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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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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?
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.