RFID in Japan

Shelly is a card for protecting RFID cards from skimming attacks. You just cover your RFID train pass (e.g., SUICA) or payment card (e.g., Edy) with this Shelly card and it disables the RFID's wireless communication. Sanrio recenlty licensed the use of Hello Kitty for Shelly cards and here's what happened:

http://www.shelly-shop.com/

via Nikkei, July 25

IBM Japan and Connect Technologies co-developed a system for printing and capturing/decoding "invisible" 2D barcodes using special ink that responds to black light. Yes, the barcodes show up only when they are exposed to black light. That's kind of cool. In their usage scenario, they do talk about a cell phone that has a camera and a blacklight LED for lighting.

via Lnews

via Keitai watch (the first five photos show the device).

If you remember, KDDI was testing RFID readers for mobile phones - it was more than a year ago. Recently, the company demoed RFID reader attachment for mobile phones at Wireless Japan 2006. It can be attached on the back of a mobile phone (the size: 106 x 50 x 16mm) and reads Hitachi's mu-Chip tags. The attachment communicates with a mobile phone via Bluetooth -- information captured from RFID tags is sent to the phone via Serial Port Profile. The reader can be controlled by using a BREW application that runs on a mobile phone. Anyway, what sounds exciting is that the company may release this RFID reader attachment soon, probably this fall.

via wireless watch japan:

DoCoMo labs has demonstrated that they can insert audio data on broadcast signals - in music and voice - which can be translated by enabled mobile phones into text messages and URL links.

also: ITmedia

SUICA is the popular "touch and go" RFID train pass/prepaid train ticket in Japan. I use the prepaid SUICA, so everytime I use up all the amount stored in the card I have to use a ticketing machine to add more money on it. This may change soon. JR East is introducing a service that allow some passengers to automatically recharge SUICA when they go through a ticket gate. Passengers will be able to reconfigure the default settings with SUICA using ATM machines -- when the cards should be recharged, how much, etc.

via nikkei shimbun, july 5

QRy is a QR Code company that offers so-called QR Charcters, which combine manga/anime flavored characters with QR codes. Examples include: QRobo(left) and NijigenJin(right).

thanks, don q!

Ubiquitous ID Center/ YRP Ubiquitous Networking Lab and HItachi, Ltd. unveiled UWB Dice, small active RFID tags using UWB-based wireless communication. There are two types: the smaller one (1cm3) that can be connected to external sensor devices and the larger one that can contain sensor devices inside the package. Their battery life is quite long: 9 years when the tags are activated once in 5 minutes. They can communicate data faster than existing active tags and they can be used to recognize positions of things with the accuracy of 30cm. About 1000 of them can be recognized by a reader deivice. The price: somewhere between a dollar/tag and tens of dollars/tag. The frequency band for these UWB tags (500MHz band) cannot be used in Japan at this moment but it will likely be legalized this fall.

via nikkei (photos)

Japanese supermarket chain Queens' Isetan put RFID tags on all the 2,700 wine bottles at their Shinagawa store and used a smart shelf, a display terminal, and kiosk terminal to provide customers detailed information about wine. This pilot test was part of the goverment's "Japanese Future Store Project" and lasted from Nobember 15, 2005 till January 24, 2006. They found that customers (especially regulars) bought more wine during the time the system was used. THey've used Hitachi's smart shelf -- it has metal plates that spearate bottles electromagnetically. They've used RFID for inventry management as well, using OAT Systems' middleware.

Nikkei has some photos.