Near Field Communication: Wave to Interact with Devices

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a new, short-range wireless connectivity technology that evolved from a combination of existing contactless identification and interconnection technologies. Products with built-in NFC will dramatically simplify the way consumer devices interact with one another, helping people speed connections, receive and share information and even make fast and secure payments. Communication between two NFC-compatible devices occurs when they are brought within four centimeters of one another: a simple wave or touch can establish an NFC connection.  NFC can be used with a variety of devices, from mobile phones that enable payment or transfer information to digital cameras that send their photos to a TV set with just a touch. The possibilities are endless, and NFC is sure to take the complexities out of today's increasingly sophisticated consumer devices and make them simpler to use.  The Near Field Communication Forum is a non-profit industry association that promotes the use of NFC short-range wireless interaction in consumer electronics, mobile devices and PCs.

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

The first signs of the next shift began to reveal themselves to Howard Rheingold on a spring afternoon in the year 2000. That was when he began to notice people on the streets of Tokyo staring at their mobile phones instead of talking to them. The sight of this behavior, now commonplace in much of the world, triggered a sensation he had experienced a few times before - the instant recognition that a technology is going to change my life in ways one can scarcely imagine. This is expounded in a new book by Howard Rheingold called Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.

Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for cooperation. The impacts of smart mob technology already appear to be both beneficial and destructive, used by some of its earliest adopters to support democracy and by others to coordinate terrorist attacks. The technologies that are beginning to make smart mobs possible are mobile communication devices and pervasive computing - inexpensive microprocessors embedded in everyday objects and environments. Already, governments have fallen, youth subcultures have blossomed from Asia to Scandinavia, new industries have been born and older industries have launched furious counterattacks.

The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities. Their mobile devices connect them with other information devices in the environment as well as with other people's telephones. Dirt-cheap microprocessors embedded in everything from box tops to shoes are beginning to permeate furniture, buildings, neighborhoods, products with invisible intercommunicating smartifacts. When they connect the tangible objects and places of our daily lives with the Internet, handheld communication media mutate into wearable remote control devices for the physical world.

iPointer"! Applications: Historical Properties & Theme Parks, Corporate & College Campuses

Intelligent Spatial Technologies (iST) initial application focus is as a location-based content delivery guide for visitors of amusement and theme parks and historic areas. According to company research, in 2004 there were more than 700 historic sites and theme parks with nearly 350 million visitors and more than $11 billion in revenues. The top 25 most visited amusement parks in USA attracted 125.9 million visitors in 2004.

The two-way flow of useful information is important to the visitors and managers of large concentrated campuses including theme parks, historic areas, corporate and university campuses. This enables management to determine valuable user information such as foot traffic patterns, changes in user interests, facility use and more. The near real time analysis of user data supports better management of onsite resources and use the iPointer"!'s feedback to end-users to improve their experience. For example, management can suggest to attendees that they may wish to move from a ride or attraction with a long wait to nearby attractions with shorter waits.

HP Memory Spot to Revolutionize Your Digital Media Habits

The experimental chip, developed by the "Memory Spot" research team at HP Labs, is a memory device based on CMOS (a widely used, low-power integrated circuit design) and about the size of a grain of rice or smaller (2 mm to 4 mm square), with a built-in antenna. The chips could be embedded in a sheet of paper or stuck to any surface, and could eventually be available in a booklet as self-adhesive dots.  With no equal in terms of its combination of size, memory capacity and data access speed, the tiny chip could be stuck on or embedded in almost any object and make available information and content now found mostly on electronic devices or the Internet.

HP lab researchers have developed the Memory Spot which they believe will revolutionize your digital media habits.  Anyway, it's got many applications, including medical (embedding Memory Spots into patient's wrist-bands with full medical and drug records), business (attaching Memory Spots to paper documents with a full record of all the corrections and additions made to the text) and consumer (stick them on your photo prints to add music, commentary or ambient sound when touched with the right device).

Cythor: research and development of the ultimate mind interface