Authentic opportunity? Enabling the audience to avoid counterfeit products could mean real big business.

Related story: REAL FINE WINES GET RFID CONNECTED >>

KEY MOBILE TRENDS: NFC, counterfeiting, RFID, internet of things, logistics, big data.


Currency, clothes, Converse, cosmetics, and car parts. Airplane brakes, batteries, baby formula, and watches. DVDs, pocketbooks, toothpaste, pharmaceuticals, cigarettes, and toys. If it gets bought, it gets faked, and even some of the world's most reputable retailers have found counterfeit goods in their inventory, and are often victims of fake returns and low-life distributors.

So, could all this fakery be a genuine opportunity for smartphone vendors, components makers, security firms, and developers? Yes.

According to some stats, the counterfeit economy is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Add in the monetary value of reputation-killing headlines like exploding phone batteries and electrocuting chargers and it's clear that brands around the world have every incentive to fight the fakes. But perhaps now it's time to enable the consumer to protect themselves.

In the wireless world, we've been talking about the real opportunities in checking authenticity for years. But now the technology enablers are really falling into place: well-connected devices, NFC, RFID, low-cost components. And the incentives are huge.

Here's one interesting use case for the implementation of connected anti-counterfeiting technologies: fine wines. Expensive wines, as well as other high-end spirits, are sometimes consumed years after purchase, and far removed from the original point-of-sale. Selinko, a firm specializing in end-to-end authentication solutions, is working with distillers to digitally certify bottles using RFID tags which allow retailers and consumers to authenticate the items via NFC-enabled smartphones (apparently only Android-based devices at the moment). As the secure RFID tags provide a unique identity to each bottle, this goes beyond barcode scanning.

Systems such as this also provide consumers, retailers, distributors, and manufacturers with more detailed information about the products and their flow via the logistics chain. Educating the audience about the wide problems of counterfeits could drive the creation of a new service industry and a smartphone upgrade cycle or two.

So, for smartphone vendors looking for opportunities to complement shrinking margins, this could be the real thing.

Wearable computing for hygiene behavior tracking.

Medgadget Story >>

"Please Note: Employees must wash hands... and wear these special behavior-tracking wrist bands."

On one hand I see this concept as a good idea, on the other hand as rather intrusive.

The concept of gadgets tracking our healthcare habits isn't so strange any longer, and it will get less so going forward. Many electric toothbrushes, for example, monitor the amount of time the user spends brushing and some even go further, tracking such things as pressure on the gums. Smartphone apps can record the level of daily activity and prod the owner to get moving, and I've read about specialized computer mice which can check the user's stress levels via the fingertip and advise accordingly.

But now the same technical components can be used by employers to monitor as well as change workers' behavior. Here's a wrist-worn device from a startup called IntelligentM which can track employees seven days per week, 24 hours per day. The device works using accelerometers and RFID to track where a hospital employee is and how properly and how often they wash their hands.

Is this an example of the use of sensors for good hygiene instead of evil? I can see the argument given the stats mentioned in the video below. But, on the other hand, it is a bit Big Brother like. Just hope you don't get called to hospital room 101 for employee evaluation.

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Blacksocks scandal? At $19 a pair, do socks really need RFID, or is this just abuse of available technology?

STORY >>

Has technology implementation reached a new low?
Does a sock really need an iOS app to find its beau?


I don't mean to knocks this great idea for socks.

For $190 you get a box that is filled with smart black socks.

And with these smart black socks comes a little black box.

This little black box can help you sort your special dark black socks.

But what if you lose your dark black box before you can sort your smart black socks?

Perhaps it's me and I'm a bit over the hill,
But is this the sort of thing that is technology overkill?

Fishy business. Get ready for the internet of fins. Swedish fish to get RFID’d from start to finish.

STORY via RFID Journal >>

(Yes that’s fins, not Finns.)

I can’t say that I had heard of the "fish-traceability project" before reading this story, but it seems like an obvious and beneficial use of RFID technology.

The Swedish Board of Fisheries is working of a process to support an RFID-based system to track fish from the boat to the consumer’s plate.

It will be interesting to see how this is implemented. There’s a great deal of potential in gathering micro and macro knowledge of transactions and industries.

Yup, there’s can be some real economies of scale with this project.

Sweet. Swedish fisheries will start NFC tagging as part of the governments “Fish-Traceability Framework.”