For this week, I literally just came up with an idea that could utilize RFID chips with my social network concept. An RFID chip could be utilized to unable fast, quick connections between people while you're not even using it. The concept would be to have an RFID chip that you could connect to the site and fill with certain information: a picture and a quick greeting, some info about yourself, and a link to your personal profile. The chip could then be attached to your phone or carried around on your person in any kind of way.
This would work to connect people with others by detecting others with similar RFID chips that have been filled with the same kind of info from the site. Whenever two chips get close enough they quickly exchange info, storing into the chip your photo and small greeting from yourself. If the person doesn't care to know you further it can be dismissed. If they're curious then they can read some more about you and be linked to your profile page. Viola, new connections!
There are several areas of this that would have specifications, too. The biggest one would be a connection timer, probably the most vital for people to give it a shot. It would keep the info from another person's RFID from being sent to yours unless they're in close enough proximity for a certain amount of time. So passing by a random person doesn't send a message, but if you sit next to someone and have a nice conversation for several minutes, then that'll be what triggers the exchange of info; pretty much the higher you set the timer, the more you'd have to be near someone to swap info, which would be of great help for people not looking to meet total strangers. And if two people are using connection timers, they can't swap information unless both of them have been close enough to each other long enough for both clocks. If one is set at 5 seconds and the other is set at 20 minutes, nothing is exchanged with either until 20 minutes have passed.
You could also opt not to set a photo in case you felt that was too invasive, and also use active RFIDs to extend the range.
Interesting post. Is RFID critical to making your idea happen? Perhaps not. Applications can be developed on mobile phones to conceptually do the same thing. RFID is more important in the context of unique identification as opposed to sensor data with GPS.
ReplyDeleteGood post!