Gearfuse

Only furries could create something so ridiculously mundane that it completely circles around lameness and cycles back to being totally awesome again. This RFID-enabled Arduino-driven tail apparently reacts to different mood chips, wagging if your happy or excited, so on and so forth.

The tail is also controllable with the Wii Nunchuk remote. If your dressing up as a possum for Halloween, this tail could be an invaluable addition to your costume.

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Using an Arduino, hacker knowledge and a Nike+ iPod Serial to USB adapter, Nathan Seidle was able to rig up a system that constantly checks for his keyfob. When Nate gets close enough to his car, it opens up. When he walks away, it locks. The system worked flawlessly until he realized that while at work, the car would randomly lock and unlock due to his pacing around the office. The fix? Aluminum foil. A classic solution to blocking radio waves. If you want to make your own, instructions are available.

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Alright. Stick with me on this one. You crazy Europeans love to created weird names for products, like The Mirror by Violet. That being said, The Mirror’ is one of the neatest gadgets I’ve seen in a long time. Hook the $60 plate up to your Mac or PC and get ready to read some RFID tags. The set includes Ztamps (glorified RFID tags) that you can stick in objects and assign actions. For instance, say you shove one inside a sandwich. When you put the sandwich on top of the The Mirror by Violet, it could open up Firefox and surf to the Scanwiches blog.

Sounds like a creative tool. I’d like to know how you’d use this cheap RFID reader. I’d probably shove some in empty CD cases so that the songs would automatically play in iTunes when activated.

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The Arduino continues to power innovation and creation well into 2009. This blender, created by Matti Niinimaki, is rigged to create beats. No smoothies here, folks, just pounding techno full of cheesy sound FX. The Beat Blender prototype reads fruit embedded with RFID tags that are dropped into it. Hitting different blending speeds (Puree, Liquify, Blend, Grind, etc.) will add different effects and filters to the music, allowing for a unique style of making new music.

Matti’s setup makes use of a combination of hardware and software, including Max/MSP, Ableton Live, an RFID reader and of course, the Arduino. What gives Matti? Max/MSP? You know Pure Data would work just as well and we’d all be able to play around with your code.

I guess when God gives you lemons, you make music.

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Children are increasingly interested in social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook. However, children under 13 don’t really have a lot of safe options for an online presence and the technical curve can be difficult for some. This is all solved with the RFID-enabled Poken.

These little toys come with big hands for high-fiving. Two kids can high five each other’s Poken and their information will be transferred to the device. Once they get home, they can use a USB cable to download their friend’s information. It’s a unique way of interaction that really brings people closer. You have to actually talk to people in real life? Now that is innovation.

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Need even more proof that RFID doesn’t improve security? According to a group of hackers who bypassed an ePassport RFID authentication at an Amsterdam airport, RFID passports aren’t as secure as people think. Using software to design custom identities as well as convincing scanners to accept fabricated RFID chips, the hackers got around security without raising suspicion.

They used an image of the late Elvis Presley for their passport and still, no one said anything. The group has even made their method publicly available, so you can attempt to bypass security at your own airport. Though, I don’t recommend attempting it.  You could end up in Guantanamo Bay.

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This isn’t the first idea of real-life geotagging but a new system called Tikitag certainly looks to be the most successful. Think of it as a personal RFID system with a receiver and some sticky tags. These are fully programmable in the sense that you can associate any URL with the RFID tag. Throw it on a pack of condoms and have it take you to JDate. Now that’s a pretty clear message.

Throw one on your biz card and have it take your client to your website. Presto! If the idea of bringing the Internet into the real world excites you, you should probably seek professional help or Amazon.com, where you can purchase Tikitags for $50 on October 1st. That’ll net you a scanner and ten tags, quite enough to cause some havoc.

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If any of our francophone readers happen to be in France soon, be sure to let us know how your trip was. More specifically, we want to know if French transit company SNCF has expanded it’s trial RFID program. Passengers will receive a USB drive with an RFID chip inside it. You can add money to the account via RFID or hand it to an attendant who will refill it over USB. SNCF wants to have all it’s customers using the system by 2010, so we’ll see what happens. Remember: security always plays a huge part.

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For the opening and closing ceremonies at the Olympics, the Beijing committee included RFID chips with spectators’ passport information and home/e-mail addresses in each ticket to prevent counterfeits and hacker intrusions. Like the RFID-driven Japanese urn system, the Beijing system makes sure that anyone who isn’t supposed to be there, won’t. Much like U.S. airport security, if you were a foreigner with an RFID ticket, you’d still get the ill treatment as if you were up to no good.

According to a Dutch businessman, he was asked to drink his sunscreen to prove it wasn’t an explosive and when he explained that he couldn’t drink sunscreen, he was let through without further inquiry. “The security was less than professional and not completely thorough,” he said.

That really does sound just like airport security here in the states. One time, I was forced to eat a bar of soap simply because it was the same color as Anthrax. After eating it, they let me through. When I went through the gate, I started vomiting up a foamy white solution. This led them to believe I was a terrorist. What a horrible vacation that was.

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Burial plot prices are skyrocketing in Japanese cities, so one company built a facility that uses RFID technology to help store the dead. At Nichiryoku, mourners visit a “prayer area” where they swipe RFID cards to have the cremated remains of their loved one are lifted up from an underground storage vault.

CScout Japan has some excellent videos of the RFID burial plots in action. My favorite is the Nichiryoku commercial where a woman tells the ghost of her dead father that visiting him is “no problem” because the automated cemetery is so “close to the train station.” This sounds like a great way to say Sayonara to gadget lovers who are looking a futuristic funeral.

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