NFC in 2011: What's NFC, and Why Do I Care?

ReadWrite Web with a special on NFC, to help its community understand the strategic business and technical implications of developing mobile applications.

NFC is a term you're going to start hearing a lot more of this year, but many out there don't know what it means or only have a vague idea. Some equate the term only with mobile payments and mobile wallet initiatives, thinking that NFC is just for making purchases with a phone at the point of sale.

But NFC, or near field communication, as it's called, is more than that. It's a technology that is poised to change every aspect of your mobile life from exchanging business cars to "checking in" via location-based apps like Foursquare and, yes, even entirely replacing your wallet's contents, including credit and debit cards, cash, coupons and more.

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Ideo concept shows how RFID tags could be used in the music industry

Design consultancy Ideo has developed a concept music player that uses cards embedded with RFID tags to generate music playlists. Near Field Communications World reports.

The idea here was to find a physical representation of the elements of modern musical life that we've come to love (such as playlists and shuffle), but not give up on that retro mixtape, twelve inch vinyl physicality," the company explains. "What if we could touch our music again?"

To play the music stored on an RFID-enabled card, users simply drop the card onto the firm's prototype C60 music player. Multiple cards can then be placed on the player at one time to generate a playlist:

c60 Redux from IDEO on Vimeo.

Stanford researchers demonstrate NFC TV applications

[via Near Field Communications World]

Researchers from Stanford University's MobiSocial lab, who last month demonstrated the first Android NFC peer-to-peer applications, have now developed a number of applications which show how NFC could be used to interact with TVs.

Watch video.

Enjoying the Oscar Awards on Several Small Screens

This Sunday’s Oscar ceremony could be the first where mobile devices truly change the experience, thanks to apps like Oscar Backstage Pass, Live from the Red Carpet and Obsessed with Hollywood. The New York Times reports.

In the past, mobile video apps tied to live events suffered greatly, with frozen screens, fragmented video and audio static.

But Albert Cheng, the executive vice president of digital media for the Disney/ABC Television Group, said his company would be prepared to serve even a large mobile audience. If a user’s video quality suffers, he said, it more likely would be the result of a slow cellular network connection.

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Preserving the Online Legacy of the Egyptian Revolution

An interesting read from The Atlantic on how the Egyptian revolution is being digitally preserved.

Regardless of how much you think social media aided the revolution in Egypt, one thing we know for sure is that Egyptians uploaded videos, posted pictures, and tweeted hundreds of thousands of times during the 18 days between the January 25 protests that invigorated the movement and the the day Hosni Mubarak stepped down.

Somewhere in all that real-time information sharing, there are deep and important stories about how the revolution played out in the streets and hearts of Egypt.

But the problem is, there's no single place where one could find all of that information, particularly with any kind of metadata attached about where it came from and who made it. Worse, Twitter's search function only works for a limited amount of time, which means that searches for #Jan25 or other popular hashtags will soon come up empty. Facebook shares will melt down timelines.

The online life of the revolution is in danger of slipping away from easy retrieval. It's being buried under the avalanche of always-new events. But a few people are trying to preserve what happened.

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Ohio Girl Scouts accepting mobile payments for cookies

According to engadget, the local Girl Scout group in Northeast Ohio has teamed up with Intuit to accept credit cards using the company's GoPayment app (and accompanying card reader) for iOS and Android.

What's more, while the Ohio group is the first to sign up, Intuit is now also extending the same offer (which includes reduced transaction fees) to Girl Scout organizations across the US -- something tells us it won't have much trouble getting attracting interest.

Read full press release.

GSMA working on Near Field Communication standard

The idea for now is to develop and test different standards on NFC to make sure it will work, globally. The GSMA warns that if there is no single standard NFC will effectively be flawed, as users will not be able to reap the benefits of the technology when they travel elsewhere and find themselves faced by different operators, networks or devices.

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Social media, cellphone video fuel Arab protests

Social media, cellphone cameras, satellite television, restive youth and years of pent-up anger are proving to be a toxic mix for authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. The AFP reports.

In clip after clip of footage from the street protests that have been sweeping the region, demonstrators -- mostly young men -- can be seen among the crowds holding mobile phone cameras aloft to document the scenes.

The shaky footage of peaceful protests -- and images of horrific carnage -- have been uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and other sites and aired on pan-Arab satellite television stations like Al-Jazeera.

Read full article. Image from YouTube.

Mega Payments Race Pits Google, Visa Against Phone Operators

Deutsche Telekom AG, France Telecom SA and other mobile operators, who lost the battle for online applications stores to Apple Inc. and Google Inc., say they have a fighting chance of winning the corner convenience store. Bloomberg reports.

... “Google’s massive, but Google does not have a billing relationship with 99 percent of its customers,” Deutsche Telekom Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Ed Kozel said in an interview last week. “That’s our opportunity.”

The stakes for losing out on this business development are huge, with NFC payments -- which could potentially replace many cash registers and credit cards -- likely to account for a third of the $1.13 trillion global market in mobile transactions by 2014, according to IE Market Research.

Operators, who “were not as good as the Internet players” for online apps, have an opportunity to get back in the game, said Philippe Vallee, an executive vice president at SIM-card maker Gemalto SA. With NFC, “they can become the applications portal for the secure wallet.”

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Cellphones Become the World’s Eyes and Ears on Protests

For some of the protesters facing Bahrain’s heavily armed security forces in and around Pearl Square in Manama, the most powerful weapon against shotguns and tear gas has been the tiny camera inside their cellphones. The New York Times reports.

By uploading images of this week’s violence in Manama, the capital, to Web sites like YouTube and yFrog, and then sharing them on Facebook and Twitter, the protesters upstaged government accounts and drew worldwide attention to their demands.

A novelty less than a decade ago, the cellphone camera has become a vital tool to document the government response to the unrest that has spread through the Middle East and North Africa.

Recognizing the power of such documentation, human rights groups have published guides and provided training on how to use cellphone cameras effectively.

Read full article.

Coming soon: Wave your hand to control your phone

Ttouchless gesture interface is coming to mobile phones from top-tier handset makers this year, promised Ofer Sadka, chief technology officer of a start-up called Extreme Reality based in Herzeliya, Israel, that's commercializing the technology. CNet reports from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

... Variations of gesticulation-sensitive interface are being used to flip through a photo gallery. One used close-range hand gestures, including rotating a fist to zoom in and out.

The other was from several feet away--it's got an 8-meter range--and used more sweeping arm motions, an experience more akin to Microsoft's Kinect game controller.

The touchless interface could be useful for controlling devices in a car, where a driver might for example not want to have to focus specifically on hitting the right button.

Read full article.

Related technologies:

-- Samsung Patents Visual Gesture Control

-- Cell Phone Uses Gesture Control

-- Synaptics Mobile Phone Concept includes gesture interface

-- Links to articles blogged by textually related to Air Texting

Police pay photographer thousands in deleted images row

A man has won $40,000 in damages after police in the United States confiscated his camera phone and deleted images he had taken of them in a public place. Amateur Photographer reports.

Marlon Kautz from Atlanta had been filming officers as they arrested someone last April when he was told he had no right to record them.

Kautz belongs to a group that films police activity using cameras and mobile phones. The aim of 'Copwatch' is that officers can be held accountable for any wrongdoing.

He claimed that one officer snatched the phone from his hand. 'Kautz said that when asked to get his phone back, another officer said he'd return it only after Kautz gave him the password… so he could delete the footage,' reports The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Kautz refused but when police returned his phone the images had been 'deleted, altered or damaged'.

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The Barcode Piano

Spotted on PSFK, the Barcode Piano, a music instrument that lets children understand the concept of barcodes and how they embed unique information in them by using the piano as a learning interface.

Designed by Marco Triverio, Hao-Ting Chang, and Helle Rohde Andersen at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

Read more. Watch video.

iPhone Photojojo Telephoto Lens

Spotted on [Technabob], an impressive photo lense for iPhone that retails for $35.

Bloomberg Review: Apps can enhance smart phone cameras

As cell phones have gotten better and better, their built-in digital cameras have advanced immensely. While they're still not as good as dedicated cameras, smart phones have a couple of big advantages on their side: they run third-party software, and they have Internet access.

Business Week takes a look at some noteworthy apps that can make your photos pop.

Digital art project: Face of Tomorrow

A new digital art project with a techie bent has sought to discover the effects of globalisation on identity by taking 100 photographs of people in cities around the world and combining them using a computer to make a single average face for each city. stuff reports.

The project, Face of Tomorrow, posits that if you combine all the faces in a city right now you would be looking at the future face of that city.

South African photographer Mike Mike, 46 - who lives in Istanbul but has studied at Sydney University - devised the project. He travelled the world snapping photographs of over 41 different ethnicities and nationalities.

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Camera Phones in the delivery room

This week’s New York magazine features an item by Tina Cassidy on the trend–and controversy–of parents photographing, texting and sharing the birthing process in real time with the aid of camera phones. Forbes reports.

We’re familiar with the trends that led to this new frontier: up-to-the-minute tweets tracking cervical dilation; Dad holding his phone by the foot of the bed so faraway Grandma can feel like she’s right there; Facebook pages updated from the recovery room with video of the new arrival.

And we’ve seen what happens when those impulses are checked: In November, a Maryland medical center joined other hospitals in banning photography—potentially a dangerous distraction, not to mention evidence in the event of a lawsuit—until several minutes after the baby is born, only to spark a backlash from indignant parents.

Forbes

FDA Clears iPad Radiology App

The FDA recently cleared a radiology app for the iPhone and iPad that will let physicians view medical images including MRI, CT and PET scans. [via The WSJ Health Blog]

While the agency says the app — called Mobile MIM, made by MIM Software — has been approved for making medical diagnoses, it says it “is not intended to replace full workstations and is indicated for use only when there is no access to a workstation.

Mobile MIM is available in 14 languages.

Mobile MIM has been eagerly anticipated by the medical community since the App won the Apple Design Award for Best iPhone Healthcare & Fitness Application in 2008.

Mobile Wallets Poised for European Takeoff

The technology isn't new. Consumers can already "wave and pay" at certain shops in countries around the world with contactless payment cards like Mastercard's PayPass and Visa's WavePay which contain an embedded near-field communication, or NFC, microchip that communicates with a reader to process payment transactions. The Wall Street Journal reports.

But despite plenty of hype, the rest of the world is years behind Japan, where osaifu-keitai or mobile wallets are used at over 300,000 retail outlets across the country, a network that has taken seven years to build.

The success of the service in Japan is a product of the unique mobile market there. NTT Docomo is the dominant player, with around a 50% share of total subscribers, and it has worked with handset makers, retailers, ticket outlets and transport organizations to encourage take-up.

Elsewhere network operators, handset makers, retailers, banks and IT specialists are still squabbling over who gets what slice of the mobile wallet pie, hence the lengthy stasis outside of Japan. Sporadic trials have been run in several countries but only now are the fragmented players planning commercial launches.

The handsets are, however, beginning to gain traction.

Read more.

Application to live stream crime videos to 911 providers

The Augusta Chronicle reports on an application being developped for the iPhone and Android called Guardian Watch that will allow users to stream live video to 911 providers.

A user who witnesses an incident, say a robbery or a car crash, can immediately begin streaming video to the Guardian Watch Web site.

Using the phone's built-in GPS, the caller's location is plotted on an electronic map and the video of the scene can be accessed by dispatchers with a click. A text service allows dispatchers to send instructions to the caller on the screen.

There is no need for the caller to text back because dispatchers would be able to hear them almost instantly through the video stream.

Read full article./p>

Heat Vision for Your Cell Phone Camera

Do you ever look into your backyard at night wondering if there are hostiles hiding in the bushes readying for an ambush? Well, if Pentagon’s research branch, Darpa, succeeds on implementing heat vision on cellphones, as is their plan, then you may soon have available to you a militarized iPhone to safeguard your house. Slashgear reports.

Darpa has solicited a project where they want thermal imaging capabilities small enough to fit into a rifle sight, on the dashboard of a vehicle, or in a cell phone. And they’re not satisfied with it only being able to determine a person’s approach, but also to be clear enough so that the viewer can “determine that personnel target(s) are present and that the target(s) are potentially an immediate threat.

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Why you don’t need to take my picture when I make a driving faux pas

Should we all start whipping out our smartphone cameras in defense of perceived slights or rudeness? Does the fear of getting your picture snapped in a weak moment really change behaviour? Or does this shutterbug-spy trend run the risk of making us a society of intolerant Big Brothers? The Globe and Mail reports.

Last week, after several TTC drivers were caught texting by passengers with a cell phone camera - while steering the bus (infractions that cost them their jobs) the union accused the media of encouraging passengers to “phone stalk” drivers for bad behaviour – and not encouraging the same surveillance for passengers who abuse the driver.

In Britain, the Sussex police have introduced “Operation Crackdown,” in which motorists could go online and report incidents of anti-social driving, including speeding, talking on your phone and tailgating. In three years, authorities received nearly 20,500 reports – and identified most of the drivers.

Read more.

Amazing Honda Jazz App

Amazing. Watch this advert. With Honda Jazz - This Unpredictable Life app for iPhone you can catch the characters as they appear on the screen in Honda's new commercial. Just wave your phone!

[AutoGuide]

Walgreens' Mobile Apps Allow Prescription Renewal via Phone's Camera

Walgreens new app allows users to renew prescriptions by taking a photo of the barcode on a pill bottle using a smartphone, or by just keying in the prescription code.

Other abilities of the app:

Express Refills by Scan

Capture a prescription bar code from your phone and we'll have your refill ready to pick up.

Pharmacy

Refill prescriptions from your account history or simply by entering your prescription number. Get a text alert when your prescription is ready for pickup.

Flu Shot & Store Locator

Trying to find a flu shot? Our flu shot locator will help you find the closest Walgreens or Take Care ClinicSM.

[Medgadget via GeekDoctor]

Mobile app helps the deaf use smart phones

A new app for smartphones is being called a huge leap in communication technology for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Wivb.com reports.

The "N-Touch for PC" and "N-Touch for Mobile" has been launched by Sorensen Communications . The app allows the deaf to set up a video phone so they can use sign language and communicate with friends and family all over the world.

Read full article.

iPhone camera can be improved dramatically by apps

According to The Christian Science Monitor, the cameras in most mobile phones are an afterthought. This has left an opening for programmers to step in and develop software to make the images produced by smart phones much better.

One roadblock to this effort has been the cameras themselves—their very design imposes limits on what a photographer can reasonably capture. Now Stanford professor Marc Levoy has created an app that changes what the iPhone's camera is capable of.

Called SynthCam, Levoy's software lets the iPhone 4 take pictures that look like they were taken with a larger, more expensive camera.

Read more.