We don’t ususally post project wins. But we’re making an exception because this one has a very public profile and it really is about innovation – design innovation to be precise. We teamed up with Minima Design and have been selected to deliver part of the Mobile Phone Security Challenge set by the Design Council.

Funded by the UK government, the Design Council was set up to “demonstrate that design can play a vital role in strengthening our economy and improving our society”. There’s loads of information on their website about current projects with great aims – such as reducing healthcare associated infections with better designed furniture.

This particular challenge is part of the Design & Technology Alliance Against Crime which is “leading a programme of work to develop innovative design solutions to help prevent robbery, to crime-proof hot new gadgets and to embed public safety in the design of new public spaces”.

The challenge briefing notes set out the problem neatly. “Four billion people worldwide have mobile phones – twice as many as have credit cards – and 80% of us carry information on our handsets that could be used by criminals to commit fraud. 16% of us already keep our bank details on our phones.” Anticipating the success of mobile payments “when credit on our phones will replace the cash in our wallets” the challenge is to mitigate risk by:
— Making mobile phone handsets harder or less desirable to steal
— Making the data stored on mobile phones harder or less desirable to steal
— Making future m-commerce transactions secure and fraud proof.

Of course it would be spoiling things to reveal what our plans are at this stage. Look out for some prototypes of market-ready solutions early next year.

I had an excellent evening at Mobile Monday this week.  I was assigned the task of presenting my work for the past year – the Proxama NFC Wallet – in just 5 minutes.  Making a video proved to be a great way of getting lots of information across within the time-slot, still leaving me loads of time to talk!  A total of 15 people showcased demos but as we stuck within the same groups I only managed to see four other demos – all of which were very impressive! Full details on the MoMo site.

There were plenty of interesting questions from each session.  The audience is technically literate, well versed in mobile and pretty good at asking awkward questions. So – I thought it might be interesting to post some of the questions raised. I hope my answers were clear enough on the day to those who asked.

Recently I saw a demonstration which included peer-to-peer payments, why doesn’t your product include this?

This particular demo shows what’s possible using existing payment applications that are specified and certified by schemes such as Visa and MasterCard. And P2P payments are not part of the specification for these products – yet. The industry view – which we share – is that eventually P2P payments will be standard for NFC applications – but it’s not there yet. It would be simple to add P2P payment to this demo  – and we have a conceptual demo that does this already – but it doesn’t fall under the payment scheme application banner

How would this application be issued to me?

Our demo is made up of two bits of software – (1) the payment application (i.e your debit or credit card) which sits on the SIM and (2) the wallet – which is the user interface software that sits on the handset. There are 3 basic approaches to issuance:

1. Everything is pre-personalised by the operator. Your payment card details are on the SIM and the wallet is on the handset when you get your phone.

2. OTA personalisation. First you load the wallet which lets you add your card applications onto the SIM

3. Phone docking. There’s been a lot of talk recently about PC based updating – encouraged by the iPhone model.

Why haven’t we seen this technology already, it exists in Japan today!

The Japanese model was made simple because NTT DoCoMo was the dominant player and had more than 50% market share. They subsidised the new handsets and rolled out NFC. The situation in Europer is more complex, with a more fragmented market.

What handsets does the Wallet operate on today, what handsets will it work on in future?

At the moment there are a couple of handsets the Wallet runs on, the Nokia 6131 and Nokia 6212, these are the two main NFC enabled handsets in production.  In future we know that Nokia have another handset due for Q3 2009 – the 6216, this handset is key because it has the secure element as part of the SIM card, which is what Operators want because they own the SIM space.  We also know that LG and Samsung are releasing handsets due this year, which both also contain UICC based secure elements.

I expected a lot more questioning about the security – usually this is a point of concern whenever credit-cards and payment are mentioned.  I didn’t really get asked much on that, only once did I point out that it’s more secure than your physical wallet.

Big thanks to Daniel Appelquist (twitter @torgo), Helen Keegan (twitter @technokitten) and Alex Craxton (twitter @AlexCraxton) for organising.  You run a very tight ship!

The NFC forum unveiled its logo last week. I’m a big fan of NFC and I really don’t want to knock the N mark. I am sure it will grow on me. The sticking point for me is that the logo – cleverly incorporating the letters NFC – promotes a technology

I thought it was generally agreed that this is not the way to go – and I do think there’s good reason for this. Would we all have been clamouring for frequency-hopping spread spectrum headsets if we’d been trying to remember to ask for F-HSS rather than Bluetooth? Tenth century King Harald Blátönn (trans: Bluetooth) of Denmark was a well chosen namesake – he united warring Scandinavian tribes (i.e communication protocols) into a single kingdom. The logo itself sticks with this theme and is a combination of two “letters” from the runic alphabet, chosen for their visual appeal rather than inherent meaning. Bluetooth sounds cool and it has a neat back story. Again on the mobile side, one of the reasons often cited for WAP’s failure was that the mobile industry tried to market a technology, rather than focussing on how it could deliver value-added services to the phone. The story goes that the developers working on the wireless Application Protocol standards were horrified when they saw WAP appear in marketing literature.

On a more positive note, it’s not a million miles away from the Bluetooth logo…

… and on the face of it, this could be a good thing, promoting awareness of mobile interaction more generally. As the two technologies work quite differently, this could cause some confusion however. How do I know whether to touch my phone to the poster or hit the Bluetooth switch on my phone? The current NFC guidelines do not include instructions for adding directive words like “Tap here” but you can see why it might be a good idea.

I asked our design specialist in the office, Ross Harvey, to help me out – to think purely about the design elements and he said that it ticks all the boxes. “As a logo, it’s great – a contrast of smooth curves and hard angles that suggests movement and connectivity.” He agreed that there’s nothing that invites you to interact with it though – which is the whole point of NFC – isn’t it?

So I can’t help feeling that NFC hasn’t been given the best start in life. I’d like to think that someone in the NFC forum considered promoting “Forkbeard” before discarding it as ridiculous, despite offering the great back story that Forkbeard – son of Bluetooth (aka Sweyn I of Denmark) – forcibly deposed his father and having founded Swansea finally became the King of England.

My feelings aside – this is what it looks like on a smart poster…

… and here’s where you can down load the N mark with a simple click through license. Usage guidelines are here.

I was at the second day of the Near Field Communications World Europe conference last week and thought it was worth capturing some of the discussion. Because despite several humorous references to Groundhog Day, there were a few interesting points that came out of the presentations and banter, proving that it’s not quite same old same old and that progress has been made.

There are no real barriers

Facilitated and cajoled by Dave Birch, a panel of experts (Dominic Peachey – FSA, Saadi Hussain – BT Global Services, David Brendl – Telefonica O2 Czech Republic) agreed that in Europe at least,  there are no regulatory, structural or operational barriers preventing the roll out of NFC services. The age old culture clash between network operators and banks was discussed but most agreed that commercial collaboration and the establishment of common goals is possible. This we probably all knew anyway, but what was interesting was that Dominic Peachy said that although there are no regulatory barriers, the FSA has no objectives for driving payment innovation. I was left thinking that if there were such objectives in place, then NFC would be higher up on the financial services agenda. Shouldn’t payment innovation, with the potential savings that it brings, be something of a priority for all countries?

What’s in it for the banks?

Whereas network operators can see the benefits of offering new services to their customers, which can help to reduce churn, it was widely agreed that churn isn’t really an issue for banks. It seems that it’s just too much hassle for us to change our bank accounts. So – it has to be about something else. Telefonica O2, based on a project they ran in the Czech Republic, proposed 3 benefits for banks transaction uplift, fraud reduction and improved CRM. Interestingly, giving anecdotal evidence from the same project, David Brendl mentioned the importance of balance check functionality for mobile NFC applications. People would rather draw cash from an ATM than pay with a card or phone and risk the embarrassment of not having sufficient funds in their account.

It’s about cash replacement

The ideal environment for NFC to flourish is one with few ATMs  – which is why Citibank is focusing on India for its next big project. The poor results of the contactless payment initiative in London (cited a “marketing disaster” by Vivotech’s Mick Mullagh) was used to illustrate another requirement for success – you need a tight metro community with lots of acceptance terminals in place. Bringing a note of realism, StoLPaN’s Andras Vilmos pointed out that retailers are likely to need some kind of financial incentive to get them on board, having just shelled out for chip and PIN in Europe. And where would the financial incentive come from? Singapore seems to have the lead here. They do see the benefits of payment innovation and the cost saving of taking cash out of the equation. Dave Birch, a consultant on this project stated that subsidising contactless and NFC is part of the Singapore government’s cash replacement strategy.

Really making it work

Dion Lisle of Citibank Growth Ventures and Innovation made an interesting point about really making NFC happen – beyond trials. Referencing the success of Apple’s App Store he pointed out the importance a “complete ecosystem”. I read something recently about NFC and loyalty and how it could all work really well if we viewed mobile phone apps a bit more like ring tones and made them as easy to obtain and dispose of  – and I’m sure he’s right. I left the conference feeling very hopeful for NFC, sure that there’s an unstoppable momentum now and that next year we won’t be talking about Groundhog Day.

At first glance, Nokia’s announcement last week about the new Nokia 6216 doesn’t seem so “new”.  For the most part, the handset is identical to the existing 6212 (which is what we do all our current NFC development work on). What makes it new is that the secure element ison the SIM – whereas the old version has an integrated chip, as a feature of the handset itself.

So what difference does this SIM centric approach make? It’s what the network operators have been pushing for – for well publicised business reasons. The operator has the billing relationship with the subscriber and is best placed to promote and manage new services. While many of us do show some brand loyalty and preference in terms of handset choice, the ongoing commercial relationship tends to be with the operator.

From a technical view point, remote management of the applications is much simpler with the SIM centric model also – because the operators already have a framework to do automatic SIM updating via SMS. This is important for lots of reasons but most particularly if you think about some of the applications NFC will support – like payment. If I were to lose my NFC phone I’d want to be sure that the payment application could be switched off immediately.

As far as applications are concerned – most of them will port seamlessly. You’ll be able to do all the usual stuff like using smart posters for service discovery. There are some implications for applications like ticketing – although they are really just product development issues for the SIM vendors. Oyster for example requires Mifare support and not all of the SIMs on the market offer this currently because there hasn’t been the business need.

Do we think this will speed up the roll out of NFC enabled services? Yes – probably -  because it was one of the main reasons that network operators were dragging their heels with NFC.

I had a great time at MoMo last night – reminding me that I must get to these monthly meets more often. While the presentations on “How to Finance your Business in a Credit Crunch” were generally informative – no one said anything specific about current times. By contrast, the panel debate was excellent so I thought I’d share some of the points I picked up, particularly because the news is broadly good for mobile.

Funding

The same number of businesses will receive funding as last year but with smaller amounts, reflecting more sensible valuations.

The iPhone effect

The iPhone and app store have changed the market, but for a limited number of users only. Crucially, no billion dollar ideas will be seeded with Apple as the gate keeper. The coolest thing I saw all evening was a 2D barcoding app on the iPhone for sharing information from Air Source.

There is growth

The mobile applications and services market is still growing fast – despite recession.

The future’s about money

Mobile payments is set to be the next big thing – if the consumer experience is good. We spend a lot of time working on the consumer experience – so I was pleased to hear this prognosis and look forward to being part of making it all happen.

I was at the CI spring conference last week representing Zeus, a group of companies (see footnotes) working hard to keep contactless technologies on the 2012 Olympics roadmap. LOGOC’s Paul Williamson was also there and brought a healthy chunk of realism to the conversation. He kept us focussed with a reminder that the Olympic Games is a sporting event designed to entertain people. It lasts just two weeks and there’s little point in putting expensive infrastructure in place for core applications – like ticketing – when there are highly cost effective lower tech solutions that are fit for purpose.

We support this practical approach and it came as no surprise, despite Lord Davies’s positive words at the Mobile World Congress in February promoting the use of mobile phones for payment and ticketing: 

Lord Davies revealed that the use of mobiles for ticketing and cashless Payments is already being explored “I see huge opportunities for us around the Olympics” he said.

There were some highly positive interpretations of what he said but Zeus members have been working with these technologies long enough to err on the side of caution.

This does not spell the end of technical innovation for contactless at the Olympics though – which is what Zeus is all about. Our message is simple and it was well received at Contactless Intelligence. Contactless technology is slowly and very surely taking a hold in London. By 2012 there will be tried and tested infrastructure for payments, transportation and access control. While the official Olympic applications are unlikely to make use of this infrastructure – its sponsors certainly could. A simple example – you could imagine Coca-Cola issuing a bottle shaped key fob or sticky label with Olympic branding. The branded tag could be used as an e-purse and for loyalty/rewards at a number of outlets both inside and outside the immediate Olympic locations, giving Coca-Cola additional and measurable benefit for their sponsorship dollars.

Zeus is all about bringing contactless applications to market. If you have something to add to the mix – get in touch!

• Proxama
• The Logic Group
• Altair Technologies Ltd
• Innovision
• Paytekh
• Twinlinx
• G&D
• C-ITV

Speculation about IPTV, interactive TV and additional uses for the set-top-box seems to have been ongoing for a while now. I remember sitting through a presentation 8 years ago called “Put Card in Telly” outlining how payments through your set top box could be THE thing in 2001. Aside from the technology, infrastructure and security issues (is it “safe” to enter your PIN into the insecure remote control?) there was a lot of scepticism about what we will and won’t do with TVs – the lean-back, lean-forward debate.

Interestingly, theoretical debate didn’t hamper Nintendo who has a diverse age range – in 3 million households across the UK – leaning all over the place as we bowl, ski and race our way round the living room – all channelled through the TV. I can only assume that they knew the proposition was strong enough to get us leaning forward and out of our seats.

The fact that we’re not glued to our sofas with a “you do all the work for me” attitude has to be good news for the latest generation of TV innovations. The best of these were the focus of the UK arm of the IPTV World Series Awards held in London last week. We’re particularly excited about them because our client Miniweb Interactive won the Best Interactive Service or Application award. The judges were most impressed by Miniweb’s ability to allow internet content to be redeployed as an interactive TV service and to provide a solution for delivering interoperability. The real jewel in the Miniweb crown is that fact that it is instantly available in the 9 million+ homes on the Sky Digital platform in the UK.

TV as a compliment to PC based information is really attractive. While it’s unlikely that I’d use it for a task like listing a product on eBay, I’d certainly use it to check my bid status during a regional weather forecast. You can see it working well with Fantasy Football too – you might use it to tweak your team at the last minute. The success of services like the BBC iPlayer has also helped more generally to smooth boundaries between TV and PC content.

And Miniweb works for the content providers too, especially home shopping channels, attracted by the possibility of permanently listing more products for sale. With some major brands in early planning stages for getting onto the platform and ads starting to appear on some digital channels, I am sure that a great number of us will have tried it out by the year end. 

When you work with NFC all day, it’s easy to get hung up on the more complex solutions – like payments & ticketing and vouchers. These services will certainly be the driving force for getting the infrastructure in place. But what I’m really looking forward to seeing is how NFC will solve some of the more basic challenges – like getting applications onto your phone.

It’s off putting – even for techies

Nerdy online tutorials and numerous blog posts prove how complicated the current process is. Imagine how easy it will be to install an application on your NFC handset. You tap a smart poster, hit “yes” to confirm a couple of times and that’s it – done! What happens in the background is simple. The RFID tag contains a web-link to the application and the handset loads the link using its browser. This seems trivial but for years I’ve wrestled with the alternatives – either some kind of trigger for sending a WAP-Push to your handset (which means giving out your phone number) or typing a URL into the native browser. If you’ve never tried, have a go at typing “http://” in your next SMS. There are some great mobile games but the PC based email and phone number registration process really puts me off.

App stores aren’t enough

In light of Apple’s success with the Apple-store, many manufacturers are actively creating an application eco-system. This is long overdue in my opinion but these solutions fall short “on the move” – however slick and touch-sensitive your phone is. In the NFC enabled future it will be another matter entirely. I will be in a cafe, having picked up the latest copy of Edge and I’ll tap my phone on the insert promoting “Left 4 Dead get exclusive mobile content”. The RFID chip in the insert will do it all for me. I can’t wait!

Follow me on twitter: @j_norris

Having spent a number of years living in Russia, I can imagine that taking a school trip there might be a little challenging. So I was really excited to be involved in a project designed to make the business of keeping track of people – in a very foreign land – a whole lot easier. A few NFC handsets, a java midlet, some RFID wrist bands and an established call centre is all it took!

How does it work?

All students on the trip wear a wrist band. The band has a printed phone number, a unique serial number and an embedded RFID chip, with a corresponding unique ID. And the teachers carry NFC phones to read these wristbands. In a simple headcount scenario, students getting back onto the coach after a visit to Lenin’s Mausoleum hold out their arm as they pass the teacher who simply taps their wristband with the phone as they board the coach.

How is this better?

If the count is down, the teacher in charge knows immediately who is missing, has the option to call or text the student straight away and also has instant access to this person’s EHIC and passport information. Feedback from teachers on the trip highlighted the availability of information as one of the main benefits of this system.

From the student’s perspective, separated from the group and possibly feeling unwell, it’s easy to alert a passerby to call the number on the wrist band. The call centre operator asks the passerby to read out the printed ID, lets the passerby know any important information about the student – for example, the student is diabetic – and informs the teacher of the whereabouts of the student. 

How safe is the information?

No information about the student is stored on the wristband chip and in order to read the information on the phone, you need a “master” wristband and a PIN. The information about each student is held in a secure data centre, accessed through a secure internet gateway. Another major appeal of this system is that it eliminates a lot of paper shuffling – parents are responsible for keeping each child’s records up to date and do so through an easy web interface.

The service is operated by AlertID.