Tikitag – Bringing RFID to the Common Man

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has no doubt held revolutionary promise ever since it really started making waves in the tech field from around 2003. What’s held it back is that inspite of the endless number of uses that it can be put to there has not been a single RFID kit in the market that you an I could take home and play around with – that is till now.

Tikitag from Alcatel-Lucent is an RFID kit that lets you connect to the Internet through material objects. The kit consists of an RFID reader with a USB cord plus 10 RFID tags. So, if you’re feeling too lazy to type in the address to your LinkedIn profile just wave a Tikitag stuck on your favorite coffee mug in front of the USB-enabled NFC reader connected to your laptop and Voila! you see the desired site without having to hit the keyboard. Or stick these tags to your business cards or products and make it easy for your prospects and customers to find you online.

Although personal and business application opportunities are endless and limited only by our imagination, the tag reader technology will have to become more ubiquitous before RFID for personal use becomes a really pervasive thing. Maybe readers could be fitted into wrist watches or mobile phones, that would be cool. How radical would a subdermal reader be?

Tikitag kits are ideal geeky toys that can serve as the ideal Christmas present for the gizmo-freaks in your family. An international order for the kit from Amazon will set you back only by Euro 34.95.