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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."
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)
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...