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RFID: The Next Internet?
An anonymous reader writes "RFID Journal has an artricle about how an open source foundation is creating a new Internet based on RFID tags. 'The founders [RadioActive Foundation] liken the EPCglobal Network as a whole to the Internet, with RFID tags acting as URLs, and the tags' associated data being the Web site for that tag . The software the foundation develops, Michael Mealling adds, will act similarly to an Internet search engine. With Discovery Service software, for example, companies will be able to search for an RFID tag without requiring connected links between each point of the tag's travels.' Pretty neat concept, probably decades away."
Hasn't this sort of thing been tried before and failed miserably?
they want their CueCat back.
You won't even know you're using it!
Now they'll be able to track where our INTERNETS are! From now on, I'm wrapping my internets in tinfoil.
Anyone got millions of miles of tinfoil I could borrow? Getting the first one wrapped is going to take a while.
That green slime had it coming.
This would be an excellent development for people like FedEx, UPS, big wharehouse companies, etc. The only thing I see is that it is a two edged sword. First, it wouldn't be totally necessary in companies, as you could just have a database app. for this. Secondly, would you want your competitor to have your RFID database of products? I wouldn't think so.
... who thought of this?
will it finally solve missing socks phenomenon?
839*929
So I will be able to google for my keys? I always seem to misplace them...
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
You mean we'll be able to slashdot an actual RFID tag?
Cool.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Good name, 'cause from what I'm getting, it sounds like something that I don't want to touch with a ten foot pole.
Could someone explain exactly what they mean by, "[C]ompanies will be able to search for an RFID tag without requiring connected links between each point of the tag's travels." That sounds ludicrously ominous to me. Are we talking about tracking items with RFID tags, and are talking about being able to track them once they've left the store?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Seems to me that the the two most obvious uses for this would be for blind people and for in-store product information.
If your vision-impared, it would be an amazing thing to carry around a talking box that can read signs and maps to you.
For product "tool tips", you could walk around your local best buy with a small device that could scan CD's and DVD's and hot-link to IMDB reviews or short trailors and song samples.
:::: the insomniac's digest
"companies will be able to search for an RFID tag without requiring connected links between each point of the tag's travels. "
How do you make sure you connect to the RIGHT RFID tag? Just because a tag has a certain ID does not make it the right one. They need to really address this right now imo.
Will it be a new internet:
rfid:127.0.0.1
a new protocol:
rfid://127.0.0.1
or another flavor of what already exists?
http://rfid.slashdot.org
The article contained no solid information!
How would this work? Would workers travel from computer to computer with RFID tags full of data?
I suggest someone give these people a bag of clues and a link to the documention on sending TCP/IP via carrier pigeons.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
distributed communication an internet does not make distributed communication does not an internet make distributed communication not an internet does make an internet does not distributed communication make all work and no no play does jack a dull boy make sigh.
God Curse America.
Don't they mean, A New Website on a private network, that uses Cuecat/AOL "keyword" links? Wouldn't they have been better off just making a nice web page and have the rfid code load up the revelant web data?
This sounds like the work of.. Marketing!
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Sure, you could google for your keys and it would tell you the last place it saw them...
"Your keys are at the safeway on Main street"
RFID can't "displace" or become "the next internet" anymore than barcodes can. RFID tags have no computation ability, no networking capabilities...
;^)
RFID tags, at the lowest level emit a pre-programmed number when activated by RF energy (the resonate, if you will).
There is a Dummies Guide on RFID - I expect it to be a big seller among the tin foil hat crowd
Ken
I finally got all my bookmarks organized... Now I just have to find a big damn key-ring to put them on.
Yeah, it will be the next Internet - because there is nothing else on the Internet except for web content - and static web content, for that matter. Things like email, IMs, news, ftp, BitTorrent and so on don't exist, and dynamic websites don't exist, either.
Since when does having addressable content mean something's gonna be the next Internet? It sounds more like a networked hash to me.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
i'll be able to "read" all the "pages" of everyone within a 25-foot radius of me w/o being hampered by those 25-foot+ RFID spammers. man am i glad everything i'd like to access on a network is w/i walking distance.
RFID is already on its way to becoming the next Internet - a name that is applied to anything technical that people don't understand. Just like web==internet in many people's minds, RFID is slowly becoming whatever people want it to be. For example, we have the "RFID-powered mouse" that appeared here a week or two ago, the "RFID is the Internet" story here, and the guy I overheard in downtown Chicago in March trying to impress his girlfriend saying "Yeah, I saw a thing on the Internet where people hooked the light switches in a building up to RFID tags and could turn the lights on and off, and were able to play Tetris on the side of the building."
The world is becoming a scary place full of people who know just enough words to be dangerous.
Posted from the wireless couch.
This sounds like a press release from the .com glory days . . . mindless banter that uses some fancy buzzwords (Internet, RFID, URLs, Website) in hopes that unsuspecting folks won't realize that this analogy is poor at best, blatantly wrong at worst.
I could use the same analogy for my house. The house is the internet, each power outlet is a URL and each appliance's use of electrical current is the associated data for that website. Now with a bunch of multimeters, I have an "internet."
Analogies in the hands on the misinformed are a very dangerous thing.
This actually will be an EXCELLENT development if it gains widespread usage, assuming it is distributed over the whole market. The reason being is that you could finally, and knowingly, know for sure that a product that you are about to buy over the internet is 100% for sure in stock. You could also know exactly where and when it was delivered to the wharehoue, and could know the exact time it left to be shipped. It would be like the Tracking number for many of the shipping companies out there, except it would be for every product in existance that had an RFID tag.
Oh, and BTW, EPC2 is less open than one may think. Last time I checked, the EPC2 (unlike EPC1) spec was closed to EPC consortium members only. You will not be able to write software for EPC2 platform unless you have some good $ behind you. So much for free and open. Please correct me if I am wrong, as I really would like to be.
Ok, I've run out of ideas. Why don't we return to the ACTUAL TOPIC OF THE FUCKING THREAD???
You dont need to replace "the internet" to add a new use, all uses can share the network, like actually the web, the news, the spam-distribution-system and others share the internet resource.
-Woof woof woof!
has RFID been it's own category?
Dammit, people, learn the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web! The World Wide Web is a collection of servers that serve up content such as web pages on demand. The Internet is a stupid network of networks that does nothing more than route packets. If this system does anything more than route packets, if it houses any information whatsoever, it is analogous to the World Wide Web, not the Internet!
Whenever one of my sock is missing after the laundry, the first place I look is in my pockets and stuck to the inside of trouser legs and shirt sleeves. My evil washing machine keeps trying to hide them, but it has only so many places to do it.
After reading the not-so-very-detailed article (not surprising since it's little more than concept phase right now), they're only 'likening' this technology to the Internet.
My interpretation has this being most useful on an INTRAnet where a company can call up an RFID that may have various category tags that would allow them to see that there are only 18 on the shelf, 42 on order, and 235 other products that meet the same criteria that are readily available.
I know a guy who works in IBM's Global Services (consulting) group...they're pushing RFID like it's the second coming. In many ways I think it can be seen as the next barcode, only better.
Because we've been dealing with barcodes for years and years, we can now right some wrongs that manufacturers and their customers may feel exist in the simple barcode...they can go a long way towards getting the job done right the first time (or at least 'right' as far as today's standards are concerned).
The accessibility thing for vision impared customers at a store is a clever idea too - however I don't think this product is going to be end-consumer driven at first.
What if folks that want to use RFID tags simply put the information on a publicly available web page (which would include the entire RFID response string in clear text), and wait for google to scan the pages. You could then simply submit a google search for the exact RFID response string, then parse the page to get the information you want...
How is what this vendor is describing any different? RFID tags have identifiable sub-fields, but by definition each is unique (like MAC addresses)...
Ken
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but there is no point in creating a 'New Internet' if it's just as easy to give each damn RFID tag an IP address. I shouldn't have to waste time translating between networks, if I ping an IP it should reply be it a server, an RFID tag, a mobile phone, a watch...
Remember URLs? Ever heard of the concept of URIs? A 'name' could be given to a tag which resolves just like a domain name.
Come on people, we don't need new networks. We need IPv6 on the one we've got, and hook more devices onto that.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
http://vunct.com/~jasonalter/googlekeys.jpg
Anyone know what's up with Wheels of Zeus?
For those trying to understand the EPCglobal Network from those media reports here's the easy primer:
The EPCglobal Network is just a set of usage conventions for existing Internet standards and infrastructure for accessing data about the Electronic Product Code (EPC). RFID tags that adhere to the EPCglobal standards for tag encoding contain EPCs. The standard bar code that's been in use for decades is a degenerative case of an EPC.
The usage conventions include a way of turning that EPC into a domain-name (in much the same way that the ENUM standard provides a way of turning a telephone number into a domain-name). From that point on its really just TCP/IP, HTTP, XML, Web Services, and standard security mechanisms we all know and work with every day.
Yes, there is a large amount of incorrect terminology in that article. Anyone that has talked to a reporter about technical stuff knows that there's no telling what you're going to get on the other end. Suffice it to say, this isn't QueCat, it isn't a "new Internet", and it isn't about reading RFID tags from a distance. The stuff the Foundation is building is useful even if RFID tags were never deployed since it also works with bar codes.
to rehabilitate and/or obfuscate what RFID is all about.
Weve seen the RFID mouse (which was RF, but no ID). Ive read of RFID pebbles (RF bugs, maybe some mesh, but no ID). Etc etc.
Isnt it strange that all these 'RFID' stories are coming out at the same time, and are 'broadening' the defenition of RFID beyond its accepted meaning, to include much less threatening uses, all of which have nothing to do with ID.
Yes my friends, RFID is here to stay, but not because its a way of tracking the products you own throughout their entire lifespan, but because its some amazingly usefull and hapopy-freindly stuff - it can do just about anything - its the internet - its a bug - its wireless radio - children love it - you mum loves it - as used in hospitals - cures cancer too.
Fucking PR machines. Should not be recognised as a legitimate business expense.
That's how the terrorists win!!
Support the Nuclear option: 2056 bit
uniting the internet one dollar at a time
Smile.
wouldn't this mean that hackers would be able to hack into your house and do things like make your microwave explode or your dishwasher start?
Brian
We all know this is the decisive factor. Ask the makers of WWW and VHS.
The privacy ramifications of this are frightening. RFID is already widely used in product storeage, it makes warehousing far easier and more streamlined. The problem is that the tags arent always deactivated once the product has been purchased. If this turns into a gigantic linked network, consider the possibilities. Any hacker worth his salt could dial in and figure out what you purchased, where its being kept... any number of things. It would make tracking your spending habits simplistic. more on RFID: http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/RFID/Metro_Rhe inberg.php
To err is human, to really foul up requires a computer
Most RFID tags end up being sent to the land fills, so I guess the waste management companies now can rename themselves to RFIDSPs? Radio Frequencry Identifier Service Providers... FREE HOSTING!
I would prefer to just use
traceroute my.car.keys
in a bash shell.
That way I don't have to worry about google knowing which person I slept with last night.
Now how am I supposed to microwave the entire Internet?
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
The RFID community is an overrated and much overhyped technology, theve been trying to drum of support by any means necessary for 20 years and to little avail. The technology behind it stinks when it comes to actual applications, just look at the efforts trying to standardize it, aka walmart. Its been in development for so long and will continue to be in the dev stage for years to come, but that won't prevent anyone from trying to make money with it because the r+d costs are so high.
Until they have porn, it's not an internet.
Linux and Free Software are not perfect.
RFID is not the next Internet. The Internet was something that businesses didn't appreciate that turned into a massive platform that allowed leaps and bounds in technology development and service delivery. The Internet did not grow explosively because of marketing. The Internet grew explosively because it created a new (useful) ecosystem that had never existed before.
RFID is the next XML. XML is a technology (do I ever hate that word) with limited but useful business applicability. It is format for building other things, things which are useful. It also has certain limited, but widespread benefits to businesses (all those people who are unhappily trying to fit their various archaic databases together now have some glue to do so). As a result, every businessperson in the world has been inundated with content about XML being a vital, essential business technology for years. RFID is useful for certain tasks. It is also very overhyped, its limitations are rarely appreciated, and while theoretically interesting and useful systems can be built with it, it's not all that interesting on its own. Pretty much like XML.
I remember all the "XML-enabled" stuff, the bad books about XML, the heavy use of the term "XML technology", and the filling in of the "XML checkbox" on products that had no direct benefit from filling in that checkbox other than making some purchaser happy who vaguely understood some article he read about XML. It's going to happen, all over again, with RFID. We now have that idiotically-termed "RFID-powered mouse" as a harbringer.
Man, I'm going to learn to hate the word over the next few years.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
You can care where products you've already shipped are for a number of reasons. Here are two:
(1) Proof of delivery: in the same way that RFID makes 'cycle count' so much easier, it makes proof of delivery a snap. Instead of arguing over whether 38 or 40 boxes arrived, you know which boxes arrived.
(2) Reverse logistics. If you need to recall something, or if you want to validate that a return is on its way, you can tell where it is in the downstream supply chain, and validate that it's coming back.