

Ask HN: Would you use an NFC PaaS (easy solution for real world analytics)? - auston

Hello HN,<p>I am part of a new company in the NFC space - for those unfamiliar, NFC is a way to uniquely identify things in the real world using rfid.<p>We have not launched &#38; are considering options for product development. One of them is becoming a PaaS company.<p>So, the platform would be a service that allows you to get our NFC cards, a reader (android app or a small hardware device) &#38; a web api to those cards. We would do things like store all of your cards checkins/scans &#38; push checkins/scans to your server if you'd like as well as provide analytics via interface &#38; api. Additionally, we would provide example code for reading tags / integrating api in several languages. In essence, we're like a Twilio of real world tracking/analytics.<p>For clarity sake, here are a few possible use cases:<p>1. The automagic wakeboarding photos (or video) app - Imagine you have a cable ski park, you could stick an NFC strips on the bottom of your wakeboard &#38; one of our waterproof terminals at the base of a ramp that will notify your service in which you could activate a camera &#38; snap a photo (or video) of the person ski-ing &#38; send them emails with all of their photos from their ski session.<p>2. The single loyalty card for every restaurant ever - Imagine you'd like to be a rewards company that gives you a loyalty card that provides rewards at every restaurant registered with your service. You could order our NFC cards (or stickers if you want people to stick them on the back of their drivers license) &#38; distribute them to your restaurants to give out or give them out yourself. Your members can now swipe/tap &#38; get rewards anywhere.<p>3. The supermarket tabulation app - If you could work your way into wholefoods &#38; replace every shelf price sticker with an NFC sticker you could have people go through the store &#38; scan each item/quantity they plan on buying (using their android/nfc enabled phone) &#38; get a running total of their grocery bill (or perhaps find deals for similar items?)<p>4. The realtime wallet &#38; keys app - Imagine a phone app that consistently checks for the presence of your keys &#38; wallet. You just slip one of our NFC tags on your keychain &#38; card in your wallet &#38; never worry about losing them again because your phone will log your location &#38; alert you when they (your keys/wallet) are not close to it (your phone) for more than X seconds or minutes.<p>5. An improved security system - Security would no longer have to be decentralized, you could now see live checkins in a given building using our API.<p>6. A real world 4square/Gowalla - If you could outfit locations with our hardware you could very simply create a more automatic check-in service.<p>The point is, we think the possibilities are endless &#38; were wondering if the development community would be interested in using a service like this. Pricing would likely be a few cents per scan (we're thinking .02-.04).<p>Any feedback or interest is welcome &#38; the founders are here to answer any questions you may have!<p>p.s. What applications would you have in mind for something like this? We're definitely interested in how other people would want to use our tech/api!
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phaylon
I was under the impression that NFC is for very small ranges. Wikipedia[1]
says less than 0.2 meters. Is this correct or are there different kinds of
NFC?

[1]
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Near_Field_Co...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Near_Field_Communication)

Edit: Forgot footnote.

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grundyoso
yes, you are correct. all of our use-cases currently can be implemented with
the short-range nature of NFC (1-2in). however, our platform also supports
long-range readers (UHF - 10-15m) as well.

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phaylon
Thanks! Since I'm only following the news about NFC & Co. on the side, the
ranges and possible applications of the different technologies are somewhat
confusing. This really helped making it a bit more clear.

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TAGMentor
I'm curious how you'd lower the friction in the process... meaning, what's the
best way to get a consumer to opt-in to receiving an email (per example #1)
with this tech. Do you have an app that serves as an explicit opt-in a la
ShopKick?

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grundyoso
NFC is great precisely because of it's opt-in user experience. in other words,
people need to make an effort to get their tags read due to the 1-2in range.
this makes for more accurate tracking yet preserves a user-in-control notion
different from shopkick. we have an app that let's you checkin to an event
that can easily be made to create an email subscription.

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brianbreslin
so what are the device requirements for the end consumer (me) and then for
your consumer (store/merchant)? If I get something like a keychain tag (like
cvs, etc) whats the explicit advantage of this over barcode/scan ?

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j0hnbull
End-user req's: just an NFC tag

PaaS customer req's: whatever NFC tech fits their scenario. Any combo of
readers, tags, etc

NFC has many advantages over bar-codes which result in a much friendly end-
user experience. No wrinkling, crinkling, smudging or any other ways of
wrecking bar codes. Plus NFC can come in many form factors - plastic tags,
sewn into clothing, or even ingestible pills.

Also, NFC is being incorporated into mobile phones. Imagine a world where your
iPhone could unlocked doors, replaced all those crappy frequent buyer cards,
and pay for your meals. We think that sounds pretty cool.

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runjake
> Imagine a world where your iPhone could unlocked doors, replaced all those
> crappy frequent buyer cards, and pay for your meals. We think that sounds
> pretty cool.

Well, it's already replaced all my frequent buyer cards, but the other stuff
means that I just have to worry about losing or having my phone stolen or
hacked just that more. It's certainly not something I'm readily comfortable
with.

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mikegreenberg
How are you going to make custom RFID devices/objects available to a
developer? (Assume a unique use case which requires custom RFID + Object
development.)

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j0hnbull
That's the beauty of the platform, it's device agnostic. We'd partner with
killer hardware manufacturers to ensure we support a wide range of
technologies.

As far as actually acquiring the devices - we'd likely partner with a
preferred manufacturer and refer customers to them.

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ericb
What is the practical range for RFID?

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j0hnbull
NFC is designed for short range (few centimeters). Other RFID technologies can
extend much further, meters, depending on form factor and cost.

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rokhayakebe
I do not know much about NFC, but I would flip the model. Consumers first,
developers later.

You should build a simple app around it and distribute the cards for free to
consumers. Once you have it in their hands, open the platform and let
developers build apps which connect to YOUR cards. Maybe consumers can go to
your website and add apps to their cards. Another benefit would be that each
consumer will just have one card, but they can hook up 100 apps.

