SevenClick! Mobile Technology Evangelists

USB and RFID are now good friends in France, where the state’s railway company SNCF has developed a system based on both technologies to allow people to buy tickets without physical money.

It’s called Weneo ID Smart, and it looks like a common USB pendrive, but it includes a RFID system inside. The USB plug is for connecting it to a computer and charge it with money. Then the RFID part will let us buy railway tickets with the previously charged money, just putting our device close to the RFID reader in the train station, forgetting about standing up at long queues.

Weneo ID Smart is not just “like a pendrive”, in fact it is. It has a 4GB memory for personal and private data, only accesible using the USB plug. To make this more secure, this data will be encrypted. On the other hand, RFID readers will only have access to the data that is related to the ticketing system, and not the pendrive data.

1000 devices will start to be tested in autumn. These are great news according to new systems of paying transport tickets, like paying tube tickets with mobile phones in London, like we already posted.

Via Xataka

Thanks to XatakaMovil we’ve got noticed of this interesting trial performed by researchers of Radboud University (Netherlands) at the annual Four Days Marches of Nijmegen. After 2006 edition, with the death of 2 participants and 69 hospitalizations, the University began studying ways to monitor the health of marchers during the event.

The system trialed included several elements:

• RFID Pill for checking body temperature
• Backpack-RFID reader
• Mobile phone

Every volunteer swallowed the pill that sends the measure of temerature every ten seconds to the RFID receiver in his backpack. That data was then transmitted via Bluetooth to a GPS-enabled mobile phone and then to the operation center.

“Based on their height, weight and age, the system was able to alert the volunteer if their core body temperature had reached a dangerous level,” in words of Martijn Bakkers, branch manager of healthcare at Progress Software, the firm that provided the event processing technology, based on CEP (complex event processing).

And, what is more important, thanks to the mix of real-time time processing, location aware and push services, in case a volunteer were at risk he could have been notified to have a rest or rehydrate. In fact, not only the participant at risk, but that ones in her vicinity and the medical team.

This is a fantastic example of how near field communications, mobility and real-time messaging technologies can be combined to provide useful services that can make our life easier and more safe.

Via XatakaMovil
Link RFIDUpdate HQInc

I love Japan, and i love how they use the technologies in day to day life earlier than in other countries, it is time now for paying your meal at McDonalds by mobile phone. It is easy and quick.

This payment method is based Felica RFID technology, installed in most modern Japanese phones to create the first program of this type, allowing customers using Kazasu Coupon (Contactless Coupon) to choose their meals, redeem coupons, and pay for purchases all with their mobile phones. Beginning with 175 stores and expanding gradually to its 3,800 nationwide stores by 2009.

How to use it. At first you must download the application to your mobile phone and choose the coupon you like. Then the coupon is redeemed by placing the phone near the RFID reader at the register, instantly adding the item to the order. At last, you must complete your order paying using NTT Docomo’s iD mobile wallet.

Check this video to see how it works.

Well, i am waiting for things like this here that make our life easier.

Via CScoutJapan

MIT Media Lab has reinvented the original Post-it, and its name is “Quickies”.

“Quickies” are stickies that have some intelligence and the ability to remind us about the task we ought to perform or to provide us at the right time with the information we captured in the past.

This new Post-it are provided with a RFID chips, artificial Intelligence and ink recognition technologies can make it possible to create intelligent sticky notes that can be searched, located, can send reminders and messages.

This is unbelievable, write on a post it and manage it from your PC to know when and why it was written for.

Via El Mundo

Link Ambient Intelligence Group

Japan is several steps beyond Occidental markets in terms of technology adoption.  Meanwhile, here in Europe, we are still discussing the best technology to establish mobile payments,  Japanese market have already adopted a valid solution in the form of Sony Felica cards.

DoCoMo is launching next friday a mobile solution for office security based on Osaifu Keitaki phones and Sony Felica cards. With these mobile phones, subscribing companies will be able to control access, open doors, buy food and even unlock computers. Just with the mobile.

How long will we have to wait for a similar service?

Via CellPhone Beat