Author Archives: Hsuan-hua Chang

About Hsuan-hua Chang

Hsuan-hua has over 20 years of experience in wireless technology, holding many corporate positions ranging from software engineer, technical architect to product marketing manager. She is the author of “Everyday NFC” and is working on an update release of the book.

ISIS – Not an Option for my Galaxy 3

Posted on by

Yesterday, I was at the AT&T Store to get an ISIS SIM card in order to use ISIS mobile payment. The rep was very excited since this was the first time she has activated an ISIS SIM card. The store manager Chris was next to us assisting her. He was very pleasant and introduced Digital Life products to me while we were waiting for ISIS to work.

After trying two ISIS SIM cards, three reboots of the phone,  four technical support calls and 1.5 hours waiting, my Samsung Galaxy 3 kept on returning with an error message that read “ISIS requires a new SIM card with a Secure Element”.  Tech support was transferred from AT&T to ISIS and the problem remained. So ISIS tech support suggested to transfer back to AT&T tech support. Finally, we decided that ISIS was not going to be an option for my phone.

I looked at the Google Play store and found similar dissatisfied comments made by other consumers. Carriers have some work to do to fix these problems.

ISIS Mobile payment started its trial last fall in Austin and Salt Lake City. It uses NFC technology for data exchange and secure element in the SIM card to save credit card information. Since a SIM card is hard to hack, a SIM based secure element is a more secure solution. Secure element will also be used for storing credentials for building access; for example hotel room locks or office building access.

The transportation market segment is also planning to store credentials to SIM based secure element so that mobile phones can be used to pay transit fare. Since the carriers’ infrastructures are not ready, the transportation market may get impatient and give up on secure element.

I hope the future secure element based NFC applications will work well so that consumers can really enjoy NFC technology and pick up the technology as Asia and Europe have. A good news is that ISIS has introduced ISIS Alliance Program to support the ecosystem. We shall keep an eye on its development.

NFC Mobile Payment and ISIS

Posted on by

Seattle Technical Forum held its monthly meeting on November 13th. I was invited to speak on NFC (Near Field Communication). Most of the audience was not familiar with the technology. As an introduction, I did a demonstration by tapping an NFC-enabled phone to a tag pasted on my business card. The audience was surprised to see my Amazon author page show up on the phone as a result. This demonstrated how NFC tags can be used to distribute information.

In my 15 minute presentation, I explained basic NFC technology, shared some current NFC applications, compared QR code with NFC tag usage and shared my vision of NFC’s potential. Karl J. Weaver, another NFC presenter, explained NFC secure mode in detail and focused on the mobile payment landscape. His speech was uploaded to YouTube. Drawing on his working experience in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong for Gemalto over the last five years, he offered a lot of insights on NFC mobile wallet.

In the Q/A session, the majority of the questions asked were on NFC security. People were curious about the adoption rate of the ISIS mobile wallet and the compatibility between chipset Secure Element used in Europe vs. SIM-based Secure Element used in ISIS.

ISIS, launched today, is a joint venture of T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. It’s an NFC mobile wallet implementation that allows NFC-enabled mobile phones to serve as a wallet. This is a link to AT&T’s announcement, which includes steps that need to be taken in order to enable NFC mobile wallet. NFC World also shows video clips on how to use ISIS.

Currently, ISIS only works with Android devices and there are limited merchants. Since telecoms haven’t promoted NFC-enabled phones despite their rapid release last year,  it will be interesting to watch how consumers adopt ISIS.

It was a pleasure to present in the Seattle Technology Forum. Other speakers, Roy Leban (Why Mobile Doesn’t Matter), Arvind Krishnan (Negotiating the Mobile First Challenge) and Jeremy Foster (Mobile UX Paradigms) all had awesome presentations and invoked lively discussion with the audience.

Reflection About Attending Conferences + WIMA USA 2013

Posted on by

Over the past several years, I have attended many conferences, trade shows and training events.  Of these, I’ve found myself especially inspired by coach training conferences, such as the ICF (International Coach Federation) Global conference held in London last autumn.  These events feed my soul. By participating, I am able to renew my life purpose and re-evaluate my path.

When I attend a technology conference or training, my curiosity and passion for new technologies are satisfied. I am able to realize ideas and concepts learned at these events in my career; for example, the social media platform that I built for the AT&T Developer Program was inspired by such a conference.

Through attending such events, I’ve gradually developed an interdisciplinary lens on business, technology and humanity. By bridging the gaps among these three distinct sectors, I am able to see unique business opportunities and build relationships with like-minded people based on synergy and vision.

Recently, I attended the three day WIMA NFC/Proximity Solutions conference. The great speakers, rich information and diverse attendees that I encountered were inspiring.  One outstanding presenter at this conference was Patrick Meyer, the CEO Futurist, Biz 3.0 Expert, and author of the book Steve Jobs & The World of Mobile.

This book provides insight on mobile development, where it is now, and its path into the future. Meyer’s vision inspires me since it echoes my purpose for writing Everyday NFC to educate people about this accessible, yet underutilized technology. I hope my book will serve as a source of information and inspiration for the many visionaries and innovators I have yet to meet.

WIMA NFC / Proximity Pre-conference

Posted on by

The WIMA NFC / Proximity Solutions Conference is being held in San Francisco from October 28 to 30. This is the third WIMA conference in the USA. Last year, WIMA focused on NFC (Near Field Communication) technology and this year the scope has been expanded to other Proximity connectivity technologies: QR codes, Bluetooth, BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), etc.

In yesterday’s pre-conference sessions, NFC, QR codes and Bluetooth overviews were presented by Gonda Lamberink, Stephanie True Moss and Dimtri Galeridis. Technology Marketing strategy and use cases were presented by Thomas Hissam and Serafin Arroyo. Panel discussions at the end of the day was very engaging and the audience participated actively. Marc Greenbaum, Verizon, shared telecom’s position on educating consumers and mobile payment (ISIS).

We also discussed what is the right technology for the right market. Consumers don’t care about which technology is used. The user experience is the most important. How we deploy the technologies that will serve the consumers is key. How we collect and leverage the data collected by these technologies is important to develop brand through personalization.

We are looking forward to today’s sessions and learning.

Reflections on Big Data Confereneces

Posted on by

Last week, I attended two technical events. One was Big Data Techcon in San Francisco and another was Seattle Biz-Tech Summit 2013. My focus was on Big Data and proximity sensors.

For Big Data Techcon, there were many sessions about tools; for example, how to collect data, analyze the data and make a correct interpretation of the analytics. The emphasis is on engineering data. Two things that stood out for me was the graph data base and the keynote speech by Doug Cutting.

The graph data base has an advantage to visualize the connections between Big Data. The book, “Graph Databases”, was given away at the session led by Max De Marzi. He was passionate about Neo4j and showed us the connections between Facebook accounts using code. The connections were visualized regardless of the privacy setting in Facebook.

In the keynote speech, Doug Cutting, the founder of Hadoop claimed that “Hadoop 2 is the Big Data OS” and “Open source’s time has come”. After the keynote, Doug was available to talk to people who wanted to obtain his insights or wanted to have a photo with him. Regarding my inquiry about his view on proximity sensors and Big Data, he saw the significance of the sensor impact to Big Data and made an example with retail stores “What would be the value to the retail stores when they can figure out the shopper’s favorable route.

Seattle Biz-Tech Summit 2013 also focused on Cloud and Big Data. I particularly enjoyed the panel “Innovation and Impacts of Cloud Computing and Big Data”. Dave Segleau, Director, Oracle described the phases of the customer adoption of Big Data as:

  1. What is Big Data?
  2. What can Big Data do?
  3. I have a Big Data (or NoSQL) problem. How can I use your product help me build and deploy a Big Data (or NoSQL) based solution?
  4. I’m starting to understand the issues (limitations, requirements, administration) around managing a Big Data (or NoSQL) solution.
  5. Here’s how I can leverage Big Data to benefit the Enterprise and our customers.

Ying Li, Director, ACM SIGKDD suggested that we would move from an engineering data phase to a data knowledge sharing phase in the future. She was an advocate for open data. Jay Mozek, Chief Architect & Director, iSoftStone thought that we need to be clear about the business goal before engineering data. Chris Garvery, Senior Director, Expedia encouraged us to think what we can’t do today and use data to discover the possibility. Panelists had their own perspectives and their unique views made the session informative and interesting.

Yesterday, I found this article that shared how graphics chips can help process big data sets in milliseconds and “opening up new ways to visually explore everything from Twitter posts to political donations.” This trend of facilitating big data visualization is certainly in full swing.

IMG_0163[1]

iBeacon vs. NFC

Posted on by

“Will the lack of iPhone support for NFC kill NFC?” This LinkedIn NFC Group discussion thread has been going on for the last 20 days.  It is a good discussion with various opinions on NFC’s future. One topic that came up was “iBeacon vs. NFC”.

Beacons are small wireless sensors that can placed inside any physical space. An iPhone supporting Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) with iOS7 becomes an iBeacon that can receive data from other beacons. It also can detect other iBeacons when they are nearby. An iBeacon also serves as an indoor GPS with built-in indoor mapping capability.

Since BLE’s connectivity range is 10 to 50 feet, it creates a location mapping zone for iBeacon. When a customer steps into an iBeacon zone, indoor mapping will indicate the location of the customer and retailers can use this information to send customers special promotions or personalized messages based on their shopping histories. Retailers know exactly where you are and how long you stay there; even if you are in the restroom. Your movements are transparent in the iBeacon zone.

NFC connectivity works within 4cm (1.57 inches) between NFC-enabled devices or an NFC-enabled device and a tag. It’s a very short distance contactless technology and it’s more secure because of the short distance. You might be tracked when you tap but not when you move around.

I think, even if Apple decides not to adopt the technology, NFC will have its own market for many applications as demonstrated in Europe and Asia. At the same time, iBeacon apps might be released quickly since the APIs are easy to use. Our new generation is so used to share their life publically through social media that they might enjoy using the apps; especially gaming ones; regardless of privacy issues.

Want to learn more about NFC? Please check out my newly released book “NFC: Near Field Communication Explained” and attend WIMA-NFC & Proximity Solution Conference.

Sensors and Big Data Analytics

Posted on by

After learning about Google’s Sensing Lab, I did some reading on Big Data and sensors.

In the book of “Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave” by Bill Franks, the value of sensor data was demonstrated with the case of industrial engines and equipment. It discussed how the embedded sensors were utilized from aircraft engines to tanks in order to monitor the second-by-second or millisecond-by-millisecond status of the equipment. All data was fed into “Big Data” analytics.

IBM and The Beacon Institute also collaborated on an effort to use a sensor-enabled monitoring network In order to track temperature, salinity and pollution of the Hudson River. Actually IBM Big Data Technology is used to develop several environmental protection projects like this one.

What about proximity sensors and Big Data? Coca Cola is using NFC tags and QR codes in 100 selected retail stores to collect the data about user behavior and handsets. The backend platform collects analytics such as time, location, frequency of interaction, tap vs. scan, phone model, operating system, service provider and browser type. SocialTagg, a startup in LA, offers an event management platform to enrich attendees’ networking experience by using Big Data analytics on QR codes/NFC tags that were assigned to the event participants.

I will be leading a panel on “Building a Link Between NFC/Proximity Technologies & Big Data” in WIMA USA – NFC and Proximity Solution conference on October 29th in San Francisco. I am looking forward to having a rich discussion with the participants. If you are a “Big Data” expert and would like to join the panel, please contact me at info@everydaynfc.com.

Big Data and Proximity Sensors

Posted on by

I attended “Social Data Week Seattle” hosted by the Tableau Software today. An overview of the workshop stated that “Social Data Week Seattle will explore the business opportunities and practicalities of creating a socially intelligent business by leveraging big data, social data and analytics.”

I arrived 30 minutes late, and there were no seats left. In front of the packed room, Rahul Khandkar from Google was giving a presentation on “Google and Big Data”. He mentioned that smart sensors, machines and social data sources will generate large volume data which will grow with time. He also demonstrated how data collected by Google Sensing Lab is analyzed.

  • Sensors (RFID or NFC?) pick up data.
  • Endpoints/App Engine ingests and processes data.
  • Datastore stores data.
  • Compute Engine BigQuery computes data.
  • Data is visualized by a Dashboard after big data analytics work.

In a previous blog, I’ve mentioned how Google is collecting purchaser’s data. Now, I’ve learned that Google is planning to collect more data from proximity sensors. What a vision!

Daniel Hom from Tableau spoke on “Using Social Analytics for Insights”. He demonstrated analyzing social data with Tableau:

  • Datasift, a Cloud platform for extracting value from social data, collects data.
  • Googlebigquery, a web service, performs interactive analysis.
  • Tableau displays the analytics in a dashboard instantaneously.

Tableau seems to be a very robust tool at making sense of and visualizing big data.  How fortunate it is that we have these innovative companies in Seattle.

I like the idea of “creating a socially intelligent business by leveraging big data, social data and analytics.” Web2.0 provides a self-expression platform and we have a large self-expressed population. What could be easier to understand our customers than understanding their needs and wants through social data?

IMG_0123

IMG_0124

IMG_0129

New iPhones’ Impact on NFC

Posted on by

Today, Apple announced the upcoming release of iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C. There are descriptions and discussions about the two iPhones to be released. Unfortunately the revelation that neither phone will have NFC capabilities is a disappointment for the NFC ecosystem.

Despite this fact, iPhone Touch ID, a new fingerprint sensor feature for authentication, may have significant implications for the NFC ecosystem. One of the values that NFC provides is security. Common practice is to save sensitive information in the Secure Element (SE).  For example, ISIS, a joint venture between AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, uses this practice for secure mobile payment. With this approach, permission is needed to access SE. Permission is granted after a successful authentication from carriers.

Touch ID has the potential to be utilized as an authentication option for accessing SE. Moreover, Touch ID could limit the need for using UICC/SIM based SE. UICC/SIM based SE is an operator-centric option, since carriers control the access of the UICC/SIM. It provides ultimate security because no one can access it without a carrier’s permission. 

Many stakeholders in the NFC ecosystem want to bypass carriers’ control over SE. Touch ID has the potential to shift our perspectives on security and authentication. What are your thoughts on this possibility?

iphone5

Apple and NFC

Posted on by

If you purchase a song from iTunes, you decide to give it to your friend as a gift, Apple will provide a method to deliver the gift using Near Field Communication (NFC)!

Surprised? Apple doesn’t offer NFC, at least not yet.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published an Apple patent application on August 15th.  The patent was titled “Media gifting devices and methods,” It specified how iOS device users purchase and consume digital content with the NFC transaction. See details here.

On September 6th, Apple filed for a European patent about devices with fingerprint scanner and NFC. See details posted by Patently Apple. The European patent application is derived from a U.S. patent application filed in September 5th and titled “Electronic Device with Shared near Field Communications and Sensor Structures”. It described a dual mode operation as follows “When operated in a sensor mode, the sensor circuitry may use the conductive structure to gather a fingerprint or other sensor data. When operated in near field communications mode, the near field communications circuitry can use the conductive structure to transmit and receive capacitively coupled or inductively coupled near field communications signals.” (see picture attached)

This is not the first time that Apple has filed for a patent based on NFC technology. What does this tell you about Apple and NFC? I expect that NFC will continue to expand with or without Apple’s participation. And Apple’s participation is very likely to surprise everyone.

applePatent