life device, nor to rely on some convoluted metaphor. You don't need to touch it to the screen, nor perform some rituals to apease the gnomes in the monitor that push the cursor around, nor any other retarded metaphor. Again, people can very well understand the concept of "you push it here, and something moves over there."
E.g., take the hyperlink. It's so successful that it's pretty much become the standard interface wherever information is involved. Even the menus on DVDs basically use hyperlinks. Your retarded neighbours who call you to remove Gator off their PC, got it... by clicking on a hyperlink.
And again, it doesn't even try to rely on any metaphor. You don't need to give them a visual of something squeezing through that link and spilling all over their screen. Nor to show them some convoluted animation of a hand flipping through a book to find the page they've requested.
Etc.
All the successful interfaces are, in fact, abstract. They're easy to use for what they are, not because of needing mind-twisting visual metaphors to understand them.
I.e., while I do think that this use of RFID does bring a usability improvement, it will _not_ be because of convoluted mental acrobatics to imagine an invisible wire. It will be because the act of touching two things together is simple and intuitive, in and by itself. (Or at least easier than generating and distributing WEP keys.) You can tell anyone "just tap it to a poster to get a sample song", and rest assured that they'll understand it very well as such.
These convoluted visual metaphors aren't just unneeded, they create more problems and questions that they solve. E.g., if you tell someone to visualize an invisible wire, you just give them reason to ask wire-related questions. E.g., "what if someone walks through my invisible wire?"
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This seems more of a novelty function than something useful. I can see this technology having a few cool uses, but downloading media by tapping CDs and posters isn't it. Remember 5 years ago when "In the future, you'll be able to buy drinks by pointing your cell phone at a soda machine, or using your Java Ring!"
If I want to buy music digitally, why the crap would I want to put pants on and go to the mall? So I can tap my player against a CD and buy music the super-cool new way? I don't know about the rest of you, but for me a primary advantage of buying digital media is the fact that I don't have to go anywhere.
This could make for some hilarious ways to buy porn...
I must be missing something here... Why not just have bluetooth devices to the whole process? Surely the point of RFID tags is that they are cheap and can be spread, virus-like, through the known multi-verse. But if you have to have a transmitter for the transfer process anyway, why not just do it all through the bluetooth or wi-fi in the first place..?
-- IANAL, BIPOOTV
And they'll be charging $2 per song right? I somehow doubt it.
That then begs the question, why bother? Why not use something like itunes?
It sure sounds cool to say "you can buy songs just by tapping your mobile onto a poster" but there are things to think about:
* DRM - am I allowed to make unlimited copies? How about 1 so I don't have to keep the song on my mobile phone?
* Cost - No more CDs means the price goes down, right? Most likely not. They'll probably charge however much singles cost per download. At least whilever the song is new, they might bring it down to a more reasonible price afterwards.... maybe.
Itunes == good idea
Poster != good idea
They use the same principles, but I just can't see this poster idea being quite as good as itunes. If it is priced around the same as itunes and your allowed a reasonable amount of copies, then whoever uses it could be a serious competitor to itunes. Otherwise, forget about it.
This technology isn't a download technology, it's an ID technology. It doesn't download a 3mb song in the time it takes you to tap a poster, it just transfers a UUID or similar identifying set of bits. It doesn't automatically download anything, you'd have to set your receiver to start looking for it.
Here's how it would work. You're in a music store and you want to "grab" a demo of a song. You tell your PDA/IPOD thingie to grab a song, then tap it on the appropriate poster. The IPOD receives a UUID, connects via WIFI or Bluetooth to a song server and starts to receive the music. It could quite readly play such a song as soon as it starts to receive it, since WIFI speeds are way above playing bit rate these days.
There's no magic here, except for the ability for an "RFID reception area" to be in the shape of a poster with printing on it, as opposed to an invisible ranged sphere.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.