iPhone 4G Will Pack RFID Reader?

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RFID technology has come a long way in the past few years. Chips are now individually very cheap, and thousands of uses for them have been devised by corporations and governments. Now it seems that Apple is looking to help make RFIDs something consumers make use of every day by adding a reader into the new iPhone. AppleInsider says that a site focusing on Near Field Communications has found evidence that Apple has built new iPhone prototypes that pack an RFID reader.

An iPhone-mounted RFID reader could have a wide variety of uses. It could allow “touchless” payments at vending machines, stores and toll booths, as well as enable a variety of AR technologies. RFID chips can also act as barcodes, which would make browsing for deals and 'at a glance' window shopping much easier for people with iPhones. Since many products and services are already embedded with RFID chips, we could see this functionality appear in the very near future.

Posted on Fri, 6 Nov 2009 07:34:14 CST | by Robert Evans

Innovative RFID Mirror USB Gadget by Nabaztag Violet is shipping

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The Mirror by Violet from the Nabatztag Wi-Fi rabbit people is now on sale at ThinkGeek. The Mirror by Violet is possibly the most creative RFID gadget you can buy right now.
The mirror connects to a PC or Apple Mac and reads the RFID tag inside so called Ztamps you stick to objects of your choice. Now you can assign actions and tasks on your computer to different objects.
There is almost no limit on what you can associate with objects. Placing your umbrella on the Mirror could give you weather forecasts. Waving your car keys over the Mirror and it could send an email to your loved ones saying that you are leaving now. Read more

Posted on Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:05:43 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Aluratek Tornado External HDD with RFID Security

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Aluratek announced the latest version of its tornado one-touch external hard drive that features a RFID security key and onboard data encryption. The drives can be had with storage capacity of up to 1TB with the lowest capacity 160GB.

The drives come in two different sizes -- 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch. Connectivity is via USB 2.0 and the drives are compatible with Windows and Mac computers. The drives ship with a pair of RFID security keys for an added layer of protection. The 160GB version of the external drive retails for $119 with the 1TB version going for $249. Read more

Posted on Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:33:59 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Silverstonetek TS01B RFID protected HDD Enclosure Review

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Metku published a review of an RFID protected HDD Enclosure from Silverstonetek dubbed TS01B.

Quote from the review: ""As 2,5" laptop drives already range up to 320 GB in storage space, in worst case scenario they can contain virtually endless amounts of classified material that in wrong hands can lead to huge problems. Read more

Posted on Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

RFID Skin Patch Aims to Reduce Medical Errors

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A company called Gentag has announced a new technology for hospitals to use aimed at reducing medical errors. The RFID skin patches stick to the skin of the patient with a breathable bandage like material.

When scanned the tags provide health professionals information on the patient like allergies, procedure to be performed, and other related data. Gentag says that the tags can also be used to match new mothers with the correct newborn child. Read more

Posted on Mon, 5 Nov 2007 11:16:44 CST | by Shane McGlaun

Casio RFID Wristband Fitness Club Gadgetry

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Casio introduces a RFID Wristband based networked solution for fitness clubs.

With the Casio "mobile Check-Fit" system you can check-in to the club, track your training on the machines, pull up your training records on a PDA station or check your health parameters with a fully automatic hemadynamometer body constitution analyzers.
The PDA's (Casio Cassiopeia DT-5200) mounted on the fitness machines have a VOIP client so you can chat with your trainer, when you have a question.
Hey, this opens the door to India based call centers acting as personal trainers. Technology is just wonderful! Read more

Posted on Mon, 11 Jun 2007 05:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Swingline RFID Staples in Your Future?

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Swingline has a vision for the future of tacking documents in an office via RFID tags. These tags would be attached to staples that hold your document pages together. Then if you loose it you can use the RFID reader to find it.

Perhaps they will make the stapler red, then we could use it to bind our TPS reports together and surely if some one steals this stapler from your desk you could track it down with it being loaded with RFID tags and all. Read more

Posted on Fri, 2 Mar 2007 09:00:00 CST | by Shane McGlaun

I4U Gadget Flyer: Split PS2 Controller : FooTooKit : Subdermal RFID

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The new !

The Technology News Highlights for last week are:
!
Read more

Posted on Sun, 2 Apr 2006 00:18:04 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

Implanting Subdermal RFID in Practice

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Canadian Piercing Studio Tribal Expression provided us with some insights on subdermal RFID placements in practice.

The studio offers RFID placements for people who want to have keyless entry into their home. Tribal Expression uses a glass ampoule that houses a 64-bit RFID chip. 64-bit gives 100 billion unique keys. Tribal Expressions Owner Keith Kennedy likes to compare this to the fact that average lock sets only have 300 unique keys, which would mean that in a city with 1 million, 3,333 people would have the key to your front door.

VeriChip was the first to come up with a subdermal RFID chip back in 2003. VeriChip expanded their subdermal RFID solutions quite a bit since then.

Tribal Expression places the RFID unit for instance under the skin on the wrist (see photo below).
The studio charges $275 CND (~$235) for the placement. The RFID reader sells for about $400 CND ($340). Besides home access the company works on car and computer access systems for their RFID chips. Read more

Posted on Thu, 30 Mar 2006 01:21:33 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

Smart RFID Carpet

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German Vorwerk shows a carpet with integrated RFID grid.

The smart floor carpet can be used to lead robots around buildings. A floor cleaning robot could clean more efficient as he can use the RFID tags as guides. Data can also be stored to the RFID tags, which could for instance allow areas to be marked as cleaned. Other uses are factory floors where transport robots need to find their way from point A to B.
The Vorwerk RFID smart floor can be installed under almost any floor material. The data communication on 13.56 MHz works up to a 30mm thickness of the floor covering. Read more

Posted on Tue, 14 Mar 2006 11:00:00 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

Philips Develops Plastic RFID Tag

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Philips Research demonstrates world's first 13.56 MHz RFID tag based on plastic electronics.

A plastic electronics RFID chip can be printed directly onto a plastic substrate along with an antenna. This could enable the packaging industry to replace existing barcodes by a low-cost RFID tags.
Yesterday we reported about the World's Smallest RFID Tag developed by Hitachi. It seems to me that for retail products the plastic based RFID tags might be better suited.
Read more

Posted on Tue, 7 Feb 2006 08:01:49 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

World's Smallest RFID Chip Revealed by Hitachi

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Hitachi announced today the world's smallest and thinnest RFID chip.

The Hitachi RFID chip measures 0.15x0.15mm and is 7.5 micrometer thin. Hitachi's current model on the market measures 0.4x0.4mm. Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology is used to achieve this level of integration.
The Hitachi µ-Chip can wirelessly transmit a 128 bit (10^38) unique ID number. It is impossible to rewrite the data and thus provides a high level of authenticity.

This RFID chip is so tiny you might breathe it in if you are not careful - will RFID chips be the Asbestos of the future? Read more

Posted on Mon, 6 Feb 2006 05:17:48 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

RFID Door Lock Available Now at ThinkGeek

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The RFID Door Lock we reported about is now offered at ThinkGeek.

ThinkGeek is always picking up on cool new gadget trends. This time its the RFID Door lock. It comes with 8 RFID smart keys. The RFID lock also has a keypad to be able to get in when you forget the keycard. This lock also has a built-in alarm that will deter thieves at the door itself, if the door is forcefully entered.
The RFID Door Lock sells for $299.99 on ThinkGeek.

Read more

Posted on Mon, 1 Aug 2005 10:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

RFID Digital Door Locks

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Keyless entry systems are already very common in offices. The newest use RFID tags. RFID Digital Locks are also available for homes. The Gadget Home has the MyKey 2300 on their site.

The RFID tag to open the lock can be for instance placed inside a mobile phone (see photo below).
The MyKey 2300 also has a pin number input. Besides that this digital lock also looks quite good. I have no information yet on the price.
More details on the MyKey datasheet.

Read more

Posted on Mon, 23 May 2005 10:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

World's Smallest Battery-Equipped RFID Tag

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YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory has developed the world's smallest RFID tag with integrated batteries (Photo: Nikkei.Net).

The cube sized RFID tag measures 15x15x15mm. The battery can last 2 years.

YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory plans to release a production version of the RFID tag within the year.
More details on Nikkei.Net (Subscription). See also YRP UNL site (Japanese).

Japanese YRP UNL laboratory also created the RFID Wristwatch.

Read more

Posted on Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Crazy Hack: RFID Music Player

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A student in Germany stores music SID files (SID is the music format for the C64) on RFID tags and plays them back when approaching with a RFID reader.

When such a music-loaded tag is put near to the reader, the music is played on a connected stereo. He uses a RFID reader, which connects to a PC through USB. The C program for this hack is available for free download.
More details and videos. Via Slashdot.

Read more

Posted on Wed, 23 Mar 2005 10:30:00 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

RFideas pcProx Sonar Presence USB Sensor Review

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We reported about the RFideas pcProx Sonar USB presence sensor a week ago.

RFideas sent us now their interesting USB gadget for review.
The pcProx is a proximity zone detector that sends different keystrokes for walk-away and walk-up conditions. The idea is to automatically lock a PC when the user is walking away. If you have a sneaky room-mate or do not want your boss to see that you spent time again on I4U by forgetting to log-off when leaving your PC, the pcProx Sonar is your solution.
Read our full review.

Read more

Posted on Mon, 15 Nov 2004 10:46:59 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

RFID: Nokia NFC shell for Nokia 3220 Phone

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Nokia officially introduces the Nokia NFC (Near Field Communication) shell for Nokia 3220 phone.

As reported Nokia already showed a RFID reading Phone at the CTIA Wireless Show in San Francsico last week. There together with Verisign showed a Nokia 5140 with RFID reader. Now Nokia announces a Near Field Communications add-on for the Nokia 3220. Nokia, Philips and Sony have joined for the NFC technology early this year.

The Nokia NFC shell offers consumers access to browsing, and text message services simply by touching tags that contain service shortcuts. Consumers are also able to give their favorite service shortcuts to other users by touching another NFC-compatible device with their phone. In addition, the Nokia NFC shell comes with tags that can be used for creating own personal service shortcuts.
More details in Nokia Press-Release.

Read more

Posted on Tue, 2 Nov 2004 11:59:28 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

RFID Reading Nokia Mobile Phone

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Nokia and Verisign showed a RFID reader mobile phone at the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment 2004 Conference in San Francisco.

The demonstration of the Nokia RFID prototype shows how a Nokia mobile phone, equipped with an RFID reader, can enable consumers to access information tagged with EPCs (Electronic Product Codes) and obtain background on products like pricing, origin, product descriptions and more. ZDNet reports that the prototype is based on the Nokia 5140.

We reported about several gadgets that get RFID enabled recently:
RFID Reader Wristwatch
Human Subdermal RFID Chip - VeriChip
RFID Wearable Smart Badge from nTag Interactive
Tiny RFID Chip in Wristwatch Glass

Interesting here is that Verisign seems to want to be a player in this market.
More details in this press-release.

Read more

Posted on Tue, 26 Oct 2004 03:47:51 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Tiny RFID Chip in Wristwatch Glass

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This can only come from a Swiss Company. Swiss Startup Winwatch S.A. has patented a way of embedding tags built on RFID technology in watch glasses, opening a wide variety of new applications.

Winwatch's solution is to integrate a RFID transponder into a wristwatch without altering the internal structure of the watch. Which is important if you know how watches are made.

Read more

Posted on Fri, 16 Jul 2004 17:00:04 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

RFID Reader Wrist Watch

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YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory led by Professor Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo unveiled the "UC-Watch," a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader embedded in a Wrist Watch.
The UC-Watch features a function to read data based on "ucode," an RFID code system that the Ubiquitous ID Center developed. Users can pick up objects that contain a RFID chip to read the info, which is then displayed on the 120 x 160pixel screen on the RFID wrist watch.
More details on Nikkei ITpro (japanese), NE Asia and on UNL.

More cool technology Wrist Watches on WristDreams.

Read more

Posted on Wed, 14 Jul 2004 04:35:29 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr