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Facebook tests RFID-based location services — NFC on the way?

Sarah Clark — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:48:32 +0000

The All Facebook blog reports that Facebook is issuing RFID tags to all the delegates attending its f8 developer conference:

All attendees of the f8 developer conference are receiving special RFID tags that enable them to check-in to various locations throughout the conference venue. The service lets you tag yourself in photos, become a fan of various Facebook Pages, and share activity to your Facebook profile.

"One can imagine that RFID would be extremely useful for enabling users to check in to various locations, however in its current form, there’s little disclosure on what each check in results in," the blog continues. "The process is clearly an early stage test to provide some entertainment value for attendees of the f8 event. It’s definitely interesting though and it’s a sign that we may see other location announcements in the coming hours."

Could Facebook have plans to provide RFID cards to its 400 million users around the world? While that is highly unlikely, enabling users to check in to locations using their NFC phone does provide Facebook with a clear business model. Like Apple, and Google too, it has the potential to build a serious business around using near field communication to provide location-based mobile marketing services and mobile coupons to businesses and brands around the world...

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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PhoobyBook introduces TouchTwits for NFC-based social networking

Sarah Clark — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:35:52 +0000

Italian start-up FreeAccess has developed a new service that enables users to send each other Twitter-like NFC-based short messages by simply tapping their NFC handset over a friend's phone.

TouchTwits are part of a new service called PhoobyBook that allows users to manage multiple social web identities in a single SIM-based application that stores profiles, preferences and contacts associated with each of the users' web identities.

"All this information can be immediately exported or imported to/from existing services (eg Facebook, MySpace, etc), creating what we call user profile portability: having one identity independent of how many communities the user belongs to," say FreeAccess' founders Alessandro Cilardo and Luigi Esposito.

"In addition, PhoobyBook provides personal messaging, mobile microblogging, etc, which may be seamlessly linked to their Internet-based counterpart (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc)," the founders explain. "Furthermore, based on peer-to-peer NFC interaction, PhoobyBook lets users exchange short messages by proximity, i.e. by tapping their handset over a friend's phone. These short messages, called TouchTwits, establish restricted and more intimate relationships between groups of users, creating new, compelling interaction forms."

The service is one of ten shortlisted for the 2010 Simagine awards and is being demonstrated at the Sophia Antipolis Pavilion at the Mobile World Congress this week. The winner will be announced on 20 April.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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Tranzfinity adds NFC to Facebook

Sarah Clark — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:57:15 +0000

A new NFC-based service has launched in Los Angeles that automatically updates a consumer's Facebook status with a message from the merchant every time they tap a poster in a shop or restaurant to obtain a special offer.

PROMOTION: Smart posters indicate discounts are available — and where to tap your mobile phone

NFC specialist Tranzfinity has launched a new marketing service at Los Angeles' LA Live entertainment complex that enables merchants to post messages automatically to their customers' Facebook accounts.

Merchants participating in the system place a smart poster containing an NFC tag at the entrance to their store, restaurant or entertainment venue. Consumers, who need to have either an NFC phone or an NFC enabler such as Tranzfinity's Myztro device, then tap the poster when they enter the merchant's premises to receive a coupon and, in exchange, have their Facebook status automatically updated with a message such as "Ryan Bethea is enjoying a special offer at Trader Vic's @ LA Live".

Whilst consumers need to have an NFC phone or other device to use the system, a key advantage of Tranzfinity's solution is that merchants do not need any additional equipment beyond the posters, which are provided by the company.

Instead, once the consumer has received their coupon over the air, they simply show the coupon to their waiter or at the point-of-sale in order to redeem it. Although that means redemption rates are tracked manually, it eliminates set-up costs for the merchant. And, since Tranzfinity charges merchants a fee each time a customer downloads a coupon plus only a much smaller fee for redemption, it means that accurate tracking is not essential.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS: In return for the coupon, a promotional message is posted to the consumer's Facebook wall (click to enlarge)

"This is an excellent way to look at how we can start to participate in social networking and interact with our customers and their friends," says John Valencia of Trader Vic's, one of the merchants participating in the LA Live system. "You can't underestimate the power of having a customer pass along a positive experience at your restaurant."

The system runs on Tranzfinity's Secure-Z ETSM platform which allows merchants to vary the offer made according to a number of parameters such as the time of day. And, whilst the first run of smart posters contains only one NFC tag, several could be included, Tranzfinity's Rob Canterbury told NFCW, so that a variety of offers could be made at the same time.

The system running at LA Live is managed directly by Tranzfinity. The company's main business, however, is in developing its Secure-Z platform as a white label product that can be licensed for use by other companies looking to offer near field communication based solutions.

To that end, as well as the Facebook service already developed, Tranzfinity is also working on a number of other applications that will run on the same platform. These include a new service that turns standard mobile phones into contactless card accepting POS terminals via the addition of a Myztro device. These are manufactured by SCM Microsystems and, in volume, have a target price in the mid-€20 range.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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Brigham Young University to test new NFC microSD solution

Sarah Clark — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:49:39 +0000

Students at BYU-Idaho will begin testing an NFC microSD solution from Rfinity in September.

SECURE: RFinity's system brings together encryption, one-time tokens, NFC and microSD cards

A new microSD-based NFC solution from US start-up Rfinity is to undergo its first field trial at Brigham Young University-Idaho in September.

Students equipped with the Rfinity microSD solution will initially be able to use their phones to make purchases at the campus bookshop. Plans then call for the project to be expanded from January 2010 to include up to 1,000 participants and additional functions, including peer-to-peer transactions and others that will be developed by Brigham Young students.

Rfinity was founded by two ex-US Department of Energy mobile security experts, Aaron Turner and Steve McCown, who worked together at the DoE's Idaho National Labs on analysing mobile phone security vulnerabilities — and which led the pair to investigate ways of enabling mobile phones to securely handle mobile payments. Backers include Gideon Yu, former CFO of both Facebook and YouTube, and Rajiv Dutta, former president of eBay Marketplaces and an EVP of eBay Inc.

The core of Rfinity's technology rests, as the founders' backgrounds might suggest, with its encryption technology, rather than with the microSD card itself. This enables a secure one-time token to be generated each time a transaction takes place and ensures that a user's credit card details never need to be transmitted, even in an encrypted form.

Although the company has a patent for its microSD-based solution, the token technology could equally well also be built into the secure element of an NFC phone, Steve McCown, Rfinity's CTO, told NFCW.

In fact, the company's ultimate goal is to become what McCown describes as a 'Mobile Open Encryption Platform', an underlying combined hardware and software encryption technology that other companies could use as a platform on which to build their own solutions.

One reason for the choice of a microSD solution comes from the founders' experiences at the DoE, McCown explained. Given his knowledge of cellphone vulnerabilities, he says, the idea of a SIM-based NFC system in which the mobile operator is in control is not one that fills him with confidence. "Here in the States, the telco always seems to get my bill wrong," he told NFCW. "So there's an access control issue that I'm not entirely comfortable with."

The Brigham Young University field trial will be "the first public shakedown of the technology," says McCown, giving Rfinity the opportunity to tweak the technology based on feedback from the trial, ahead of a planned commercial launch in mid-2010.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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