In the recent “Conversation with Eric Schmidt” with John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly at the Web 2.0 Summit 2010, there is a good deal of discussion about the use of NFC in mobile devices. Right at the start of this video there is a demo of as-yet-unannounced Google device with an NFC ‘secure element’ chip, that interacts with a physical Google ‘placemark’.

While this demonstration is basic, and doesn’t actually go much further than what we are already used to with GPS and wifi positioning, it is quite exciting that a platform like Android might open up an open platform for physical-world interaction. I’d really like to see the possibility of actually implementing commercial apps and services that are more about our interaction and engagement with the physical world rather than the screen.

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Tom recently used an updated version of this library in his RFID workshop at ETech 2009 and has written a series of thorough tutorials on his weblog. The tutorials covers the basics of the library and also shows how a SM130 can be used with an Arduino: Sonmicro RFID reader for Processing, Reading Mifare RFID tags, Writing to Mifare RFID tags, Arduino-based RFID reader and RFID to Web interface.

In a future post we will look more closely on the technicalities of designing behaviours with RFID readers, presenting our tools for both the Sonmicro SM130 and the Innovation ID12.

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This is a simple ‘classic’ or ‘candybar’ design like the earliest NFC models. Nokia has a history of basing its NFC devices on existing models (see the 5140 from 2004, the 3220 from 2005, and 6131 from 2007). The 6212 looks like it is based on the 3120 classic (announced in February 2008) with the addition of an NFC module and a slightly simplified physical design. Compared with the most recent NFC phone, the 6131, the 6212 is slightly smaller and lighter with a smaller display at the same resolution. More notes on the design details below.

The demo

This interview with Jeremy Belostock—Nokia’s NFC Sales & Marketing Director—has a number of cutaways that show some of the new NFC features in action.

There is a discussion about the path towards the mass market: whether to focus on user acceptance or building infrastructural ‘ecosystems’. NFC is discussed as being immediately suitable for developed markets where there is infrastructure already in place (such as RFID ticketing and credit card systems such as Oyster and Visa Wave). Although emerging markets are interesting, there is a particular emphasises on Western Europe and Asia in NFC transport and payment, because of the immediate benefits in these areas. The interview ends with a brief (and rather odd) discussion of the environmental benefits of NFC. I’m not sure replacing a stack of plastic cards with a mobile phone is necessarily an improvement towards sustainability (most of my credit and debit cards outlast my mobile phones by a factor of 2 or 3).

Interaction design notes

Nokia is attempting to focus on features such as sharing content through touch-interactions and using tags as a way of controlling phone functions. Nokia seems to call these emerging interactions “tapping and sharing”. In the demo we see:

• Tag access to the system functions: we see a tag setting an alarm
• Tag access to files on the system: we see loading and playing of music files

• Peer to peer exchange of content: we see the ‘sharing’ of files

  The specifications also note that it’s possible to “share business cards, bookmarks, calendar notes, images, profiles, and more” so there is clearly a deeper integration between the Series 40 system and the NFC functions here than with earlier devices (we called for this in 2005 when we had the first look at the 3220). What is not shown is the before/after interactions that are required to set up these sharing actions. How do I set up the transfer? What happens if we simply touch phones together? What are the default events? Where and how are these actions phrased within the menu system? Without seeing these we cannot yet assess the quality of these new NFC interactions.

  

  Touch-based interactions are super-simple, orders of magnitude less button clicks and less security hassles than a technology like Bluetooth. This simplicity stems from the physical proximity required when interacting with tiny RFID fields. The demo shows NFC pairing between two devices working in various physical ways: two phones are tapped side to side, face to face and face to back. Previously these interactions were imagined to work back to back but since RFID works through electromagnetic induction, which creates a field that encompasses both sides of the antenna, other physical gestures are possible.

  

  When the NFC chip is given enough power and when the interaction involves two readers rather than a reader powering a passive tag, phone-to-phone interactions will work in many configurations around the device. Although this seems to be a technical reality, I wonder if it makes sense to visualise and explain NFC in this way? Should there be an active point of connection on the phone that is more like a button rather than an active aura surrounding the entire phone? There is an interesting study to be created here about the user’s mental models formed by these subtly different interaction types. More on touch-interaction affordances later.

  This launch is not just about the NFC phone, but points towards a range of NFC appliances: “pairing with a Bluetooth NFC-enabled device, like the new NFC variant of the Nokia BH-210 headset, happens with just one touch”.

  

  At first glance this suggests that new Nokia accessories may have embedded NFC tags, but it seems that “the Bluetooth Headset BH-210 sales package includes a pairing tag that has BH-210 address information in it. Pair the device and headset conveniently by tapping the tag with the device.” When suitable Mifare tags are available down to about 10mm in diameter, why not embed the pairing tag inside the device itself? Perhaps the fear is that pranksters could sneak up to unsuspecting bluetooth-headset-wearing businesspeople and pair with their devices through a sneaky swipe…

  Nonetheless, this points in some interesting directions, towards interfaces and control for all sorts of consumer devices. It highlights the possibility of the mobile phone as a ubiquitous controller where it interacts with a multitude of inputs and outputs from games controllers and sensors to printers and screens, and then perhaps a whole host of other devices that require a rich interface but don’t have the physical form or price range to justify one. For more on this see our thoughts on the universal controller and this research paper by Christof Roduner.

  

  The phone is packaged with three tags, one of which is a ‘tutorial’ tag that teaches the use of NFC with on-screen tutorials. This learning mode seems to include lots of animations where phones and tags are brought into contact with each other, perhaps the least complicated part of NFC interactions. Without seeing it for ourselves its difficult to say, but the tutorials could perhaps be more useful for explaining the possibilities inherent in putting URLs, phone numbers, etc. onto tags.

  Physical design notes

  If we are expected to regularly touch our phones against grubby payment terminals, subway gates and public advertising, the surfaces and materials both on the phone and in the world must encourage this touching action. A robust and rugged shell is essential.

  From the very first mobile phones that could be operated with one hand, Nokia has traditionally been good at creating robust, over-engineered devices that play well in the messy, physical world. The challenge with NFC is to create natural, basic touch interactions through material, ergonomic or other affordances. What are the physical affordances that would encourage—- as Dourish puts it—‘interacting in the world, participating in it and acting through it, in the absorbed and unreflective manner of normal experience.’? So beyond ruggedness and a degree of scratch-proofing, what is necessary for these touch-interaction affordances?

  

  The first consideration is the placement of the reader. The above image is a quick excercise imagining where readers might be placed on various phone models. The 5140 RFID kit and the 3220 NFC shell had a ‘classic’ or ‘candybar’ form that meant that the NFC reader was placed on the lower back of the device. Apparently this was to separate the various radio antennae (GSM, Bluetooth, etc.) from the RFID antenna, but all of our experiments showed that this was confusing to users. The 6131 solved this by placing the NFC reader at the top of the flip-up screen, away from the other antennae at the hinge.

  Somehow the NFC reader in the 6212 is at the top of the device. This is a very good place to have an ‘active area’, it’s outside of the natural hand-grip, and its the part of the phone that most often faces the world, encouraging intuitive pointing and selecting gestures. With this placement the phone becomes a kind of ‘wand’, that perhaps draws on the metaphor of magic in ubiquitous computing. Whatever our thoughts on magic in interaction design, there is no doubt that this gesture is culturally significant and is likely to be a useful model.

  

  More practically, the 6212 features a camera lens in roughly the same position as the reader. This combined with the perforated loudspeaker work against the idea of a robust active area. This is clearly a tradeoff, will scratches and grit getting into these delicate areas hinder touch-based interactions, and will keeping the phone pristine in general be a problem? Would a shiny iPhone ever be suitable for touch-based interactions?

  The second consideration is signs and symbols. There was a time when Nokia thought it necessary to indicate the active area of NFC phones with a visual icon, starting with two concentric rings and moving on to the ‘wireless fingerprint’:

  

  But the 6131 and 6212 have no visible indication whatsoever that they offer any sort of NFC functionality. The clear plastic film that protects the 6131 screen had a diagram of a phone-tag interaction but that of course gets quickly removed.

  My feeling is that there should be clearer markings for the NFC active areas on these phones, even if it is a change in texture, colour or material, it seems like a functional necessity until NFC is properly accepted and understood in the mass market. It’s also a particularly easy thing to do. When music phones have very clearly marked dedicated buttons devoted to specific media functions, why shouldn’t a significant functional and interactional surface be clearly marked on the device?

  

  A few quick sketches using some of the icons from the graphic language for touch. Whether the possibilities inherent in NFC are indicated through clear affordances or explicit symbology, this is extremely important to get right.

  Other technicalities

  The 6212 has a slightly better higher resolution camera than the 6131. It also offers a second video camera on the display side (why do they still include these, does anyone actually do video calling? Is there a secondary usage that I’m missing, YouTube?)

  The press-release and demos emphasise the new level of integration between NFC and Bluetooth but the specifications don’t list Bluetooth 2.1. Of course it supports the standard contactless communication API (JSR 257) so that 3rd parties like us can develop applications for NFC. We hope that it gives us more leeway than the implementation on the 6131. Includes MIDP 2.1 and a few other Java APIs.

  The phone also supports the Nokia Software Market for application discovery and this might be very useful for distributing consumer-focused NFC applications.

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2008/05/thoughts-on-nokias-nfc-developments/feed 16 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/11/making-things-talk http://www.nearfield.org/2007/11/making-things-talk#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:37:21 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/11/making-things-talk

  Tom Igoe’s new book Making things talk arrived today, full of lovely projects and code examples. Tom’s previous book Physical computing has been the definitive reference for all hardware hacking that goes on at AHO and in the Touch project. Making things talk is structured into specific projects, and covers technology as part of practical examples.

  The section on RFID uses the ever-useful ID12 RFID readers with project examples created using Processing.

  

  The processing code was developed with Sara Johansson as part of the Sniff project in our tangible interactions course earlier this year, and it is great to see Sniff in a double page spread:

  

  From our initial reading the book looks like an excellent introduction to creating physical networked things, using a very wide diversity of technologies. The project examples are well designed and extremely useful in order to move beyond conceptually simple networked things. As a place to start prototyping with RFID this is a great complement to some of the other RFID books out there.

  

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/11/making-things-talk/feed 1 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/08/sparkfun-now-selling-id12-readers http://www.nearfield.org/2007/08/sparkfun-now-selling-id12-readers#comments Mon, 27 Aug 2007 13:30:28 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/08/sparkfun-now-selling-id12-readers We have been making a lot of prototypes with the Innovations ID12 RFID readers in the past few months. We’ve been getting them from the super-helpful Core RFID, and now Sparkfun is selling them.

  

  The ID12s measure just 25mm x 26mm and include their own antenna. They are great because they are packaged in a form that is very adaptable to many prototyping needs, including inside a toy dog’s nose.

  

  Sparkfun have designed their own breakout board for the ID12 which should make connecting it easier in the future.

  Update Tom Igoe’s latest book Making things talk includes lots of details about getting an ID12 to work with Arduino and processing code.

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/08/sparkfun-now-selling-id12-readers/feed 5 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/nfc-at-wikipedia http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/nfc-at-wikipedia#comments Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:27:41 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/nfc-at-wikipedia I revisited the Near Field Communication at Wikipedia page this week. For a long time it was a copy and paste of the About NFC page from the NFC Forum, but now it has evolved into a page of its own:

  

  However it is still in a pretty sorry state, a mixture of history, standards, soapboxing and technical jargon. I know many people involved in the history and current development of NFC read this weblog, so this is my appeal to get involved making this a useful resource for a wider audience (I still don’t have a definitive page to send the uninitiated if they want to find out what NFC is). See the pages on the Hong Kong Octopus Card for an example of a good article.

  So far I have added an image, cleaned up some irrelevant smart card links from the references and added an initial list of NFC trials. There is an awful lot more to be done before it becomes useful.

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/nfc-at-wikipedia/feed 1 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/alternative-rfid-infrastructures http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/alternative-rfid-infrastructures#comments Tue, 03 Jul 2007 13:30:50 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/alternative-rfid-infrastructures This is a design brief, one of many themes that the Touch project is investigating.

  

  The landscape of RFID technology is focused on surveillance, efficiency and control. The near-future possibility of RFID implants, identity cards and passports is focused on the ability to efficiently and accurately identify people. The rush to replace barcodes with RFID is pushed by a desire to have more control and efficiency in supply chains and to reduce the risk of counterfeiting. Much of which ignores the human perspective and the imposition of this new technology is running into trouble as it begins to cross paths with public opinion, perception and protest.

  But new infrastructures can certainly be designed to support useful, private, secure, bottom-up, ad-hoc and people-to-people interactions, not just transactions controlled by banks, transport systems and governments. There are open identity systems that should allow RFID to be used in a way that gains people’s trust, that allows individual control over its use.

  This project should look at the issue of trust and technological innovation and adoption. It should take RFID or NFC as a case study and look at the various viewpoints that are taking control of the emerging debate. Without going into technical solutions the project could look at people-based or social scenarios around sharing, trust, privacy and perceived security in various defined contexts.

  References

  Rob van Kranenburg at How I learned to love RFID. “It is naive to say that RFID tags do not contain information, and thus cannot be linked to individuals: that disregards the whole history of data mining. Transparency is important, individuals should certainly have access to the information that their tags carry. This view has been fuelled by the Nokia phone that reads and writes tags.”

  Matt Ward, Rob van Kranenburg, Gaynor Backhouse. RFID: Frequency, standards, adoption and innovation. PDF

  Why Technical Breakthroughs Fail: A History of Public Concern with Emerging Technologies. “In the face of various public concerns, some of these technical breakthroughs have been successful while many others have been unsuccessful. This white paper examines five cases of technical launches that have taken place during the last fifteen years.”

  Public Policy: Understanding Public Opinion. “As the Centre prepares to launch its EPC network it is therefore important to anticipate how the public will perceive this new technology, to anticipate any concerns and to explore ways in which the network can be improved, in order to ensure consumer’s confidence.”

  Spychips: how RFID will compromise privacy, security, freedom

  Privacy-Enhancing Radio Frequency Identification Tag: Implementation of the Clipped Tag. “The privacy-protecting tag, called the “Clipped Tag” has been suggested by IBM as an additional consumer privacy mechanism. The clipped tag puts the option of privacy protection in the hands of the consumer. It provides a visible means of enhancing privacy protection by allowing the transformation of a long-range tag into a proximity tag that still may be read, but only at short range – less than a few inches or centimeters. This enables later use of the tag for returns or recalls.” PDF

  Smart and Secure RFID tags “The philosophy of the RFIDsec tag is that all users can read and access the part of the tags information that is authorised for their specific use, and nothing else. Strong encryption, even on passive tags, ensures that the levels of access are not jeopardised. The Access Management software ensures simple and secure user control. Hence it is possible to have data on tag. The RFIDsec tag can even operate in Silent Mode, thus eliminating concerns about leaking information and consumer privacy.” Link

  See also references for RFID and the everyday

  Read more about these design briefs.

  No related posts.

  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/alternative-rfid-infrastructures/feed 1 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/04/rfid-form-factors http://www.nearfield.org/2007/04/rfid-form-factors#comments Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:06:32 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/04/rfid-form-factors As our interaction design students get deeper into prototyping with RFID, we needed to start looking at the range of possibilities around the materials and forms of RFID tags. Last week we created a demonstration board of all the RFID tags that we have collected over the last year. Most of these tags are available from places like Mannings in the UK and Trossen robotics in the US.

  

  The range includes ‘ampoule’ tags for embedding in animals, or under human skin, wristbands, tough plastic ‘pills’, CD labels, palette labels, outdoor labels, sticker-backed tags, various key fobs, playing cards, credit cards and pedagogic clear tags.

  One of our students, Einar, has started making standard RFID reading modules using mini Arduino’s and the tiny ID12 reader, which is becoming the standard way for students to explore low-frequency RFID systems alongside the Phidget USB reader.

  

  

  This gave the possibility of measuring the read-ranges of the 30 or so tags that we have. So now we have a good idea of the relative ranges of each size and kind of tag, which is very useful as we start to design all sorts of interactions around them. We are looking forward to seeing what opportunities emerge as the students explore the intricate details of RFID interactions, and the material possibilities for RFID form factors.

  

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/04/rfid-form-factors/feed 3 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/03/bluetooth-21-incorporating-nfc http://www.nearfield.org/2007/03/bluetooth-21-incorporating-nfc#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2007 19:56:54 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/03/bluetooth-21-incorporating-nfc The Bluetooth people are now getting on the NFC bandwaggon, the following video shows Mike Foley of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group demonstrating features that are NFC-based:

  Bluetooth has historically lacked a compelling ‘user-experience’, with passcodes and security getting in the way of adept interactions. It’s interesting here to see how NFC is being introduced as the ‘user-experience’ component of Bluetooth, and how compelling it seems for these relatively mundane interactions.

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/03/bluetooth-21-incorporating-nfc/feed 4 http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/rfid-hacking-workshop http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/rfid-hacking-workshop#comments Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:37:04 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/rfid-hacking-workshop

  So this week Touch is running an informal workshop where we are looking at the materiality of RFID, potentials in Radio Frequency and EMF, and building simple interactions and services using the technology.

  With us this week are Matt and Jack of Schulze & Webb, Even, Simen and Alex from Bengler, and Matt Karau (formerly Media Lab Europe).

  So far we have uncovered two very interesting directions for quick prototyping and hardware hacking. More updates soon.

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/rfid-hacking-workshop/feed 5 http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/phidget-rfid http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/phidget-rfid#comments Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:40:15 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/phidget-rfid

  Ten Phidget RFID boards arrived today. The Phidgets are an extremely cheap prototyping platform for simple RFID. They are low power, with a maximum read range of about 8 centimetres, so perfect for quick interaction prototyping of near-field applications. We’re planning to build some table based applications, and to use them in student projects. The only downside is the lack of anticollision: multiple tags can’t be in the vicinity of the reader at once.

  

  The boards plug in via USB to a host computer (can be used with USB hubs to create massive arrays of readers). They have drivers for Windows, Linux and OS X, plus libraries and sample applications for Visual Basic, C, C++, Flash, .Net, Java etc.

  With the readers came a huge variety of low-frequency tags, many of which are interesting from a design perspective. The CD/DVD tag, the tough polycarbonate buttons, and the very pedagogic clear plastic tags.

  

  [tags]RFID, Phidgets, prototyping, electronics, physical computing [/tags]

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/phidget-rfid/feed 2 http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/phantom-geometry-and-tissue-simulant-liquids http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/phantom-geometry-and-tissue-simulant-liquids#comments Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:20:14 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/wireless-devices-and-tissue-simulant-liquids

  I’m investigating the visualisation of electromagnetic fields, part of our exploratory process to look at the materiality of RFID. What are we talking about when we say ‘touch-based interaction’ or ‘near field’ for instance? This investigation threw up an interesting company: Indexsar specialises in:

  “Turnkey test systems for the measurement of SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) and the Over The Air (OTE) testing of wireless devices. Our product range includes E-field probes for use in both air and in tissue-simulant liquids, equipment for accurate testing of the dielectric properties of phantom liquids and a system to give a 3-Dimensional presentation of mobile handset radiation and sensitivity. We can supply suitable RF amplifiers and directional couplers for wireless product testing and can offer suitable phantoms (heads, hands and liquids) for testing radiated emissions.”

  Their test setup includes 6-axis industrial robots to move sensors around models of human anatomy (or “phantom geometry” in official testing language). Their setups include geometry for the head, and the right hand (no left hands yet). In the test rig below a liquid model moves while the sensors are stationary. It looks like it has been hacked together from meccano and a Wacom pad.

  

  These are some visualisations of bodily electromagnetic fields from Flomerics MicroStripes and Hugo:

  

  Microstripes software is a 3D electromagnetic simulation & synthesis tool:

  “MicroStripes is widely used to design antenna and microwave structures and assess their installed performance, to optimize RFID systems, to analyze radar cross-section (RCS), EMI/EMP and lightning effects on vehicles, ships and aircraft, and to predict absorption of EM fields in human tissue.”

  Another visualisation:

  

  Leafing through the manual for my Nokia E60 I noticed that it includes guidelines on holding the phone, in order not to degrade the performance, and thus battery life of the antennae.

  

  As we move towards multiradio devices, this analysis is going to become more important. I wonder what the fields look like around the RFID/NFC phones like the 3220...

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/phantom-geometry-and-tissue-simulant-liquids/feed 4 http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/developing-nfc-applications http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/developing-nfc-applications#comments Mon, 21 Aug 2006 18:18:46 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2006/08/developing-nfc-applications

  Judging by the number of emails we have received, there is great interest in software and hardware development of NFC applications. The main stumbling block at the moment seems to be working out what development platform to use, and knowing where to get hold of development kits for the various handsets and servers needed to run an NFC application.

  Bearing in mind that we haven’t used any of these things extensively yet, we are putting everything we know about getting hold of development resources here. Perhaps we can collectively use this post as a way of pooling information on the topic. Thanks to Peter Ljungstrand for initial conversations and valuable information on these things.

  NFC phones

  At the moment, the phones we can use for NFC development are the 5140 Field Force Solution and the 3220 NFC Shell. Both of these are rather quirky, the the 5140 is slow, and the NFC shell is somewhat unreliable. Nokia has admitted that these are trial releases for developers, and will never be widely released to the public.

  

  Both of these kits are available from Top Tunniste, and we’ve seen them pop up at other online stores too, so search around.

  Various rumours have been circulating about upcoming Nokia handsets: perhaps a flip phone with a fully integrated NFC chip, not just an interchangeable cover. We’ll have to wait and see but lets hope they have a robust and consistent approach to the next release, coupled with simultaneous rollouts of useful public services.

  Samsung has apparently developed an NFC enabled SGH-X700. There is some discussion about it over at the Sun developer network.

  In Asia, particularly Japan, many handsets are using the Felica standard that is supposedly compatible with NFC. It would be very interesting to hear any Asian experience with these phones or the Felica SDK.

  NFC tags

  The Nokia 3220 only comes with four tags, so any developer will need to get hold of more. Getting hold of tags is easy. Toptunniste for instance sells a few kinds of tags for about a euro each. But there are many other options: NFC is based upon high frequency ISO 14443 Mifare standard, so re-writeable Mifare Standard 1K/4K or Mifare Ultralight tags from any supplier should work. And these are available in many form factors, from cards, key fobs, stickers, to laundry tags and ‘mount on metal’ tags. Some other suppliers are Mannings, Promobox, Cardxx, SAG and Korea RFID.

  NFC standards and protocols

  The NFC forum is slowly releasing the specifications for NFC devices, and this is the first place to look if you want to find out if the NFC standard is right for your application. There is enough detail there to work on high-level descriptions of NFC applications and services.

  ‘Official’ development kits

  At the moment, because the Near Field Communication specifications haven’t been normalised, writing an application for NFC requires writing for one brand of phone, using proprietary development kits.

  
  The Nokia Field Force Solution Architecture, available here.

  The Nokia development kit for NFC is currently available from a number of suppliers. Top Tunniste in Finland sells a 5 user license for €2000, they also sell phones and compatible tags if you can’t find them locally. I’ve heard that the kit is available for around €800 in Germany and £500 in the UK so it may be worth phoning around to ask local suppliers.

  In the license agreement for the Nokia SDK you agree to use their proprietary server for networked interactions. For this you need to buy, or subscribe to the Nokia Local Interactions Server (LI Server). The LI server is described as such:

  Nokia Local Interactions Server (LI Server) is a cost-efficient, real-time Web service that simplifies data capture, reporting, management, and communication with mobile workforce. Quickly integrated into your company’s back-end systems, your field force personnel can use it to provide up-to-date information to the back-end office and receive instant feedback in their mobile phones. It is also an easy, but secure method to distribute and update company-specific phone Local Interactions (LI) Client software to end-users’ mobile phones.

  This is €400 from Top Tunniste. Getting around the LI server is supposed to be a little clumsy, but it’s possible (if not legal) to use your own server applications. At the simplest end of the spectrum, my students have used URI stored on tags as simple pointers to web applications that are invoked when a page is loaded, for instance.

  If you want to discover how other people are getting on with this stuff, then try searching at Forum Nokia for RFID or NFC, which reveals threads like this one.

  Other development kits

  There are other hardware and software NFC development kits available from places like Sirit, Inside contactless, Skyetek, Innovision and Wireless Dynamics. Given that the NFC forum specifications are still nascent, we don’t yet trust the interoperability between different manufacturer’s devices. So we haven’t used any of these so far, and would be very interested in your experiences.

  Contactless communication API

  JSR 257 the “Contactless Communication API” has been proposed by Nokia and is currently being defined by the Java Mobile community. It is supported by the Nokia 5140i FFS (Source) but we’re not sure about the Samsung phones. When rolled out and standardised, it should be a good common development space for all kinds of applications that require physical links or applications. One of the great possibilities is that we can prototype and launch using 2D barcode tags, and easily transition to NFC interactions as the handsets become widely available. We can also design more specialist applications that use Bluetooth or even IR in the same environment.

  Simon Woodside, the developer of Semacode, writes about it here:

  JSR 257: Contactless Communication API is defining both RF and visual tag interface for Java ME. This will be THE way to interact with visual tags and RFIDs, smart cards, etc. And since our SDK implements the public draft interface, you can future proof yourself.

  There is an overview of this and JSR 256, the “Mobile Sensor API” here, and an in-depth look at the standard here. It’s currently in the “Proposed Final Draft” stage so it looks like it’s pretty solidified.

  More information

  We are really interested in hearing about your experiences with development, it would be great to use this post as a place to collect information.

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