RFID in Japan

Sounds like an interesting topic.

Green RFID Guy

RFID Gazette reports:

The Sultanate of Oman will be receiving 2.5M smart ID cards from Gemalto for the country's national ID card program. It's the first program of it's kind in the Middle East and will begin at the end of the year.

From Europe. This game is played in an office building in England. Developed by Andrew Wilson.

via RFID Journal

Something unique and noteworthy, from outside Asia. A group of researchers at University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab College Park built and tested a technology for supporting children's outdoor learning, using RFID.

Our solution is the Tangible Flags technology. On a field trip, each child (or team) is given a set of Tangible Flags and a wireless tablet computer with a radio frequency identification (RFID) scanner attached. Tangible Flags are computationally enhanced using RFID tags (see figure 2) and when scanned, provide access to digital information. While on a field trip a child can attach a Tangible Flag to any interesting item in their environment and can draw a picture or take notes relating to the flagged item using software on the tablet computer. The digital artifact is saved on a remote server via a wireless network. Children can use this same tangible interaction to access digital information created by others and annotate that information in a shared space.

via A case study of Tangible Flags: A collaborative technology to enhance field trips

Something unique happening outside Japan/Asia -- There's an interesting RFID event that will take place on May 20 in Germany: "How I Learned to Love RFID"

The series of lectures brings together approaches and projects that artistically and critically deal with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology - a technology that is significantly being developed and advanced by companies and research institutes in Dortmund.

Speakers include Bruce Sterling, Rena Tangens, Rob van Kranenburg, Wolfgang Lammers, Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits, Honor Harger, Adam Hyde.

more info (in German)

Another important event of course is the Mediamatic workshop "RFID & the Internet of Things." This one's taking place on May 9-11 in Amsterdam. Regine (of wmmna) is speaking at the workshop. That's cool.

Here's a unique piece of news from Canada. We haven't seen something like this happen in Japan --

Nancy Nisbet, who teaches visual art at the University of British Columbia and is an artist in her own right, is about to embark on a six-month roadtrip to educate North Americans about radio frequency identification.

[snip]

Nisbet's plan is to let people know about the promise and potential pitfalls of RFID by tagging all of her worldly possessions, loading them into a truck and driving them across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. She plans to trade away her tagged items to people she meets on the journey.

The Project's website

via IT Business\ < RFID Gazette

(This is about RFID but not about Japan or Asia. Nevertheless, I couldn't help blogging this, under the newly added category "world.")

WMMNA reported on Time Capsule, Eduardo Kac's project in 1997.

Eduardo Kac received the Arco-Beep award for electronic art for Time Capsule. In 1997, the artist inserted a microchip with an identification number into his ankle in front of photographs taken of family members during the 1930's in Europe. He then registered himself via the Web in a database designed for identification and recovery of lost animals, making it the first instance of a human being added to the database.