RFID can be used for many more applications than might seem evident. Subni RFID Webservice
is a social networking website that encourages people to tag objects
and map metadata to this site's database. For example, if you tag a
tree, I presume that you can share information such as latitude/
longitude, type, age, city, country, date of tagging condition of tree,
etc.
I say "presume" because while you have to register to use the service,
they tell you after you waste time filling out the form that they're
not taking new members. (They also don't bother setting up the form for
anyone outside the U.S.) However, their applications page diagrams what look like very interesting applications - with no text whatsoever to describe them, unfortunately.
Basically, at the time of this writing, this site is a tease, hinting
at what could be. Very frustrating but also exciting. For example, they
describe a Subni application called Soundtag, which converts
information from an RFID tag on a prescription bottle to sound. This
would help visually impaired people know that they have the right
medication. This is a brilliant idea, and while other companies might
be doing something similar, I haven't come across it elsewhere.
Other applications that they describe on the site suggest tagging
physical objects. This has the potential for some powerful municipal
applications.
For example, amongst the client computing projects that I've worked on,
one of the more interesting ones was a forestry-style application for a
municipal tree database. For the sample database, I drove around wooded areas and photographed a few clusters of
trees. Theoretically, I would have attached some identifying
badge to each tree, then recorded approximate geographic coordinates.
This information from the field would have been synced up with a
central database later, when I "got back from the field."
Now imagine if there was an easier way to manage such a database, and make it central. So put it online, and use durable RFID forestry tags.
Provided handheld readers have a wireles connection to the Internet,
field agents could update a database - private or public - in
real-time. Add environmental sensors and a memory device like the i-Disk RFID flash drive, and environmental conditions could be stored for later analysis.
In fact, any municipal assets such as park benches and bus shelters,
could be tagged in this manner. What might also help is a means for
citizens to report problems with an asset. At present, if a tree goes
down, a bus shelter is smashed, etc., a citizen makes a call and gives the nearest intersection.
In the future, they might be able to use their NFC-enabled cell phone (dual-mode Wi-Fi/ cellular) to call in the information using a VoIP application over a municipal Wi-Fi network.
The VoIP client could file-share the data from the asset's RFID tag,
minimizing what a citizen has to do. And if tags had IP addresses, like
RuBee tags
do, the information could be accessed remotely, saving municipalites
the cost of gasoline, wear and tear on city vehicles, and the
scheduling of personnel - except when needed.
