Use Your Phone as an ID

Make sense to use an encrypted means to identify oneself with a phone.

Germans can soon use their iPhones as virtual ID cards
iOS 13's expanded NFC support will make it possible.

By Jon Fingas, @jonfingas .... in Engadget

Zanzibar Scans Objects and Brings them into Virtual Reality

For games and toys, certainly,  but also for design of objects and how they live in spaces.  And more,

Microsoft’s object-detecting playmat brings toys to life
Project Zanzibar looks like more than a kids toy. ....

David Lumb, @OutOnALumb  in Engadget




"...Zanzibar is a 'sensing platform' that combines capacitive sensing to track finger movements with Near Field Communication (NFC) to detect objects. It's also flexible, both literally and systematically: Just hook it up to any tablet or screen and unroll the mat, and you're ready to go. It can sense objects simply by placing an NFC sticker on their bottoms, which tracks them spatially and even vertically, identifying distinct items stacked on top of each other. .." 

Youtube video demonstration.

Not yet available, a UK MS Research project.   Paper on its use and development.

Fuel Measurement and Security

A big area of security and measurement, could have considerable value ...

RFID-enabled Fuel-Monitoring System Connects to the Internet of Things
Customers in multiple countries report improved fuel accountability after adopting the solution.
By Nathaniel Prince

Feb 27, 2017—Fluid Management Technology Pty Ltd. (FMT), a specialist in fuel tank management, has developed an RFID- and Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled solution for clients that need to accurately monitor their fuel consumption. The backbone of the system is a device that the company calls the SmartFill GEN 2, which helps prevent theft by restricting fuel dispensal only to authorized users.

Waving a card or fob with an embedded Near Field Communication (NFC) tag over the SmartFill unit (which contains a custom-made reader that uses NXP Semiconductors' PN532 chip set) activates the pump .... " 

RFID Enabled Packaging

Continue to follow RFID solutions.  We tested many alternatives in our labs.

Prime Vision to Offer RFID-enabled Packaging System
The solution provider hopes to improve tampering detection and tracking for packages by using Thinfilm's Near Field Communication technology.
By Nathaniel Prince

Feb 03, 2017—Electronics manufacturer Thin Film Electronics ASA (Thinfilm) and Dutch logistics solutions provider Prime Vision are teaming up to develop an RFID-enabled smart packaging system. Prime Vision is utilizing Thinfilm's OpenSense and SpeedTap Near Field Communication (NFC) tags as it develops its new solution.

Prime Vision's inspiration stemmed from the fact that the ability for customers to determine whether a package has been tampered with is essentially non-existent in the industry at present, according to Freek Smoes, the company's director of innovation. "Because of the increased popularity of e-shopping," he says, "more parcels are being shipped than ever before, and we therefore see a strong need for a solution that can track parcels as they move from the e-commerce company to the consumer."  .... " 

Beacons Now Support NFC

Estimote Supports NFC.  Recall some question about the use of beacons with NFC in a past project.   This advance addresses another RFID related approach.    " .... Google announced last month that its Play Store will start notifying users of pertinent apps they might want to download based off their location. App developers will need beacons to trigger those notifications, and Estimote’s location beacons are one possible choice for them. Though those beacons were released only a few months ago, they're already being updated to include programmable NFC ....  "

Mobile Payments, NFC and Apple

We carefully tracked the emergence of the short range radio frequency approach called NFC, to enable smart phone mobile payments.  In Adage,  speculation that Apple will not include NFC in their latest operating system and phones, and thus cripple the progress of general smartphone payment capabilities.   " ... Successive releases of the iPhone have failed to include an NFC chip -- the hardware component to make iPhone compatible with the rest of the mobile-payment infrastructure. If Apple again fails to include NFC in this new release, then confidence in NFC, already faltering, will start to plummet, with the knowledge that mass uptake of mobile payments is now delayed for yet another year. Already we are starting to see downward trends in expectations of mobile ticketing and other NFC-based services. ... " 

NFC Technology at the Shelf Edge

Location based ideas at the shelf edge are increasing.  Check in and out of your favorite aisle, category, brand.    Obvious useful for retail and brand level loyalty ideas, and much more is possible.

3GTV Networks is adding near-field communication technology to its shelf-edge device capability. "We see NFC as the ideal technology for enabling new approaches to 'check-ins,' integrating social media into the physical store, and rethinking how we reward loyalty and encourage discovery and sharing," said a company executive  ...