Tag Archives: NFC

NFC Mobile Payment and ISIS

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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.

WIMA NFC / Proximity Pre-conference

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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.

iBeacon vs. NFC

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“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

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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

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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?

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New iPhones’ Impact on NFC

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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?

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Apple and NFC

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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.

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NFC Mobile Wallet and Incoming WIMA-USA Conference

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A friend called me from an AT&T store. “Hi. I want to buy a phone that does Google wallet, and I can’t get a straight answer from the sales person.” Apparently it is very confusing for consumers to know their options in selecting a phone that works with mobile wallet. Here is some information on this topic for curious minds.

Google wallet uses NFC technology. This is how it work.

  • User owns an NFC enabled Android phone.
  • User downloads a mobile wallet app from Google Play, an app store, to their phone.
  • User launches the app and enters credit card information to it.
  • User uses the phone to pay bills at stores that have NFC readers available.

Google wallet was released in 2011. The mobile phones sold in Verizon and T-mobile stores don’t support it because Verizon, T-mobile, and AT&T all invested into ISIS, a mobile wallet joint venture. ISIS was in trial in Salt Lake City and Austin in 2012 and will be rolled out nationally sometime in the near future. If you are interested in these topics, you might want to consider attending the WIMA-USA conference.

WIMA-USA NFC & Proximity Solutions conference will be held in San Francisco on Oct 28-30th. The conference will have a rich conversation about contactless communication including NFC, Bluetooth, and QR code. An Early Bird 20% discount on the Full Access Pass (1or 2 days) is available until September 13th using code: EBUS13.

This is the 3rd WIMA conference in USA and you can read about my WIMA NFC 2012 conference experience here.

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Develop an NFC Strategy Through Observing Cloud Adoption Trends

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NFC pioneers in the US have questions about the adoption rate of the technology and the partnership opportunities in the ecosystem.

The adoption trends of Cloud Computing perhaps provide some insight on this inquiry. Amazon started to offer Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006, Google added Google Docs to its Gmail offering in 2007, Microsoft launched Azure in 2009, and Apple announced iCloud in 2011.

James Staten of Forrester Research, shared recent trends from a survey on Cloud developers at the  RightScale Compute 2013 conference. The first trend is that developers seem to be lacking in experience with Cloud. The survey revealed that only 30% of developers had hands-on experience with the Cloud. Given the number of consumers utilizing the Cloud, this low percentage is surprising to me. For example, my laptop offers Acer Cloud, my iPad synchronizes with my iPhone through iCloud, and my Google calendar is in Google Cloud. Because these and other Cloud products are becoming more widely utilized, one can assume that a high percentage of the developers are using Cloud products. What could motivate these developers to create Cloud-based apps?

Another trend points to smaller organizations as leaders in Cloud innovation. The survey revealed that less than a quarter of Cloud developers are working for large enterprises. Finally the demographic of the survey itself revealed a trend that US’s adoption seems to lag behind that of other countries. Only a quarter of Cloud developers are in the US; the others are in Asia and Europe.

What can this tell us about NFC? A brief history shows some of the parallels. The first NFC enabled mobile phone was released by Nokia in 2006. Since then, quite a few NFC-enabled phones have come on the market, followed by the introduction of NFC-enabled tablets in 2012 and 2013. Asia and Europe have had a higher adoption rate of NFC, while in the US, consumers are not taking full advantage of the capability.

If you are one of the NFC pioneers in the US, will working with large enterprises present a good opportunity? Where can you make an impact as an educator of the technology? “What do we need to do together to make this work” as asked by James Staten.

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NFC in Action

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I was browsing YouTube and found a few interesting demonstrations the uses of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.  

NFC for Beginners by GeekBlogTV demonstrates how to use an NFC phone to communicate with tags that are programmed for specific functions. The demo uses an app (NFC Task Launcher) from GooglePlay to program tags in order to perform designated tasks.

Android Home Automation Demo | Voice + NFC demonstrates two technologies: one for speech recognition and one for NFC. Armando Ferreira places NFC tags in different areas and appliances in his house. When tags are requested to perform tasks by an NFC phone, the hands-off automation is demonstrated.

Android provides an NFC framework for app developers to develop NFC mobile apps. NFC Basics  describes the Android framework APIs that support NFC features. For example, the Android app NFC Task Launcher, such as the one used by GeekBlogTV, was developed with Android framework APIs (Application Programming Interface).

The Windows phone Proximity API provides support for NFC communication. In this YouTube video Lumia App Labs #8 – Developing NFC apps in Windows Phone 8, Andreas Jakl demonstrates how one can use Proximity API in a mobile app to communicate with NFC tags and create unique application-launch tags.