RFID in Japan

In 2005, Japanese consumer electronics makers together established so-called Consumer Electronics RFID Consortium. Their aim is to develop usage models and international standards of RFID-based product life cycle management for consumer electronics devices.

@IT has this recent story on the consortium. One of the consortium's major goals is to improve the process of recycling. For example, refrigerators, which may or may not contain ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbon. By RFID tagging and tracking information about each individual refrigerator, one may easily figure out the right recycling method for it.

In this recycling scenario, however, RFID tags are not removed after purchase. Therefore, there would be much larger privacy concerns than supply-chain or storefront RFID scenarios. I'd think consumers may want to remove and/or kill the tags after purchase, and voluntarily reattach and/or reactivate the tags at the time of disposal.

In sum, privacy-aware recycling would be cool.

I saw these RFID-enabled posters for the first time, at JR Shinjuku Station. They are called SuiPo. When passengers show their RFID tickets (SUICA cards) to the posters, they get relevant info/ads on their cell phones.

RFID readers are between the posters.

First time users need to associate their RFID ticket IDs with their mobile phone email addresses, using this kiosk terminal.

It worked! But, things were a bit different than I thought.

First, I made a seat reservation on the website. Then, I got an SMS message on my phone. When, I clicked the payment link on my phone the system took the money from my mobile phone's RFID chip (I had to enter my SUICA password in the process). Then I got another SMS message with a 10 digit reservation number.

When I got to the theater complex, I wasn't quite sure what to do. So, I asked a person at the Information Desk, and she said that I had to get a paper ticket using a kiosk terminal. The kiosk terminal didn't seem to have an RFID reader, so I had to type in the 10 digit code as well as the website password. Worked! I finally got a familiar ?paper ticket.

Overall, I didn't think RFID ticketing drastically made the process of going to see a movie easy, in this case. Things could be better. For example, if they had RFID-enabled gates at the theater complex, I could have walked right through into my theater just by presenting my phone to a gate, instead of spending the minute in front of a kiosk terminal. Also, I'd like to use it without making a reservation. I'd like to just walk into whichever theater I want - the system could count the number of the people in the theater and tell which one's full or not.

A few months ago, I intended to update the blog more dilligently than last year. But, I was involved in several other things, and could not post anything until recently. Feel free to scoff at me, haha. To rehabilitate myself, I'd start by posting weekly...

Since it seems easy to find stories about good experiences with great new technologies. I am inclined to report something different.

This morning, I found that Spiderman 3 is already out in Japan, so I looked for theaters near my place. There you go, Shinjuku Wald 9. As they have an RFID-based ticketing system, I decided to use it for the first time. I should be able to make a seat reservation on a website and use my (RIFD-chipped) phone as a movie ticket. That would be cool.

The first step was to create my account with the service, called KINEZO. This was pretty easy and it took about 2:30 min to enter my personal info. Then I was ready to make a reservation on the website. The earliest one started around noon. I clicked on a seat that looked available and then after a few clicks, it says there are no seats available. What? I did the same with the ones starting at different times, and after many clicks, it repeatedly said "there are no seats available." It took about 5 minutes to find a seat for the one starting at 4:30pm. I could have done this quicker, but, okay, 5 min isn't too bad. Click, click, and I got an SMS message on my phone with the link to make a payment. It said that I had to make the payment by 3:30pm, but I read 4:30pm. Also, I thought I would be able to pay at the movie theater by just touching a gate machine, so I decided to ignore the payment link.

I set my alarm on my phone at 3:55pm. But I left at 3:45pm, before the alarm rang, because I wanted to get there a bit earlier. Just to be safe. On the way to the theater, I remembered something about my phone and was concerned about it. About a week ago, I was about to get on a train, but changed my mind. As I used my phone as a train ticket, I had to talk with the service person to undo my getting into the platform. He said that they were unable to undo it and I had to go to some other station to do so, where they have the right equipment. Without fixing this problemI could not use my phone as a train ticket. So, I thought I might not be able to use my phone as a movie ticket until I fix it.

I was pretty sure that I can fix this at JR Shinjuku station, since it is one of the largest train stations. A bit of detour, but no big deal. I was right. They fixed it for me in a second and I got to the theater at around 4:25. I just remembered about the payment and clicked the payment link on the escalator up to the theater. What? I cannot make the payment?? It doesn't sound too good. But let's just talk to someone at the ticket office... If I get mad enough they may give me a ticket?? (That's absolutely not the case in Japan.)

There was a line at the ticket office. But, I only had to wait for 2:30 minutes and it took about 1 minute to talk with the ticket sales person. It must have been faster this way, without using the RFID-based ticket system. Anyway, my reservation was of course automatically cancelled and Spiderman 3 was all full. They said I had to wait at least for two hours. So, I decided not to see the movie this time.

In his keynote speech at CHI 2007, Bill Moggridge showed us the video clip of an extraordinarily patient woman using a "smart" vending machine Cmode. Incidentally, Cmode doesn't seem as popular as SUICA vending machines, at least in my area. Here's me buying a drink (first selected a drink, and then showed my phone).

I wonder why the design of these vending machines are quite different.