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Search Results for: rfid

USB Microwave Concept Still Falls Short

By Chris Scott Barr on 05/03/10 • 2 Comments

usb-microwave1

By Chris Scott Barr

As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time at my desk. So much in fact, that there is a mini fridge withing rolling distance of my chair. It’s nice to be able to grab a drink without breaking my flow of concentration. Of course prepping some food still means going downstairs and taking care of it. What I want is something I can set on my desk that will warm up my food.

Here is yet another desktop microwave concept. Why are there so many concepts without an actual product being on the shelves? It’s like the designers enjoy teasing us. Anywho, this one is also USB-powered (which makes me wonder at its effectiveness) and only appears to heat up special meals. Sure, the means would come with a RFID-equipped plastic utensil that programmed the time into the microwave, but it won’t cook my Spaghetti-o’s. Is that really too much to ask?

[ Yanko ] VIA [ GearFuse ]

Live Checking Cards: Watch Your Bills, Honey!

By Gaurav Kheterpal on 02/02/10 • 16 Comments

live_checking_card

By Gaurav Kheterpal

The Live Checking Card represent a very interesting concept – it displays the accumulated spending amount on your card after every purchase. Clearly, the concept itself is nothing short of a nightmare for wives and girlfriends as it displays real time information of their shopping adventures. The underlying technology behind Live Checking Cards is e-ink, which checks your purchase history and matches them up with the bank account transactions using RFID. Pretty neat, I’d say.

While it’s a blessing in disguise for most husbands and boyfriends, the Live Checking Card could have fairly serious implications on your love life, if not used carefully. On the other hand, it’s a handy way to keeping your expenses in check and ensuring that you are not heading for a credit disaster.

I’m pretty sure that there would be no shortage of husbands and boyfriends lining up to buy these cards once and if the concept is implemented.

[ Yanko Design ] VIA [ Gizmodiva ]

TMT Tactical Wallet Is More Wallet Than You’ll Ever, Ever Need

By Evan Ackerman on 01/19/10 • 2 Comments

tmt-wallet-2

By Evan Ackerman

Wallets are for storing your cash and credit cards and USB keys and stuff, and such a simple and straightforward use implies a simple and straightforward design. Apparently, some of you have expressed enough of a desire to also use your wallet for other things, like, I don’t know, killing people, that TMT Wallets felt that they could introduce a “tactical wallet” that would be commercially viable.

The TMT Tactical wallet assumes that if you buy it, you are professional super spy who is likely to be captured by the enemy on one of your top secret missions. Therefore, it has been specifically designed to assist you in the following scenarios: enduring water torture (o-rings make it waterproof), keeping your secrets secret (it has two hidden compartments and is impervious to RFID), beating your guards senseless (it’s made of 6061-T6 aluminum), breaking out of prison (it has a carbide glass breaking point), removing shards of broken glass from your flesh (it has tweezers), finding your way back to the good guys (it has a compass), and then enjoying a nice meal when you get home (it’s got a toothpick). Oh, and if course it has a built-in pen that you can use to write a screenplay about your adventures. When you consider all of these advantages, who cares that it’s gigantic and heavy and uncomfortable and $125? As a professional super spy, you need one.

[ TMT Wallets ] VIA [ The Gadgeteer ]

RFID Protected 2.5-Inch SATA Drive Enclosure

By Andrew Liszewski on 10/06/09 • Leave a comment!

RFID Security 2.5 Inch SATA HDD Enclosure (Image courtesy Chinavasion)
By Andrew Liszewski

Sometimes passwords feel like more of a pain than a plus, so I like this 2.5-inch SATA HD enclosure that uses an RFID tag to protect your data. Unlocking your precious files is as easy as waving one of the 2 included RFID tags over the enclosure, and you just repeat the motion to lock everything back up again. It’s compatible with 2.5-inch SATA hard drives up to 160GB in size, but I can’t help but wonder if the dirt cheap $16 price tag from Chinavasion is an indication of how well this thing really works.

[ RFID Security 2.5 Inch SATA HDD Enclosure ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

Freecom’s RFID Protected External Hard Drive Seems Great, A Little Too Popular

By David Ponce on 08/12/09 • Leave a comment!

freecom2

By David Ponce

Freecom is selling this 2TB external hard drive for 350 euros. What’s great about it is that it can only be accessed if you happen to be carrying one of two AES-encrypted, RFID-enabled, credit-card sized keys on your person. No key, no access.

The bad part now. For one, 350 euros is a lot of cash for 2TB. But worst of all, it’s out of stock, and no ETA.

Bummer. Still, you can check out the product page and obsessively refresh every day until there’s stock if you’re seriously that concerned about privacy.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Crunchgear ]

Ford & DeWalt RFID Tool Link Ensures No Tools Left Behind

By Andrew Liszewski on 08/10/09 • 1 Comment

Ford & DeWalt Tool Link (Image courtesy Gearlog)
By Andrew Liszewski

At times RFID technology gets a bad rap, but that’s because it’s not always the best solution for every situation. (ie Passports etc.) However, here’s one example where the technology really shines. Developed by DeWalt, Tool Link is a $1,120 option for Ford trucks that uses RFID tags to keep track of your tools so that you don’t accidentally leave one behind at a job site.

The system comes with 50 tags that can be attached to tools and hardware from any manufacturer, an RFID scanner plus software that runs on the truck’s in-dash computer, as well as a couple of RFID antennas located in the truck’s bed. Once you’ve created a database of your hardware the system can keep track of what items were in the truck at the start of the day, and what items are missing before you leave the construction site at the end of the day, before they go missing permanently.

[ Gearlog - It's 5 O'Clock. Do You Know Where Your Tools Are? ]

Freecom Hard Drive Secure Might Protect Your Data With RFID, Probably Won’t

By Evan Ackerman on 07/21/09 • 2 Comments

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By Evan Ackerman

While sheer paranoia isn’t the best thing to have dictating your gadget purchases, there are some instances where paying a small premium for that extra level of comfort and security might make sense. Freecom’s Hard Drive Secure is a run of the mill external HD, except that you can’t access the data on it without swiping an encrypted RFID card the size of a credit card past the drive. Swipe the card again and the drive locks itself. It’s not too terribly expensive at $120 for a 500 gig drive, although $410 for a 2TB drive it just a little crazy.

What Freecom doesn’t make clear is just how the encryption on the drive works… It sort of sounds like while the encrypted keycard locks and unlocks the drive, the data on the drive itself is not actually encrypted. This sort of system might keep your porn stash safe from your kid brother, but anyone with a mediocre amount of computer experience (which your kid brother probably has) will just remove the drive from the case and access it directly. Even having the locking system on the drive itself won’t thwart someone who is casually determined. And irrespective of the encryption on the drive, having to swipe your card a second time to lock the thing is just stupid. It should be set up so that if the RFID card leaves, the drive locks itself. And of course, I won’t even get started on the security flaws in RFID.

So yeah, there are some instances where paying a small premium for an extra level of comfort and security might make sense, but this is probably not one of them.

[ Bit-Tech ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

Mazda RX-8 Controlled Via iPod Touch

By Evan Ackerman on 04/01/09 • Leave a comment!

Jonathan Oxer’s RX-8 is equipped with a 3G connection running on a tiny little Ubuntu Linux system that’s always on. Besides turning the car into a 24×7 internet hotspot, it gives Jon the ability to access the car’s systems from anywhere in the world, and using an iPod touch he can turn the car on and off, lock and unlock it, and even pop the trunk. The browser based interface also gives Jon the ability to monitor engine telemetry, and even shows the position of the car on Google Maps.

As if that wasn’t enough, the car has an RFID reader mounted in the back right window, so when Jon walks up to the car, it reads an RFID tag implanted in his arm and then unlocks the door and starts the engine. This means that he doesn’t have to worry about someone stealing his keys, but he does have to worry about someone stealing his arm, which is just the sort of thing that keeps me up at night.

[ Geek My Ride ] VIA [ Hacked Gadgets ]

RFID To Improve Training On The Slopes

By Andrew Liszewski on 03/09/09 • Leave a comment!

RFID Sensors On Skis (Image courtesy Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft)
By Andrew Liszewski

There’s no question that technology plays a big part in modern sports, particularly when an athlete relies on a piece of hardware like a pair of skis. But instead of improving how the skis perform, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany are using RFID to improve how a skier’s performance is monitored during training. Typically, coaches and athletes have relied on videos of a run to analyze the weaknesses in a skier’s technique, but that approach lacks concrete data or accurate measurements.

But RFID transmitters attached to the front and back of a pair of skis in conjunction with receivers alongside the slope can be used to continually and accurately measure the position of the skis to within 3 centimeters. So at the end of a run not only do you have empirical data about whether or not a skier has drifted from the ideal path, or if they’re carving and cornering properly, but you can even tell if the skis were parallel to each other.

The new system appears to still be in development right now, and it will need to be perfected to the point where it doesn’t affect a skier’s performance or even drag during a run, but I’m sure down the road it will be responsible for the demise of a few Olympic records.

[ Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft - Signal opportunities on the slopes – with RFID ] VIA [ Medgadget ]

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