its Alcatel-Lucent Ventures program of tikitag^sm, a consumer service, at the DEMOfall 08 conference in San Diego. tikitag, leveraging innovations within Bell Labs, enables consumers and third-party application developers to increase the value of everyday items by connecting them to online content or applications. The technology that tikitag takes advantage of to establish this connection is Near Field Communications Technology (NFC) - an evolution of RFID that connects electronic devices over short distances. The market for NFC is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. Market consultancy Strategy Analytics projects that by 2012 around 250 million NFC-enabled phones will be sold worldwide.

The tikitag service enables the launching of online applications by simply touching an NFC device such as a cell phone to an item tagged with an NFC chip. tikitag can be used in a variety of environments: for example in an in-home application a father can use tikitag to link his toddler’s teddy bear to an online story about that same bear; in an outdoor environment tikitag makes it possible for a visitor to an art gallery to wave his NFC enabled mobile phone at a painting and then see the painter’s Wikipedia profile appear on the phone’s screen; or in a business/logistics environment a cleaning company can, for example, use it to record that a room has been successfully cleaned through a simple touch of an NFC-enabled mobile phone to a tikitag-linked NFC tag that has been placed in the room.

tikitag will be offered as a beta starter package on Oct. 1 through e-commerce Web sites. The package will include a USB-enabled NFC reader and electronic tags, and provide access to a community website where users can create and share new and off-the-shelf tikitag applications. Initial applications available for download include the ability to link tags to URLs or linking tagged souvenirs to photo albums. Teenagers will be able to link a tagged photo to their social network profile at Netlog® or steer an online music services player to perform pre- programmed actions via a tikitagged object.

“Sharing gadgets and things linked to your social network profile can enhance both the online and real world experience of communities,” said Lorenz Bogaert, CEO of Netlog, Europe’s leading social portal.

“Over the last few years there has been explosive growth in the range and types of online content – much of it related to real world objects, events or activities,” said Anthony Belpaire, General Manager of Alcatel-Lucent’s tikitag venture. “but how do you connect this online content with a person’s business card, for example, or a concert poster, or a work of art, etc….tikitag provides this missing link,” he added.

“The goal of DEMO is to introduce a broad audience to cutting edge ideas. tikitag is sure to get people excited about novel ways to integrate the Internet and online applications with physical items,” said Chris Shipley, DEMO executive producer.

tikitag features a flexible API that will enable third parties to customize and embed tikitag functionality into their offerings – either seamlessly extending their existing applications or creating new applications to enable interaction with tangible things. At the same time they can promote their applications on the tikitag website.

The NFC technology uses transmitters, called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, which can be easily and unobtrusively attached to virtually any object and, when activated by a reader in a mobile device or a computer, send back a unique identifying signal.

At the core of the tikitag service is the tikitag Application Correlation Server (ACS), which manages the link between an NFC tag and a corresponding action to be initiated. When an NFC-enabled device (PC, Mac or NFC enabled mobile phone) touches the NFC tag, it automatically connects with the tikitag ACS. The ACS then directs the Internet-enabled device to access the appropriate online content and applications.

Pricing and availability

Starting Oct. 1 consumers can start using tikitag by purchasing a beta tikitag starter kit that consists of an NFC reader, 10 NFC tags, and access to the tikitag community site, through third-party e-commerce Websites including Amazon.com. Beta pricing is US$49.95. (www.tikitag.com) 

About DEMO

Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies.

About Alcatel-Lucent Ventures

Alcatel-Lucent Ventures is a corporate incubator with a mission to identifying game changing ideas from Bell Labs research, incubating them into products, and bringing them to market either through an Alcatel-Lucent business group, or a spin out company.

Information Source:    Alcatel-Lucent