Get Ready For the High-tech Beach

coondoggie writes "Ocean City, New Jersey is a nice, family-oriented beach that will apparently soon be the high-tech model for seashore lovers and now perhaps geeks everywhere. The city has on its plate a $3 million plan for myriad public services and Internet access using radio-frequency identification chips (RFID) and Wi-Fi wireless technology. A wireless network will let Ocean City expand economic development and control the cost of local services. Wireless allows the City to save on cell phone usage, T-1 lines, and it adds efficiency. The city is looking to replace its ubiquitous but mostly annoying beach tags — which indicate you paid to get on the beach $5 per day, $10 for a week, or $20 for the whole summer — with wristbands that contain an RFID chip. Yet another cool feature of the high-tech beach will be the ability to track beachgoers — an application that is being touted by parents."

Comments

Re:Hmm...

[Aladrin]

I was wondering how long that post would take to appear.

Unfortunately, I have to agree... -sigh- While this would be great to find your children, should they be unruly or kidnapped, nobody else has a use for this. And the kids would rip it off if they didn't want to be tracked (they're unruly) and the kidnapper would rip it off, too. It's no better than the slips of paper, and probably quite a bit more expensive to implement -and- maintain.

So who is it better for? People that want to track you. That's it. You can't very well throw anyone out that managed to break theirs (on purpose or not) as they paid their money and can't be held accountable for the technology failing.

Is this article meant to be flamebait?

[Glowing Fish]

Since there is a big crowd of Slashdotters who are reasonable luddite-like, and who rightfully decry the unnecessary adding of technology to everything, I am guessing that an article suggesting that what the majestic natural experience of ocean and land needs is RFID tags was perhaps posted knowing that it would cause scorn and derision.

Which doesn't mean I am not going to fall for the bait.

Man, is this a stupid idea OR WHAT?

One thing beaches do need (and this aint it)

[QuantumG]

I grew up going to the beach. Some of my earliest memories are of fun days at the beach. One thing I've never seen in the last 30 years was public lockers. It just seems like such an obvious thing to me. You go to the beach, you can't swim with your wallet in your pocket. So where do you put it? Under your towel and hope no-one steals it? Pretty much. I asked a friend who is a lifesaver once if he'd ever seen lockers available. He had, but it's pretty rare. Apparently the most common excuse is that the lockers would attract thieves. That's, umm, interesting logic.