To enter, simply tell one of your friends to read CrunchGear and tell them to comment introducing themselves to the site. When they comment, you need to reply to their original comment. We’ll pick 5 pairs of winners – one goes to the new reader and one goes to the person who told them about CrunchGear. You can invite more than one person but you have to comment after each new person. You can also, feasibly, put a fake name so you get two Poken for yourself but you won’t because you’re not a douche.

See below for an example in comments.

We’ll close this contest on noon Monday. Special thanks to Start Poken to and their new service, Pokenize, a B2B customizing service that helps companies extend their social reach by connecting with Poken users.

From their English-language handout:

• When the elderly come to need care, the elderly themselves and their family take big burden.
• It is important to prevent the elderly from coming to be cared.
• We pay attention to the Living Willingness of the elderly.
• Living Willingness of the elderly is judged from daily actions which require efforts to do like bed making or cleaning.
• We check “HOW” the elderly do the action not “WHAT” the elderly do.
• For example, if living willingness is high, the elderly move obstacles such as chairs to clean every place of the room.

The theory is that if you can keep tabs on how a person performs day-to-day tasks — like, are they making a real effort to keep their house clean, or are they just going through the motions? — you can have a better idea of how healthy (physically and emotionally) that person is. Not a bad idea, even if it does sound a little invasive.

I can’t help but think of my own grandmother as I reflect on this use of technology. When my grandmother became less steady on her feet, we purchased for her a wheeled walker, as well as one of those four-footed walking canes. The former was intended to be used out of the house, while the latter was intended for her to use when inside her own home. We impressed upon her the importance of using the cane for safety sake, and she assured us that she’d keep it with her at all times at home.

I stopped over to check on her one afternoon. I knocked on her door, and peered inside the glass window of her front door to see her watching TV on her couch. She smiled at me, and rose slowly to come to the door. Sure enough, her cane was right there by the couch. I watched, in mixed horror and amusement, as she gripped the cane handle and proceeded to drag it behind her as she walked to the door! She was doing what we had asked — keeping the cane close to her — even though she wasn’t doing what we had really expected of her.

I wonder how something like the Tagged World Project might similarly miss the point…

Now to be fair, I’m bifold guy. I know some people prefer a long checkbook style wallet, or carry a trifold, but I’ve always been a fan of the bifold style. My last wallet, a leather bifold that’s been with me through two states, four jobs, and five moves finally started to wear to the point that I couldn’t use it any more. I was starting to panic.

Then, the Flipside wallet showed up. After figuring out how to open it for the first time, I was surprised by the quality of the design. The wallet is made from an industrial plastic, similar to the type used in pelican cases. It opens much like a flip phone, with one side intended for credit cards, ID, and things of that nature, and the other side has a clear plastic holder for cash. There’s a center divider that provides additional storage for credit cards on the right side, and a space for a photograph on the left. I did attempt to put my ID in the photograph slot, though my drivers license was obviously too thick to fit. I wouldn’t advise doing it.

The case is spring loaded, and when you move the latch to open it, it will open smoothly and quickly. The hinge is not just plastic however, there is an aluminum bar that looks like it would outlast the plastic. The metal plates inside are held together with tiny aluminum screws. This implies the possibility that if you were to break a side or a retaining clip, you might be able to order a replacement.

The Good: It’s built to last, the aluminum plates will protect you from RFID hacking (remember, those Real IDs are coming in 2010), and it’s small enough that you could put it in your back pocket, but be aware that its stiffness really only qualifies it for your front or jacket pocket. Also, how many other wallets offer a one year warranty?

The Bad: They are a little expensive at $39.95. Also, the one I was sent to review was the color “Orange Crush” and it’s horrible. If you are fixated on putting your wallet in your back pocket, this might not be for you.

Bottom Line: While this is a product that we made fun of in the past (what haven’t we made fun of) it’s actually not bad. A plastic wallet that you carry in your front pocket might not be for everyone, but it is for me. Just not in that awful safety orange color.

Right.

Anyway, the Pulse costs $34.95 and is available at StartPoken.com.

I played with the older Poken a while back and if you have lots of friends with Poken, they’re a good idea. Sadly, if you and your friends have one you can only trade with them once. So once you’ve blown your Poken wad, you’re kind of stuck.

So this is a weird thing. It’s kind of like an electronic camp counselor and it’s called Swinxs. Kids wear RFID bracelets and then the box tells you to do stuff like run around and play hide and seek. You check in with the box by moving your RFID band near the box.

There are 25 games so far, most of which involve running around and then coming back to the box for further instructions. Parents can also make their own games including, presumably, my Dad’s old favorites, Go to the Store and Get Me Some Beer and This Is What You Get When You Spill Paint in the Garage.

The box will cost $150 and it’s on Amazon right now. We’ll have a full review shortly because I totally want to see how this thing works in real life.

Even though virtually unknown in the US or Europe, Sony’s Felica technology, mainly materialized in the form of a contactless RFID smart card or a chip built into cell phones), is used for electronic payment by millions of people on a daily basis. Now users in Japan (one of the main markets apart from Hong Kong and Singapore) get to use it for other things (and on computers), too.

Tapping a Felica card or a Felica-powered phone on a reader built into your notebook or desktop PC (see picture) to instantly pay for stuff you buy on the web without using a credit card has been possible for years now. There are also external USB FeliCa PC reader/writers and even Felica-compatible TV remote controls on the market that let you do the same thing, at least in Japan.

But now Sony has expanded this technology by developing a system called Felica Launcher that triggers the launch of websites or software just by scanning data stored on a Felica card. Sony says swiping a blood pressure cuff (with a built-in Felica chip), for example, is enough to make the PC load a special piece of software that could record information on your health directly through the device.

The company plans to make the Felica Launcher available to other firms this fall and says it currently prepares Felica-related software, which will be available for end users for free.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

All in all it looks like a pretty awesome solution for a small business. Effortless security, plenty of space, no noise. Now for the bad news. First, it costs $500. Yeah, I know — 2TB normally costs about half that. Second, Freecom is a mostly European outfit, so it’d be difficult to get anyway. And the last bad news is… they’re sold out.

Still, it’s an awesome little drive. I’ll love it from afar.

[via Gadget Review and EverythingUSB]

Take a virtual trip on a Russian sub
Anvil Motion cabinets: crazy cool and crazy expensive
Review: LaCie 1TB Rugged XL external hard drive
OMG! DIY Drumsticks!
Review: Touchatag RFID System

I got my first real RFID sensing smartcard reader
Bought it on the Internet
Coded ’til my fingers bled
It was summer of ‘69

I just experienced that rush with the Touchatag and I’m ready to shout it from the rooftops: “Look out, world! I am using near-field technology to trigger actions on my Mac or PC using simple, web-based software and a small piece of fairly well-made hardware.”

Touchatag is an RFID and QR system that uses a web-based client to interact with your PC. The starter package with a reader and ten tags costs $39.95 and tags cost $24.95 for a pack of 25. 500 tags cost $474.95 but what the heck do you need 500 for?

When you bring the tags close to the reader it senses their unique ID and then triggers an action. Actions include sending an email, making a Skype call or, in the case of this clever app, changing the song on your media player. You can also use a Nokia 6212 NFC phone, essentially a phone with near field transmission built-in as well as use QR codes on the iPhone or Blackberry.The QR system isn’t nearly as compelling as the RFID system, though, so it’s not worth much of a look.

Obviously the coolest application is the RFID interaction. By simply waving a card or object in front of your PC you can shut everything down or trigger an action. Want to assign a houseplant to call your Mom? Use the Skype app. Want to open our bank’s website with a swipe of your hand? Easy peasy. I think the ultimate solution would be to set your co-worker’s computer to shut down whenever they brought coffee near the keyboard.

I would consider this a toy right now, however. I’m not sure it’s robust enough to run, say, a health-club membership system or a security system for an office. However, if you want folks to swipe their RFID cards when they come into an office, for example, you could feasibly use this as a makeshift solution. I’ve created a few triggers and you could feasibly add this to a PC close to the front door and sense when junior has come back from his or her barbarian warfare practice. The possibilities, as they say, are limited by the time and effort you choose to put into this kit.
Bottom Line
RFID is spooky action at a distance. It’s great fun and with a little tinkering I’m sure you nerds could figure something out. Let me know if you have any special RFID solutions you’ve created.

Speaking at Qualcomm’s Smart Services Leadership Summit, Dr. Eric Topol’s introductory presentation is focused on the role of wireless devices in the medical field. Earlier this year at WWDC, Apple demoed the capabilities and value of the iPhone to the medical community for monitoring purposes. There are various medical devices in the works and already out on the market that could lend to better monitoring of one’s health and the iPhone appears to be the center of much of the attention.

Corventis recently received FDA approval for the PiiX heart rate monitor that’s an unobtrusive, water-resistant device that collects and transmits the wearer’s physiological information. Said physiological info includes: respiratory rate, BioConductance, daily activity level, heart rate variability and heart rate. The PiiX will begin testing via the Gary and Mary West Wireless Hospital this year.

Other devices in the works include the Triage Wireless wrist worn vital monitoring system, Proteus’s RFID monitoring pills, the iShoe project out of MIT and other various projects leveraging wireless technology to help better the lives of everyone.

At the center of it all seems to be the iPhone. It is, after all, the most viable mobile platform to relay data en masse. Perhaps the iPhone really is the end all of the mobile industry. One day soon we’ll all be wearing some monitoring tag that relays every facet of our body to our mobile device. Creepy, huh?

This AP story is a good summary of what’s been going on in the chipped ID world over the last couple years. If you’ve gotten a passport recently, or a driver’s license in certain states, chances are you’ve got RFID in there just waiting to beam its information to anyone who’s got $100 in easily-obtainable electronics.

Oh God, what can we do?! Well, it’s against the law to disable the RFID in any government-issued ID, so don’t you go off and put it in a microwave or something. But passports get a lot of use and sometimes accidents happen, like maybe you dropped your luggage on it? Or maybe you dropped a hammer on it, over and over?

Carlos Deleon first told you about the FlipSide back in January and the fine folks from the revolutionary wallet company have informed us that they’ve gone 2.0. The RFID blocking wallet is now smaller, thinner and supposedly ‘smarter’ than the first generation FlipSide.

The following improvements were made from the 1.0 to 2.0. It’s now 5/8-inch thick (what it was before, I don’t know), has a redesigned button and locking mechanism, improved card slots (stronger and grippier, but with more room for finger space, says FS), and it comes in a bright “look at me” orange color. At least the price dropped down to $40.

FlipSide [FlipSide]

In theory and in practice this is great. It ensures your tween doesn’t connect with creeps like me. Kids can only connect with friends that have their private key – no one else exists in the site except for Sabrina Circle, the Tom of this candy-pink MySpace.

The environment lives entirely in flash and you can publish photos and diary entries to your page as well as play games – there are only two right now – with your friends and relations. It also has a great theme song:

Download audio file (ss.mp3)

That’s pretty much it. You plug in the USB key, share your key with friends, and rock out. The physical key costs $19.99 while a dual-key BFF pack costs $29.99. A voice chat headset add-on costs $14.99. They are available at Justice stores nationwide.

The keys are kind of like Poken without the RFID part.

Maybe I’m not the best judge of social networks aimed at tweens but I think this would be a great solution for 8 to 12 year olds. My daughter is a little small to use this – she’s 6 months – but I’d rather she mess around on this rather than risk the hell demons that populate popular social networking sites like Orkut.

RFID technology seems to be on the rise lately. After Mitsubishi announced a super-efficient tag reader last month and NEC said it was able to dramatically cut production costs for RFID two weeks ago, it’s now Hitachi’s turn: The company has announced today that it has developed the world’s smallest RFID chip.

Hitachi claims their chip measures only 0.075×0.075mm, 80% smaller than the company’s smallest RFID chip available now. The new chip is made by observing how human cells are worked with in medicine. In the production process, the new chips are first floated in a liquid solution, picked up individually using a pipette and then transferred on to a substrate.

Hitachi says the new chips are cheaper to produce than the current models of the company, which cost slightly more than 10 cents per unit.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

In your own words, what exactly is a JAGTAG?

It was born out of our agency (which I thought you might appreciate). Basically in early 2006 we first got exposed to 2D barcodes. We were trying to figure out how we could help a newspaper company attach their physical paper to their online content and that’s the first time we ever discovered that ‘wow, there’s this cool new medium coming to the United States in which the brand can use their own assets and turn their own packaging and product and advertising and point of sale into their own medium instead of having to give their money to other media companies.’ We were really big in utility marketing and consumer requested stuff instead of ‘push’ and we saw those things together and thought ‘man, this category of being able to make every advertisers asset an on-demand media channel is going to be the biggest thing to happen, for brands, since the internet.’ We got pretty hopped up about it and as we looked more at the market, we just felt like, in the United States specifically, that an application based system that had to be downloaded prior to use was not going to be a good short-term solution for brands.

We were worried that [having to download a QR code reading application] would create negative brand engagement and there wouldn’t be any reach. So we thought, ‘hmmm what if we could eliminate that barrier.’ We started realizing that MMS was coming soon and if we created the world’s first MMS enabled 2D bar code solution and could make every camera phone work instantly without the need for a download then we’ve solved one of the biggest issues around consumer trial and reach for the brand [with regard to 2D barcodes]. The initial inspiration for the product was (a.) the magnitude of the category and then (b.) the opportunity to create a better solution for the advertiser than an application based system that was not pre-manufactured into the device.

So that’s an overview. We felt like there was this amazing category out there and the issue was that it was trying to be served by technologists that didn’t really design their system around a brand’s or consumer’s needs.

One of your main differentiators is that there is no client side app. That makes it easier for users correct?

Yes, but it’s not just ease—it’s ease and reach. The latest numbers we have are that 60% of people under 35 habitually take and send [mobile] pictures here in the United States. So you could argue that 60% of the market already does the behavior that we require. I think that outside of iPhones (we can’t find a number) but we have surmised that about 1% of the market will download and app [to a mobile device]. With iPhones included, that might be about 6% of the market will download an app. So if 6% of the market will download an app and 60% takes and sends pictures then arguably we have 10 times the reach of an application based 2D barcode system.

There is no application required—that’s one benefit—but because there is no app how does that affect JAGTAG with regard to location-based initiatives.

One of the primary ways we can bring value to the ecosystem is by understanding what’s going on in the immediate environment of the person that’s making the request, so location based understanding is at the forefront of our long-term strategy. It’s a requirement for us. In the short term, interestingly enough, we can get a lot of that out of the tag itself, because we can put different tags in different places. So we can do some geo-understanding based on the tags. The other biggest benefit that we have is that we are also a wonderful measurability tool. We enable brands to measure the relative value of their media because we put a different tag on every piece of source media based on how the brand wants us to and we can tell them ‘hey, this is what’s happening with packaging that came out of CVS versus packaging that came out of Wal-Mart—this is what’s happening with your ad in TIME Inc. versus your ad in Newsweek—this is what’s happening if you’re a manufacturer at your point of sale from one store to another.’ One of our greatest immediate values is we give brands the ability to measure media that they’ve never been able to measure before. They’ve never been able to measure print, they’ve never been able to measure out-door, they’ve never been able to measure event marketing. We don’t give them exact impression data, but we give them relative data, because if I run the same ad in TIME and Newsweek and I get three times as many requests out of TIME than I do Newsweek, then I can pretty much assume that TIME is a better medium for [the brand] and [the brand’s] consumers than Newsweek is. We have 900 million tags by the way.

Out there right now?

That’s how many different combinations there are in our current code-reading schema.

If sheer ease of use could help get you guys get ahead and dominate the U.S. market for 2D bar codes in the short term, what is your plan for sustaining that system in the long term against a swiftly growing list of technologies vying for that same space in object hyper linking and beyond.

Normally, the people with the money control an ecosystem—either the people with the money or the people who have the customers—so our long term strategy is to satisfy the brands immediately and to continue to evolve to satisfy the brands needs in the future. So we are building a category and the category will move and we plan on moving as the category moves.

What do you mean by “the category”?

The category of being able to give the consumer the opportunity to access a brand, anywhere and in any way they want directly off of physical objects. I am hesitating to answer your question because I’m trying to figure out how much of our long term strategy do I want to share with the market. We will have long term value within the value chain of  content delivery based on object-based code-triggered, consumer requested communications.

I will tell you one thing, and I’m not touting our product—I’m touting the category. When brands get a taste in their mouth for not having to give their money to media companies but [rather] are able to turn their own properties into media channels…that’s a really big thing for them. You think about Wal-Mart and Six Flags… they are brands that reach an awful lot of people, and the fact that they can now turn every asset that they have into a media channel for themselves or for other people—I think this whole category is going to shift the whole way people look at media, because suddenly every brick wall at Burger King is now [like] a TV screen and now Burger King can have more impressions than traditional media does.

As mentioned, there are a lot of competing technologies out there. Things like “contactless” RFID enabled phones, virtual geo-locational tagging, and computer vision services. Those technologies are evolving as we speak. Do you see JAGTAG taking a step into any of those kinds of technologies?

We see ourselves being very fluid within any object-based, code-triggered, consumer-requested-via-mobile technology. So, RFID, SMS, image recognition, traditional 2D barcodes…we have a strategy for adding value within any of those immediate and long term technologies.

Do you operate as a custom shop too? For example, if a brand came to you and said “this is not in your offering but we want to do x, y or z”? Would you take on a custom job in that way?

We will, but right now were doing that more within our immediate core-capability of our tag.

Are JAGTAGs color sensitive like Microsoft tags?
No, everything gets converted to a grayscale.

Coming from a graphic design background, I noticed that there is an aesthetic quality to JAGTAGs that is different from other QR codes. Did you all Design it?

We designed and developed it in house. Interestingly our early business models were based on QR codes because it is open source. But cameras aren’t good enough to be able to take a picture of it. In many instances, when we do testing, it appears that we are actually reading better than an application based systems. We also can be much smaller; we can go down as small as a half-inch by a half-inch. You mentioned the design, and it is an aesthetic design, but it’s really the only code that doesn’t have adjoining objects. In most of the other codes, their black and white fields touch each other, and that created problems when you take a picture of it. The dots [in a JAGTAG] are designed to increase code reading because when they get compressed and sent over an MMS they don’t touch. That code is the only code we know of that was designed to actually have a picture taken of it and sent via MMS. All the other codes are designed to be read by an application.

I wanted to ask you about scalability. You said there are 900 million possible JAGTAG combinations right now. Data Matrix codes, however, are essentially, infinitely scalable—you can just keep stacking them next to each other to make a larger code to get more data. So when you do reach 900 million can you make a JAGTAG larger? What will you do then?

They can be recycled, because we could re-issued earlier tags that have expired, but really by the time we would reach 900 million we would have updated the code to have more combinations. We may be an application-based system by then. We do believe that in the future we will be an application based system. But what we really believe is that brands right now—that an application-based system right now does not give brands or consumers what then need.

Tell me about your SellToMe offering. I notice you have a suite of several services. I looked at them all and SellToMe seemed the “sexiest” and I mean sexy in terms of enabling impulse mobile commerce. I wondered if you could explain a little bit about how it would work—if I understood it correctly, a person would see a tag and could buy whatever that is, right there on the spot.

We’re working thru that with partners right now. The first stages will be that basically we can deliver an operator based sale and an Internet based sale—those will be the two primary areas that we move into. It’s probably not as exciting as you might imagine in the immediate future.

Can we go back to Metrics for a minute? I know brands are typically extremely concerned about metrics. One way you described the metrics offering of JAGTAG is that they are, in one sense, “old school” in that the tags are actually in physical locations and can be tracked as such. The sheer location of the tag can be meaningful alone. Is there more that differentiates your metrics offering than just that?

Yes, but they are more long term. We have some proprietary systems. In the short term we have source media tracking.

Will JAGTAG technology work in other countries?

Right now we’re focused on the U.S. and it feels like we have the greatest immediate opportunity here, but anywhere where a carrier enables two-way MMS we can instantly integrate. So any country where that is currently established, we can get up and running in no time. But our current focus is providing value to brands and consumers in the United States.

Can you explain to me, specifically, how rich media experiences are returned via JAGTAG. Someone takes a picture of a tag, sends it via MMS to the server, it is processed and then what? Does it return an actual video or does it return a link to a video that the user watches in a browser? Can you explain?

We are currently commercially approved with the carriers we run on [Verizon and AT&T], for returning WAP links, MMS and SMS. The majority of our business will be returning MMS and when we return an MMS we are actually returning video, multiple pictures and audio directly into the phone. So while we can support a mobile web solution,  we believe that 20% of the world accesses the mobile web and 80% do not and we believe that an MMS return, in most instances, is easier to use and much lower cost to the consumer than a mobile web based return. Our reach goes thru the roof when we return MMS. With an MMS input we get device information. Basically, that is the big difference. So because we have device information, we understand the media player of the phone and the screen size and we optimize that return based on that phone’s specific requirements. That’s really our big home run, right. So when you make a request off your phone, we know exactly what your device is. And when you have an SMS input, you don’t have that understanding. The way some other people do that is they send out a WAP link and try to understand the device off the WAP link.

Then would you say that smart phones are your market, because these could be heavy data media files correct? And that would presuppose that the person downloading does have an unlimited data plan in order to really download this kind of stuff all the time. Unlimited data plans seem to be more closely associated with smart phones.

You know, we would say that our market is smart phones and dumb phones [regular feature phones, like a Motorola RAZR]. An MMS return works wonderfully on a smart phone or a dumb phone. So it’s that extra reach that we’re bringing to the market. Let’s say you wanted to show a video highlight to everyone that clicked in Sports Illustrated. Well, if you rely on the mobile web only, you’ve reached 20% of their audience and if you rely on MMS you’ve reached 100% of their audience.

So what you are saying is that if a person has a “dumb phone” and they don’t have an appropriate player to play back a video then you would send what back to them?

We would know that and would send them a message to the effect of ‘sorry your phone cannot play video, but here is something else from the brand instead.’

Ok, so you sniff out the phone type and there is a payoff, for the consumer, one way or the other, depending on their phone.

Right. We don’t even really sniff it out. The carrier gives it to us.

Can you capture other data about the user other than their phone number?

We receive the phone number, the image and device information.

You don’t collect profile-type info from the user? Or do you?

We don’t transfer individual consumer data to the brand unless the user has requested it be sent.

Is every JAGTAG that is photographed and sent in to the server considered an “opt in” then?

Yes, every request is an “opt in” as long as the source material is clear about that.

I read on Mashable not too long ago where Dana Oshiro had listed 5 possible uses for QR codes. Things like, green ticketing, etc. Obviously you have your product offering and that says something about where you think tagging is going, but can you give me a little insight into what you all think is the future of this technology, outside of where it is today?

Well really it’s still not established today [laughs]. You know, the current IS the future.

That’s a good point.

Really the future is our current product offering.

Right. That is, outside of Japan, where this kind of thing has been going on for years. I guess we just look at whatever was going on in Japan 2 years ago, to find out what will be hip here in 3 more years.

I hear everyone talking about personalized tags—that every consumer has their own tag. Eventually you attach user-generated content to a tag and that person can share their personal best when they go to see someone else. For example in a conversation, one person asks another ‘hey are you a very good skateboarder? Well here, take a picture of the code on my board and watch my videos to find out?’ I think that is certainly a future.

I also believe that whoever is closest to the consumer will be able to use tags to create new media channels for themselves that they can charge other people money to use. Kind of like the current way retail circulars work or the way that sports teams use billboards inside a concourse to charge their sponsors to reach their consumers.  [Like those older models], one of the things I think is going to happen is that once geographic locations or venues or retail stores become ‘mediums’, I think that the owners of these physical footprints will be able to establish all kinds of revenue streams via their ‘bricks and mortar.’ I think one of the big huge shifts will be that places like Starbucks will become a medium for all kinds of stuff beyond their own properties and products. If you think about it today—if you take media as a consumer impression—Wal-Mart, Target, McDonalds, Burger King—everyday they reach many more people, I would surmise, than the New York Times does. So when you get in to a ‘physical world connection’ those are the future media properties. It’s crazy. If you look around your room right now, everything in your room is a media channel. The table is a media channel. The wall is a media channel. So whoever owns the physical source materials now owns the media channel. It’s a crazy idea to think that every object in the world becomes the media channel either for that object to market to somebody or for that object to generate revenue from someone else who wants to market thru that object.

I agree. It’s a fascinating concept. It even gets deeper when you think about it geolocationally… that step beyond when people are vying to purchase coordinates in 3 dimensional space to place their ad in so that when users walk into that space with their GPS enabled phone, they are automatically served an ad. I mean, it doesn’t have to be an ad… we are surrounded by a world of information and the point where the physical world meests this nebulous informational world is really interesting.

Right. For example, what am I doing right now? I see something in the real world and then I have to go online and then I have to find it [in order to get information about it]. But with this technology, anything I see in life I can instantly find out more about. Anything you want to know about the object you are interacting with, you can find out. That’s literally how it can be.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about JAGTAG that we haven’t covered?

I would just want to reiterate our main advantage to anyone considering using a 2D barcode today, which is that our technology literally has 10 times the reach of any other 2D barcode. We are the only 2D barcode that doesn’t require the consumer to download an application, prior to use. Also if anyone is considering returning multimedia to a mobile phone, we are the only real way to do it to a mass mobile audience. You can’t do it with Text2Get (because it doesn’t understand the device ID) and as long as you’re dependent on mobile web, you only reach 20% of the market.

Another thing I’d like brands out there to know is that they can now send gorgeous video, they can now send gorgeous looking multiple images of their products, they can now send that to almost as many people as they can send text to. I’d also like brands to know that if they are considering a traditional image recognition solution, that they can accomplish the same thing with us but they can also measure the media.

And you all have worked with many brands already, correct?

Yes, we have run programs with Sony PlayStation, Red Bull, Nike, Cleveland Cavaliers, Qdoba. One last thing I’d really like to explain about JAGTAG is that one of our core competencies (because we come out of the advertising community) is that we understand how to use the technology to accomplish marketing goals, objectives and programs, unlike some companies entrenched only in the technology side who may have more of an attitude like ‘here’s the technology—YOU figure it out.’ We’re not like that. We’re a really good partner in terms of figuring out and guaranteeing that the program along with the technology succeeds. We are agency people here to help other agency people do great things for their brands.

The Nikkei, a major Japanese business publication, is reporting that NEC is planning to sell RFID tag readers/writers, which are priced less than 10% compared to existing products. The company seems to have made major advancements “in the field of semiconductor research”, resulting in the drastic price cut.

The RFID tag reader/writers are compatible with all of the six worldwide radio communications standards. NEC is ready to accept orders beginning as early as this July. For orders of 10,000 units, RFID tag reader/writers will be available for approximately $100 each.

NEC is expecting to rake in $1 billion in sales by 2014 by not only selling the RFID tag reader/writers but by also leasing compatible software and servers to buyers. The company seems to be willing to expand the scope of usage of RFID tag reader/writers from the industrial field to the retail sector in order to achieve mass adoption.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Someday in the future, presumably before flying cars and floating cities, there might be tiny implants to help manage pain. These RFID-powered chips the size of rice should help with chronic pain and neurological disorders similar to the large, external packs being used right now. Unlike the current crop however, these would be wirelessly powered and controlled via a computer or PDA, which should normalize life a bit for the patient. 

The system works by sending jolts of electricty to the affected area that should hopefully nutralize the pain. Successful testing has already been done on rats, but us humans are a bit larger and more complex. The wireless power aspect apparently needs to mature a bit more before it will be effective in a full size person.

Still, one day, pill heads will just have to hack a computer to get their fix rather than scaming aging parents out of their meds. Onward to the future!

Americans, virtuous and true, would you use your cellphone as a credit card? That is, instead of whipping out the plastic in front of some high school kid manning the register at Target, would you wave your connected-to-your-credit-card-account cellphone in front of a scanner? In the blink of an eye your transaction is completed, with the total amount being charged to your credit card account. Such a sci-fi way of paying for goods and services rendered just went on trial in Malaysia, home to those neat towers we hear so much about.

The name of the technology here is Near Field Communications (that’s also where this here photo comes from). Visa, which is responsible for the trial over there, likes to shorten that to NFC; figures. NFC is related to RFID, so be sure to pack your tin foil hat.

Here, a person configures their Nokia cellphone—only Nokia cellphones work so far, and Nokia is the only cellphone manufacturer to show any interest in NFC technology—with their credit card information. Then, when at a participating store (a store with the equipment capable of reading the NFC signal), you simply wave about your phone at the register, and off you go.

Yes, it’s similar to what the Japanese have been doing for some time now.

This is where I ask if something like this interests you at all. Well, does it? Are you concerned that some n’er-do-well will steal your credit card information (as if your credit card information is safe to begin with!) when you go to buy Lucky Louie on DVD at the store?

I’d sign up for such a program quick-like. Less time spent at the register, chit-chatting about nothing at all, is terrific in my book.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags are widely used today to identify and track persons or objects using radio waves in a number of areas: payment systems, electronic toll collection systems, transportation systems, logistics etc. Existing RFID tag readers can only be used for tags moving several km/h, but now Mitsubishi has developed a device that’s able to read tags moving as fast as 100km/h.

The company says it looks at ways to use the new device to read RFID tags attached to car doors, tracking vehicles on high ways or express freight trains. Mitsubishi also wants to convince manufacturers to use the device if they use high-speed conveyor belts for production.

I looked for pictures of the device online but couldn’t find any. At this point, even Mitsubishi’s Japanese site doesn’t mention the new device.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Remember Nabaztag, those little rabbits that waved their ears to notify you whether you received an email, your stock was going down, or if North Korea has launched nuclear war against China? Well, now you can put those buggers – and anything else, really – onto the RFID-reading Mir:ror and then program interactions with everyday objects.

The $29.95 kit includes two tiny rabbits and three RFID stamps. When you place an item on the mirror it registers the item online. They have a few clever ideas for how to use ztamps including opening computer files when you bring paper files up to the mirror or “keeping track of every time you use your tools, take your medication, or pour out a glass of Vodka.” Sadly, my mir:ror would probably wear out if we’re talking about that final use case.

The device is available now.

Introducing Mir:ror by Violet

Picture this: your umbrella gives you the weather forecast; your kid’s teddy bear reads him email you send him from the office; your pill box remembers the days and times when you’ve taken your medication; your customer files, full of paperwork, open Excel files of business in progress on their own; your jars of cosmetics give you personalized beauty advice; your action figures and art toyz teleport into virtual 3-D worlds; your ordinary paper books contain video appendices; your coffee mugs communicate on Facebook; Grandpa’s portrait sitting on the dresser can tell you about his genealogy and life story; that pretty shell you picked up on the beach brings back fond holiday memories in pictures and sounds…

Imagine that all you need to do this is as simple as showing the object to a mirror, a magic mirror that carries any ordinary object through the looking glass, a mirror that empowers daily things, making them interactive, connected, content-rich and communicant.

Introducing Mir:ror by Violet, the first totally user-friendly consumer RFID chip reader with entirely user-customizable functions.

It is also quite simply the first object reader, a reader that reveals our objects’ life, powers and memory. Moreover these once inert now living and communicative objects just speak up within their contextual use.

Violet has been pioneering the Internet of Things since 2003. It conquered the world With Nabaztag, the first Communicating Rabbit, and deeply changed accepted concepts of design, consumer electronics and Internet usages.

Violet has devised a simple, two-step strategy for the construction of an Internet of objects:

· One: connect the Rabbits.

· Two: connect everything else.

With Mir:ror, Step Two in Violet’s action plan is now starting.

- Mir:ror is a sleek white disk, circled by a halo of light, which connects to a Mac or PC via USB. When you bring an object fitted with a RFID chip close to its surface, it reacts, emits a sound to signal that it has detected it, then triggers the action or service associated to that particular object. We will see later on all of the actions it is capable of triggering.

See video

Mir:ror owners can use:

- Any of their personal objects: by affixing a Ztamp to them, they become visible to the Mir:ror. Ztamp:s, by Violet, are brightly-coloured self-adhesive stamps containing RFID chips. Just like postage stamps have for centuries allowed objects to travel in the real world, through the postal system, Ztamp:s now allow them to travel on the Internet and its virtual worlds.

- Nano:ztags: these colourful cute micro-rabbits look just like their larger sibling Nabaztag. They are fitted with RFID chips and can be programmed and reprogrammed to perform user-selected tasks.

- Pre-Ztamped, pre-programmed objects: since November 2007, Violet has partnered with major publishers to design versions of their books fitted with Ztamp:s that trigger storytelling read out loud. And beyond the world of publishing, Violet will work with various industries in many other sectors to develop new versions of their products: with Ztamp:s, they can be enriched with multimedia content and interactive services.

- RFID objects already in circulation: for the Mir:ror, Violet has chosen to follow a standard called ISO 14443 A or B, simply because hundreds of millions of people all over the world already own objects which use this standard. For instance, it’s present in transportation cards, electronic keys etc. This means that users will immediately be able to use some of the things they already have in their pockets with their Mir:ror.

Programming one of these objects couldn’t be easier:

All you need to do is to show the object once to the Mir:ror. If no application has yet been assigned to it, the Mir:ror invites you to visit the violet.net website. There, users can browse a directory of available applications and services and select the ones they wish to assign to their object. They can add one or several applications to a single object. They can even decide the order in which they should be performed. All of this is done intuitively, without any tedious programming, simply drag-and-dropping small boxes on the computer screen. For instance, a user can choose to assign a set of tasks to their daughter’s doll, to be performed in the following order: the application that says good night to the little girl in her mother’s voice, then the one that reads a story, then the one that sends an email to dad to indicate that the bedtime story is finished.

Users can also enrich their existing objects with contextual applications.
They can add applications to any object, even ones that are pre-programmed (such as Ztamped Books) or designed for a specific use, such as a bus pass – for instance, this could be used to read the weather forecast or bus arrival time before you leave the house, while also wishing you a nice day in the voice of a loved one and reminding you to pick up stuff from the dry cleaner’s. And of course, you can always modify an object’s behaviour by returning to violet.net

Some types of tasks that the Mir:ror can perform:

- Launch local applications and files on a computer: The Mir:ror can automatically open any file located on your computer: music, images, videos, but also an Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation. It also knows how to launch any application: open Skype with a person’s photograph you wish to attach, start a game with the hero’s action figure, display a calculator…

- Execute applications and files over the Internet: The Mir:ror is able to open your browser with a given URL, knows how to launch a video or audio stream, download images displayed on your screen, RSS feeds he reads out loud… So that when you want to hear the latest football scores, all you need to do is place your football or Panini card on your Mir:ror. It can also fetch a particular application that can record the number of uses for any object, memorize dates and times it has been seen etc.

- Send information to the outside world: The Mir:ror’s actions are not restricted to the computer to which it’s connected. It can detect an object and automatically send email to predefined recipients, data to a website, a social network such as Facebook or Twitter, or to any application accessible through the Internet specified by the user.

- Trigger any type of action on other objects by Violet, in particular Nabaztag:tag or other connected devices.

- Receive messages from the outside world: Every object is unique, and automatically receives an email address and inbox. It can therefore receive messages which are then read out to the user when they use their object. You can send an email to a key-ring, to remind its owner they are invited to the in-laws tonight! Your stately home’s Visitor’s Book can now contain much more than scribbled niceties: it can include spoken testimonials and audiovisual notes that your guests can send at any time after they’ve left.

- Eventually, some services will involve networked Mir:rors, for instance to allow them to remotely play together through the manipulation of physical objects.

- Violet plans to allow any developer to create their own original applications, designed for any real object, and to host them on the Violet platform. Thanks to a brand-new API, developers will be able to integrate the Mir:ror and physical objects with their own existing applications or web sites.

Applications are independent of the Mir:ror: All applications reside on the Violet platform, and are called upon by the Mir:ror at any time required. Thus, a single object, when shown to any Mir:ror, will perform the same applications. The objects are mobile and endowed with their own capabilities and memory. It is therefore possible to program an object and give it to someone else, to use it in different contexts etc. And finally, all Ztamp:s used with a Mir:ror also work with any Nabaztag:tag. Simply give the Rabbit an object to sniff, and it will perform any programmed applications in lights and sounds.

The Mir:ror detects objects up to a distance of a few centimetres: no physical contact is required. It is capable of recognizing several objects simultaneously and will eventually be able to perform complex applications, taking into account the combination of objects present. And finally, if the user wants their Mir:ror to stop detecting, all they need to do is turn it upside down to put it on hold.

A smart object broadcasting ambient information: Even when it isn’t detecting anything, and that no object is placed on it, the Mir:ror can inform. It is an ambient information device. Through its colour animations and variations in its luminous halo, it provides useful real-time information such as weather forecasts, market trends, or email alerts…

- Sleek and discreet, yet totally customizable: Mir:ror was designed to offer a large detection surface, for improved ease of use, while remaining unobtrusive and discreet on any desk. The design was kept deliberately minimal, so that it can fit into any environment. However, users can decide to personalize their device by adding Mirror:skins to the tray: brightly-coloured backgrounds, photos, graphics, anyone can style their Mir:ror to their taste and match it with their style.

- The platform and services offered by Violet for the Mir:ror are available in English, German, Spanish, French and Italian.

Violet co-founder Olivier Mével enthuses: “Everybody was curious to find out what object we would launch after Nabaztag, the Communicating rabbit. Were we going to design a Smart Mongoose, or a Smart Toadstool? That’s not the point! Violet’s vocation is not to add a few items to a closed circle of Internet-connected devices. We believe that all objects, whether electrical or totally inert, deserve to be connected”.

Rafi Haladjian, the other co-founder, adds: “We are still living in a world where information is trapped in a few of our objects. We stare into our screens, which are like goldfish bowls full of information swimming around, but unable to escape. At Violet, we dream of a world where information would be a butterfly, flitting freely all over the place, and occasionally landing on any of the objects we touch to give them life and enrich them. We want to breathe magic into the world around us. This is our idea of the Internet of Things, and the Mir:ror is the first step in this direction”.

The Mir:ror Pack contains one Mir:ror, one Mirror:skin, 3 blank Ztamp:s and 2 Nano:ztags. It will be available as of late October from retailers who already distribute Nabaztag as well as through www.violet.net.