

NFC Stickers Make Smartphones Smarter - kul
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-12/nfc-stickers-make-smartphones-smarter

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JshWright
I just got my Verizon Galaxy S3, and ordered the 20-pack of NFC tags offered
by <http://tagsfordroid.com>

I think I know what my Dad felt like when he got his first label printer...
Within days it seemed like every object in his office was labeled...

I've got a tag in my car to automatically send my wife a "Headed home" SMS, a
tag on my night stand to toggle between 'night' (silent) and 'day' (loud)
volume settings, a tag by my back door to launch CardioTrainer when I go out
for a run (this one may have crossed the "I've run out of ideas" line...). I'm
using the keychain tag to dial a response number for the fire department I'm a
member of.

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antihero
Do you have any recommendations for tag programming software for Android, and
packs of "blank tags"?

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JshWright
I purchased the tags from TagsForDroid.com and I use an app called NFC Task
Launcher for programming/using the tags.

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zmmmmm
As cool as NFC is, it feels like so many other technologies that flounder
around due to poor marketing and lack of understanding of basic human factors
- until - Apple enters and sweeps the board and shows everyone how to do it.

The interesting thing is going to be whether Apple decides to invent their own
standard here. I fully expect them to pull a facetime and make something that
is entirely based on but completely incompatible with NFC. And I fully expect
that it will dominate and force everybody else to rework their solutions. And
as obnoxious as I think this behaviour is, I wish they would just get on with
it so we can get through it and actually start using NFC type functionality,
Apple designed or otherwise.

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18pfsmt
_> The interesting thing is going to be whether Apple decides to invent their
own standard here_

The thing to keep in mind here is that NFC requires interoperability to be
useful. Not only that, but Sony and NXPI (Philips' semiconductor spin out) own
all the related NFC intellectual property (NXPI supplies the IC in the Nexus
NFC-enabled phone). So, Apple is free to innovate at a UX level, but the low-
level implementation will be based on the NXPI ASIC.

~~~
zmmmmm
> The thing to keep in mind here is that NFC requires interoperability to be
> useful.

You could say the same thing about facetime, iMessage or airplay or other
things Apple has released. Apple seems to be quite satisfied with improving
the experience of people who live only in their ecosystem while leaving others
out, even at times to their own detriment. I think they have enough power to
pull off exclusive deals with enough financial institutions and retailers to
get their own tech deployed into a lot of stores. So I don't really buy that
they can't go their own way on this.

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drivebyacct2
NFC is going to get a whole lot more interesting as this develops:
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/memory/a-memristor-t...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/memory/a-memristor-
true-randomnumber-generator)

Again, I keep hoping I'm wrong and that there are other RFID/NFC contact-less
asymmetric encryption options out there that I'm unaware of (please tell me!),
but after buying some encrypted tags and finding out that they're still
vulnerable to some easy attacks I lost short term interest.

(Of course active<->active NFC is still interesting. I invision a future house
with a secret NFC panel that does asym auth with my phone to unlock itself
with a batman style swing-open door).

I've been watching and tinkering with NFC for sometime. It gets boring quickly
because you can't have cheap fobs that are secure yet because there's no way
to do assymmetric encryption without an active NFC (with power).

Thus, your "car openers" that use NFC fobs are open to be cloned, and in fact
was just recently a source of BMW theft. With the ability to have RNGs and
assymmetric encryption, you can have usable, secure fobs.

~~~
blindfly
Have you seen the Yubikey NEO yet? <http://www.yubico.com/yubikey-neo>

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drivebyacct2
You know, I swear I looked at this a few weeks ago and had a few problems with
it, but I guess it seems like this could be workable. Not as robust as proper
PKI as I'd like it, but I'm having a hard time remembering why I didn't like
this before when I looked at it... Thanks for the link, I'll think about it
more.

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18pfsmt
The ICs they use in passports support proper PKI, and are passive. I still
have a ~300+ page spec for an Infineon IC commonly used in passports that I
got under NDA, and I just don't think most uses call for such
security/complexity.

It's important to note that originally the key difference between NFC and RFID
was that the NFC-enabled phone was supposed to be able to fall back to power-
less operation (inductive coupling) when the phone ran out of juice.

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iloveponies
Phones that have put their NFC chip into card emulation mode for insecure
communication (that doesn't require security via the SIM) can in theory still
operate without the phone itself being on, the Nokia 6131 apparently did this.
Since it was seen as a potential attack - nearly all phones with NFC now must
be on, and the screen unlocked before the NFC radio is activated.

~~~
18pfsmt
I didn't realize security was why they pulled that functionality. Back in
2007, I was using that Nokia phone as part of my pitch to parking meter
companies and others in the parking industry (we were a startup company). None
of us would have guessed that it would take this long for NFC to materialize,
but it seems the credit card companies and cell phone companies are still
arguing over who owns the customer.

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derleth
Am I the only one not seeing anything?

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fsckin
Scroll up. OP used a link with the comments anchor.

~~~
kul
fixed. oops.

