A Dutch company, Swinxs is developing a physical RFID-based console with RFID wristbands for children. They claim to be encouraging physical activities and ‘stimulating imagination’. The console includes versions of Tag, multiple Quiz games, Hide and Seek and Charades. The base-station connects to the internet for uploading scores and downloading content. The movie on their [...]
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Internet of Things booklet
Rob van Kranenburg is creating what looks like an interesting critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID: “The Internet of Things is the second issue in the series of Network Notebooks. Rob van Kranenburg examines what impact RFID, and other systems, will have on our cities and our wider society.” Edit The [...]
RFID peripherals
Plug and play RFID-reading USB peripherals are all the rage, as indicated by a stream of recent product announcements. These readers plug into a PC and make various things happen when they are touched with an RFID tag. RFID readers are small and cheap, encapsulating them in packaging and offering a standard USB interface makes [...]
Images of touch interfaces
I’m happy to say that with great contributions from Nicolas Nova, Matt Jones and many others, the pool of images of ‘touch interfaces’ on Flickr is growing nicely. I originally asked for contributions in February 2005, and the pool has been growing steadily ever since. This collection of ‘vernacular’ designs for RFID-based interfaces is extremely [...]
RFID gestures
While thinking about radio-field-based interactions and the gestures that they entail I’m reminded of this quote by Adam in Everyware: “If you really want to know what information processing dissolving in behaviour really looks like, catch the way women swing their handbags across the Octopus readers at the turnstiles of the Mong Kok subway station; [...]
Early visualisations of cellular networks
I happened to catch the American-centric documentary history of the mobile phone called The Cellphone Revolution yesterday. The most compelling content was the early visualisations of cellular networks, made by Motorola and AT&T at the time that they were trying to convince the FCC that mobile telephony was important. It also features rather nice footage [...]
Time, motion and touch
The rhetoric of ‘mobile life’ is that technology will make motion more possible, easier, and that having access to information will make our lives easier, transcending time and space. This spectacular notion of global mobility has been around since the mobile phone became an essential business tool. Indeed mobile telephony, mostly voice and SMS has [...]