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."

Comments

As an extra space saving...

[gowen]

... I'm having mine built right in to my tinfoil hat. That'll stop the CIA/NSA/MI6/CI5/Walmart from spying on me as I carry out my top level, high security, deeply private but basically non-existent personal life.

Re:As an extra space saving...

[Big Nothing]

"As an extra space saving I'm having mine built right in to my tinfoil hat. That'll stop the CIA/NSA/MI6/CI5/Walmart from spying on me as I carry out my top level, high security, deeply private but basically non-existent personal life."

Yeah, but we can still spy on you

- FBI

oh suuure..

[JTMON]

"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."

and the RIAA is getting ready to sue them!

Re:the world's smallest RFID

[Concerned Onlooker]

I wonder how sensitive these things will really become. Will we accidentally transfer things if we bump into someone if we've left it on (e.g. Palm receive mode)?

Excuse me, I have to get the phone....

The future is here

[Janosh]

"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 sci-fi. And i even think RIAA will be able to get money from this. (don't know if i like that)

So it's fast then is it?

[Ratface]

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."

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."??

Lots of useful applications

[Stuwee]

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

Imagine also walking into a high street music shop with your MP3 player in hand where all of their CDs are embedded with rfid tags. Tap your MP3 player against a CD case to get the rfid tag, then your MP3 player connects to the store's wifi network and requests a sample of the album using the rfid tag.

Limit it to a couple of samples per person per unit time to avoid abuse, and you've got yourself a very powerful means of marketing CDs.

The tap initiates the transfer

[davidmb]

Once the tap against the poster has been registered, the transfer takes place via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. So it could take seconds or minutes, it doesn't matter if you stay close enough to the transmitter. It may even appear to the user that the tap transfered the song instantaneously.

This would make a great addition

[InternationalCow]

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 :)

Re:This would make a great addition

[horza]

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 :)

That's been around for ages.

Phillip.

Re:This would make a great addition

[comet_11]

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.

Yeah, or, and follow me on this one 'cause it's a little crazy and out-there, you could write all the contact information on the business card, and then you could give them the card, and they instantly have all the information.

What an idea... *rushes off to the patent office*

Movie tickets?

[JMJ]

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)

Re:Movie tickets?

[bhima]

The last time I was in the US, I went to see a movie. They had 5 Credit/Debit card kiosks and 3 cashiers available for customer use. There were about 100 people in line for the cashiers and less the 5 in line for kiosks. What makes anyone thing people will actually use the this technology?

Re:Movie tickets?

[BiggerIsBetter]

I don't think they're trying to sell the idea to the public. They're selling it to people who want to extract money from the public, and the benefit is not time savings but lower running costs (read, less staff). I'd say it's aimed at large retailers and mass media.

Re:New geek pickup lines coming as a result of thi

[Anonymous Coward]

Or here's one from OOP: Hey baby, wanna encapsulate
my member?

Elegant solution to 802.11 security

[domQ]

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.
This idea could solve the wireless security problems in a really secure and convenient way (if only the standards folks can get the crypto right this time :-/ ): exchange symmetric keys over NFC, then do encrypted 802.11 or Bluetooth. This gets rid of passwords (which are either difficult to remember, easy to guess, or both), is as secure as wire (requires physical access to the 802.11 hub to build a connection) and provides a nice security metaphor to non tech-savvy people: by touching the two devices together, one creates a "virtual wire" between them that can be "stretched" up to the maximal range of the wireless link.

Re:Elegant solution to 802.11 security

[Moraelin]

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?"

Dyslexia

[Fizzl]

I could have sworn it said:
Invasion Research & Technology(...) when I glanced on the blurb for the first time.

BANG BANG BANG, OW! That hurt.

[Lotharjade]

Bang your head against a soda machine to get a coke. If it doesn't work, keep banging!!!

Oh boy

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Oh boy

[laigle]

Know what I don't get about the movie ticket idea? What the hell is the big problem with buying movie tickets conventionally? I mean, do they honestly believe people are so sheeplike they'll impulse buy tickets just because they walk past a poster?

Okay, dumb question.

But seriously, it's not like you can watch the movie at the poster. You have to go to the theater, where they sell the tickets anyways. So instead of buying some universal payment laptop and worrying about who has a "smart device" skimmer in their briefcase, why not just, I don't know, LEAVE THE FRIGGIN HOUSE FIVE MINUTES EARLIER AND BUY THE TICKET WHEN YOU GET THERE?!?!?! Or if you really have to involve futuristic technology in the process, buy the tickets online as above. It's not like there's been some huge gap in our purchasing ability and we were crying out for the ability to buy random crap in more convoluted ways.

Novelty

[Luciq]

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...

Easy on the language!!!

[Illserve]

This bit here:

"access content and services by simply touching 'smart objects' and connecting devices just by holding them next to each other"

reads like erotica to the average /.er

Re:why not just use IR?

[rm007]

IR is already in widespread use, supported by many phones and most PDAs, and very cheap.

Very cheap - good point. And something not mentioned in the article. What would really drive the adoption of RFID - and make available the advantages of the technology that are mentioned elsewhere (i.e. RFID tags would be much cheaper and smaller.) would be announcement of the worlds CHEAPEST RFID reader. That would be news. Sure, the price of anything will come down with volume, and volume comes with widespread adoption, but to speed up the rate at which this technology gets adopted - and have super-small readers embedded in all kinds of devices - not only do the tags have to come down in cost, but the readers will have to be cheaper too. Is there something about how they put this together that will, all other things being equal, give this a cost advantage over other ways of putting readers together?

Oh, and to be able to compare, does anyone know anything about the cost of a typical IR reader of the type used in phones, PDAs and laptops? How about the cost of other RFID readers? While I am sure that device manufacturers are assuming that the costs will be or become equal, any idea as to when this might realistically happen?

Re:Althought it's a good idea -

[Uzik2]

You can misuse anything. Chemistry and medicine are responsible for both poisons and medicines. It's up to us to see they're used wisely. Are we going to be frightened of the future and hide in the sand?

I think y'all are missing something here.

[MythoBeast]

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.