Silicon Investor - RFID, NFC and QR code Technologies

[Savant] Of course, if your phone goes dead...u're skewered Just like w/an electric fob,...

Savant — 4/14/2022 8:26:12 PM

Of course, if your phone goes dead...u're skewered

Just like w/an electric fob, if car battery goes dead...skewered again...happened to a friend..luckily I was able to jump start their car.

And, if you lose a chipped key...darned if it doesn't cost a lot...another friend had to pay $160 to get a new key and reprogram their car...took an hour, plus travel time.

Gimme an old fashioned key, any ole day

[Glenn Petersen] Chipotle is testing RFID tags to track ingredients for food safety Chipotle wil...

Glenn Petersen — 4/1/2022 11:48:34 AM

Chipotle is testing RFID tags to track ingredients for food safety

Chipotle will be using this technology at its Chicago distribution center restaurants in the Chicago area at first

Joanna Fantozzi
Nation's Restaurant News
Mar 31, 2022

Chipotle Mexican Grill announced Tuesday that the company will be testing out RFID tags (radio frequency identification) at its Chicago distribution center and at 200 Chicago stores to improve the traceability of its inventory systems. With these tags, Chipotle will be able to track ingredients all along the supply chain, so therefore if there is a food safety issue, it can be more easily traced.

"RFID labels transform inventory management into an automatic, digital function that optimizes restaurant operations and gives our restaurant support centers access to inventory data in real-time," Chipotle chief restaurant officer Scott Boatwright said in a statement. "This integrated technology is improving our employee experience in participating restaurants while also benefiting our supply partners."

Chipotle worked with Auburn University’s RIFDLab to create the pilot program, along with RFID software provider Mojix, materials science and RFID innovator Avery Dennison, and RFID reader and encoder solutions provider Zebra Technologies. The tags will be tested on meat, dairy, and avocados from five of Chipotle’s suppliers. Here’s how it will work: ingredients will arrive at Chipotle restaurants with RFID-enabled labels and the traceability system will allow Chipotle to resolve any matters of food safety and quality issues quickly and easily.

Chipotle is using this pilot program as an opportunity to learn about RFID labels before rolling it out to the restaurants systemwide.

"We have been developing our RFID program for two years and see this innovation as the next evolution of traceability and food safety," Laurie Schalow, chief corporate affairs and food safety officer at Chipotle said in a statement. "We are excited to test this innovation in the field with our suppliers and restaurants to enhance our robust traceability program."

In April 2020, Chipotle settled its string of foodborne illness outbreaks from 2015 and 2016 by agreeing pay a $25 million fine as part of a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The RFID tags could help prevent food safety issues in the future.

Chipotle is testing RFID tags to track ingredients for food safety (nrn.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Beware of QR Code ScamsIt’s so easy to click on a QR code. Criminals are countin...

Glenn Petersen — 3/21/2022 7:46:01 AM

Beware of QR Code ScamsIt’s so easy to click on a QR code. Criminals are counting on it.

QR code scams are essentially a new form of phishing attack, where scammers direct victims to a bogus website and ask for personal information.

By Heidi Mitchell
Wall Street Journal

Updated March 19, 2022 8:00 am ET

During the Super Bowl in February, one ad grabbed a lot of attention: a mysterious bouncing QR code that enticed viewers to point their phones at their screens and click through to an unknown website. (Spoiler alert: It was for Coinbase. COIN 4.92% ) Within seconds, more than 20 million people had done just that, crashing the cryptocurrency-exchange platform.

The incident illustrated just how willing people are to click on QR codes, but unfortunately for consumers, marketers aren’t the only group that understands this. Two months before, in December, a much darker scenario involving QR codes unfolded when malicious actors placed QR-code stickers on parking meters in major Texas cities, directing drivers to a fraudulent website where they supposedly could pay for parking.

“People were tricked into putting in their credit-card information,” says Eric Chien, security threat researcher at Symantec, part of Broadcom Software’s security technology and response division. “It was a really well-done attack.”

While QR-code scams aren’t common, the risks are rising, security researchers say. The Better Business Bureau’s Scamtracker site lists just 46 QR code-related attacks in the U.S. since March 2020. But as consumers become more accustomed to using QR codes—there has been a 750% increase in QR-code downloads since around March 2020, according to link-management service Bit.ly—security officials expect more attacks. The FBI even released a statement in mid-January about QR-code schemes to raise awareness.

In a typical scenario, scammers post a notice—often posing as a business or other organization that people recognize and trust—that includes a quick-response code, a type of matrix bar code that stores information. When scanned with a camera or app, the code leads to a webpage that might ask unsuspecting users to enter personal information such as a credit card, which is then stolen, or it may install malware to gain access to victims’ devices in perpetuity.

Going phishing

Originally devised in the 1990s by a subsidiary of Toyota to track cars and parts during manufacturing, QR codes replaced things like menus, tickets, brochures, package-tracking numbers and boarding passes as the country moved to “touchless” interactions when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Rather than handing out menus, for example, a restaurant might ask patrons to simply scan a square matrix bar code with their smartphone cameras, which would lead them with one click to a website where they could view the menu. Now those squiggly squares are seemingly everywhere.

When they’re malicious, QR code scams are essentially a new form of phishing attack, where scammers direct victims to a bogus website, and proceed to ask for personal information. Most smartphones “just read the code and open the link without ensuring that it is safe or that it is, in fact, what it says it is,” says Justin Fier, director of cyber intelligence and analytics at artificial-intelligence cybersecurity firm Darktrace, so users may not know they have been had. What’s more, he says, adept attackers can use a QR code to send users to a spoof site for exploitation, then pass the information users enter on to the authentic site—an action called a “man-in-the-middle” attack” in cybersecurity parlance.

Scammers are exploiting a decision-making mechanism smartphone users have taken for granted: urgency bias. “A QR code is a tool to encourage a quick action from a consumer,” says Jason Cheung, principal fraud analyst at Digital River, which helps brands navigate the back-end processes of online selling. Ads like the Coinbase Super Bowl spot, he says, normalize the point-and-click response. “I couldn’t help my hand wanting to click on my phone and scan the QR code, and that is dangerous,” says Mr. Cheung. “It’s so unconscious, you have to really train yourself out of the habit.”

More work for scammers

Some experts expect QR code scams to remain rare. While it’s easy to make a QR code that sends users to a URL that looks authentic and asks for login credentials or bank information, “the good news is that criminals are lazy,” says Mike Benjamin, vice president of security research at Fastly, a cloud-computing and security services provider. “Having to physically place QR codes around a city and making them look perfect, rather than just sending simple phishing emails, is extra work,” he says. Symantec’s Mr. Chien says having to be physically located nearby to swap out restaurant menus or put stickers on meters doesn’t lead to a good return on investment compared with, say, “breaking into banks and stealing the account information of millions of people in minutes.”

According to security researchers, there are some simple rules to follow to avoid being had by a QR phishing scam. Mr. Chien says to only scan QR codes that are “baked in,” meaning they are printed on a device or other informational material at the time of manufacturing, not stuck on after the fact.

“Most legitimate QR codes are not a sticker someone has added on,” he says. If you do scan one, check the domain that pops up on most smartphones before clicking. The parking-meter scam in Houston, for example, sent users to now-defunct “passportlab.xyz,” that then directed them to log into a “Quick Pay Parking” system. That should have been a red flag, he says, since a legitimate QR code from a city would likely lead the user to a municipal website, usually ending in .gov or .org, or to an obviously city-run app (typically advertised by being printed on metal and affixed to a pole).

The best way to thwart would-be scams is to manually input the desired website when a QR code seems fishy or untrustworthy. Installing a QR-code scanner app with added security can also help identify swindlers, should you choose to scan. The rest comes down to standard cyber hygiene and practices everyone should employ to prevent against any manner of phishing attack: Use a password manager, which won’t autofill your credentials on a suspicious site; make sure your credit cards have functions to protect against theft and fraud; don’t input personally identifiable information on an unknown website.

When in doubt, says Digital River’s Mr. Cheung, go old school. “QR codes usually have redundant options,” he says, so ask for a printed menu or pay with cash. “Anything that can be encoded, people will figure out how to turn into a scam,” says Mr. Benjamin.

Ms. Mitchell is a writer in Chicago. Email her at reports@wsj.com.

Beware of QR Code Scams - WSJ

[Glenn Petersen] "Low-tech" QR codes featured in Coinbase Super Bowl ad: [youtube video]

Glenn Petersen — 2/22/2022 1:54:55 PM

[sense] Seems like the barriers to theft would be even lower than they are for credit ca...

sense — 1/15/2022 3:56:02 PM

Seems like the barriers to theft would be even lower than they are for credit cards ?

[sense] Potent antiviral effect of silver nanoparticles on SARS-CoV-2 ;<)

sense — 1/15/2022 3:36:25 PM

[Glenn Petersen] The End of Car Keys, Passwords and Fumbling With Your Phone at Checkout The ult...

Glenn Petersen — 1/9/2022 7:10:36 AM

The End of Car Keys, Passwords and Fumbling With Your Phone at Checkout

The ultra-wideband, or UWB, technology that powers Apple’s AirTags could reshape how we interact with devices—if companies can overcome privacy concerns and other hurdles

By Christopher Mims
The Wall Street Journal
Jan. 8, 2022 12:00 am ET

For all the attention on tech companies and location tracking in recent years, our gadgets are actually surprisingly bad at knowing precisely where they are at any given moment. That’s about to change.

A straightforward and robust technology, decades in the making, is finally becoming affordable and widespread enough to grant devices not just a basic sense of direction, both indoors and out, but also the ability to precisely locate themselves in three dimensions.

The technology is called ultra-wideband, or UWB. It enables a centimeter-accurate sense of “where” on top of the “when” of computers’ clocks and the “what” provided by cameras and other sensors, and it could lead to all sorts of interesting things that might not be immediately obvious.

It has already become part of a standard backed by Apple, AAPL 0.10% Google, BMW, Volkswagen and others designed to let anyone with a late-model smartphone or Apple Watch unlock and start their cars simply by walking up to them. It could make it easy for us to control any connected light, lock, speaker or other smart-home gadget simply by pointing at it with our phone or watch. It could even, claim its architects, end passwords.

But first, UWB has to overcome the chicken-and-egg problem that always faces new technologies that require many different companies, in many different industries, to spend time and money making their devices wirelessly communicate with one another.

Companies that use it also will have to overcome major privacy issues. Once our gadgets are broadcasting their location at all times, how do we assure that information doesn’t fall into the hands of those who would use it to harm us?

Still, while UWB is in its early days, some applications are already here. The microchips and antennae that make it possible have been in every model of iPhone since the iPhone 11, launched in 2019, as well as newer phones from Google, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and others. It’s also been in the Apple Watch since 2020’s Series 6 model.

Its applications so far include iPhone owners finding their AirTags, sharing files via AirDrop, or amusing their friends with a party trick you can only do with Apple’s HomePod Mini. Owners of newer Samsung phones are using UWB when they find their Galaxy SmartTag+, that company’s answer to AirTags.

Apple’s AirTags, one of the earliest consumer applications of UWB technology, are about the size of four half-dollar coins, stacked. PHOTO: JAMES D. MORGAN/GETTY IMAGES
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In the not-too-distant future, things could get a great deal more interesting. And while many technologies promising transformation of some critical part of our world’s digital plumbing are destined to fall short, there are reasons to believe this one could live up to its potential.

For one: Membership of the FiRa Consortium, a nonprofit developing the UWB standard, is a who’s-who of major tech companies.

UWB is not, in other words, some proprietary part of one tech giant’s walled garden. It’s more like a basic piece of consumer (and industrial) communications infrastructure, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or 5G cellular standards.

UWB was developed over the past decade as a way to very precisely locate any object in three-dimensional space, says Dr. Ardavan Tehrani, who is part of a working group at FiRa and also works for Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook, in a division called Reality Labs.

Previous attempts to track location indoors with existing wireless technologies, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, fell short because they were never intended for anything but transferring data, he adds.

UWB, by contrast, triangulates the position of an object by measuring how long it takes radio waves to travel between devices and beacons. It’s a bit like the Global Positioning System technology we use for things like Google Maps, except that GPS involves one-way transmissions from satellites to receivers listening on earth. UWB entails two-way conversations between, say, the chip inside a smartphone and another UWB device.

These beacons can be small—the AirTag is roughly the size of four U.S. half-dollar coins, stacked—and last for years on a single battery. But the technology requires at least a few such beacons nearby for a device to locate itself inside a room.

BMW is one of the companies that have embraced a UWB-based standard that will let drivers use smartphones as car keys.P HOTO: BMW
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UWB-compatible chips have the acuity to determine the location of an object to within a centimeter, says Daniel Knobloch, a wireless engineer at BMW and president of the Car Connectivity Consortium. That group has incorporated UWB into its standard, finalized in May of 2021, for opening and starting a car with any smartphone.

Many newer cars have keyless entry systems. This consortium’s new standard enables a vehicle to unlock when a person with a UWB smartphone walks within a certain number of feet of a car. Because access to the car is entirely through a smartphone, it can also be transferred, which could make picking up a rental car at the airport as simple as tapping on a link in a text or email to transform their phone into a “key.”

Similarly, UWB could allow paying at a store checkout without having to figure out exactly where on a payment terminal to mash one’s phone or watch, and entering a building without ever having to swipe a keycard.

A laptop equipped with UWB could recognize that its owner is sitting in front of it, by listening for the signal from her smartphone or smartwatch. It could then automatically log in to any service that person is authorized to use, putting yet another nail in the coffin of passwords, says Dr. Tehrani.

Another potential application: making smart homes easier and more intuitive to use. Bastian Andelefski, an iOS developer in Germany, has demonstrated its potential. In a video posted online, he showed his ability to point his iPhone at any of the smart bulb-equipped lamps in his home, and turn them on or off with a single tap, rather than opening an app and scrolling to the appropriate light, as happens today.

Making this work was expensive and complicated, says Mr. Andelefski, and his hacked-together system is hardly ready for nontechnical users. But with more and more companies rolling out affordable beacons, it’s the sort of thing that could be available to consumers sooner rather than later.

If UWB sounds like some nascent technology long on promise but short on commercially available applications, that also seemed to be the trajectory of, for example, Wi-Fi. It had its origins in the early 1990s and didn’t begin to go mainstream until after Apple incorporated it into its iBook laptop in 1999.

Like Wi-Fi, UWB has a lot of room to improve, and many more applications could arise as a result, says Dinesh Bharadia, an assistant professor at University of California, San Diego, whose lab works on wireless communications and sensing. In research announced in September, his team demonstrated that, using a new kind of beacon, the speed of UWB could be increased by about a factor of 10, while the amount of power it consumes could be decreased by the same amount.

The resulting improvements, which would require only a software update to existing smartphones that use UWB, could allow an object to be located in space every millisecond. This would allow real-time tracking of VR and AR headsets, robots and other automation, pets and livestock, boxes in a warehouse, and anything else to which an AirTag-type UWB device could be attached.

UWB can help users navigate to specific destinations within a museum, store or other building. PHOTO: NXP
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That UWB could be used for so many different applications doesn’t mean that it will be, cautions Dr. Bharadia. One application for which previous indoor-localization technologies have been touted—maps that help us navigate inside buildings, or direct us to the right item on a grocery shelf—have failed for years. There are two reasons for this, says Dr. Bharadia, neither really technological: No one has figured out how to make money from indoor mapping, and users don’t seem to really care about a technology that can be replaced by something as simple as adequate signage.

A third reason indoor localization technologies might have failed until now is privacy. Mr. Andelefski found, when using Apple’s own UWB technology, that there are many ways the iPhone’s software and hardware limit a developer’s access. Part of this he attributes to the need to maintain user privacy, and to protect data as sensitive as the precise location of their devices.

Indeed, recent reports of people using Apple AirTags to track cars before stealing them, and to stalk others, show just how sensitive this data can be.

Privacy is a “key consideration” of how the company’s UWB-based technology works, and how developers are allowed to use it, says an Apple spokesman. For example, apps can only use the phone’s UWB-powered location tech when they’re open, and after a user grants permission, so it isn’t possible for apps to track a user’s location in the background, he adds.

“UWB is enabling more accurate location data, and how it’s protected is up to Apple, Google and others,” says Mickael Viot, a member of the marketing working group at the FiRa consortium and also a director of business development at U.S. semiconductor company Qorvo.

The ability to know precisely where they are might seem minor in the pantheon of our gadgets’ superpowers, which include near-instantaneous communication with any point on the globe, sophisticated digital photography, real-time health monitoring, high-performance gaming and the like.

But the potential of UWB is the way it links up with those other technologies. Just as it was impossible to predict that 3G and front-facing cameras would give rise to Snapchat, or that the smartphone itself would transform seemingly every aspect of how we socialize, it’s tough to say just how far this sense of where our things are might take us. Today, it’s a replacement for car keys and passwords, but in the future it could well be part of making important objects in the physical world announce their position and identity to our smart glasses and other augmented-reality interfaces, says Dr. Tehrani.

That is, of course, if companies can first get a handle on the privacy implications of all those objects and devices constantly broadcasting their location.

For more WSJ Technology analysis, reviews, advice and headlines, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Write to Christopher Mims at christopher.mims@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the January 8, 2022, print edition as 'The End of Car Keys and More.'

The End of Car Keys, Passwords and Fumbling With Your Phone at Checkout - WSJ

[Glenn Petersen] The Numbers Hiding Behind That QR Code The now-familiar square of little black ...

Glenn Petersen — 8/20/2021 5:33:47 AM

The Numbers Hiding Behind That QR Code

The now-familiar square of little black boxes added a second dimension to bar codes—and holds exponentially more data

By Eugenia Cheng
Wall Street Journal
Aug. 19, 2021 6:24 pm ET

ILLUSTRATION: TOMASZ WALENTA
--------------------

Mathematician Eugenia Cheng explores the uses of math beyond the classroom. Read more columns here.

I have cautiously resumed dining in restaurants occasionally, and so have found myself scanning QR codes to access the menu online. It’s a quick and easy process hiding a surprisingly large amount of math.

QR stands for Quick Response, and these codes were invented in 1994 by Masahiro Hara at the Japanese automotive company Denso Wave. Their original purpose was to track inventory in factories, but broader uses became possible with the advent and ubiquity of smartphones.

QR codes are essentially a two-dimensional version of bar codes, which are a clever way of encoding information in an image using vertical lines of different thicknesses that a scanner can detect. Hara’s 2-dimensional version uses a square grid of small black and white squares, apparently inspired by the board game Go.

The extra power is not just used to store a bigger message; it is used to improve accuracy and reliability.
The extra dimension allows for a huge increase in capacity: Where 1-dimensional bar codes typically encode around 20 digits of information, a QR code can hold 4,000 or more depending on the version used. A small increase in the width of the grid yields a much larger increase in the number of small squares available, because of how the math of squaring works.

But this extra power is not just used to store a bigger message; it is used to improve accuracy and reliability. The pattern cleverly encodes information about which way up it is supposed to be, so that it doesn’t matter which way up you scan it. It also has error-correcting information built in, so that if the picture is slightly damaged, the information can still be reconstructed. In fact, depending on the version used, up to 30% percent can be damaged and the code can still be read.

The correcting method is called Reed-Solomon error-correction and was introduced by Irving S. Reed and Gustave Solomon in 1960. It was previously used for compact discs, so that they could be slightly scratched and still play. Reed and Solomon were engineers, but both had doctorates in pure mathematics, and their method uses some quite sophisticated pure math that might otherwise seem very unrelated to daily life: polynomials over finite fields.

Polynomials may be familiar from high school algebra. They are expressions involving a variable often called x, raised to various powers, multiplied by coefficients, and added together—for example, x2 + ¾x + 2 or higher order ones along the lines of ¾x4 + ½x3 + x2+ 2x + 1.

In these examples the coefficients are all rational numbers from an infinite pool, but we could choose coefficients from a more limited “finite field” instead. The theory of finite fields is complicated, but it simplifies certain things, especially where multiplication is concerned. Reed-Solomon error-correction uses a finite field with 256 elements; all the numbers in this system can be represented by a string of 8 binary digits, that is, 0’s and 1’s, which is convenient for computers to handle.

The text of the “message” is also turned into binary digits, so the text and the error-correcting information are all expressed in binary code, which can then be represented as black and white squares instead of 0’s and 1’s. The tiny squares inside the main square of the QR code are laid out in a preset order, and when we scan it, a computer somewhere reads off the binary digits in the appropriate order, corrects any errors found and recovers the message—whether it’s information about a factory component or a website listing tasty pasta dishes.

We don’t have to understand any of this math to use QR codes in a restaurant, but I hope we can be glad that somebody did.

The Numbers Hiding Behind That QR Code - WSJ

[Glenn Petersen] QR Codes Are Here to Stay. So Is the Tracking They Allow. New York Times July 2...

Glenn Petersen — 7/26/2021 1:58:45 PM

QR Codes Are Here to Stay. So Is the Tracking They Allow.

New York Times
July 26, 2021

SAN FRANCISCO — When people enter Teeth, a bar in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, the bouncer gives them options. They can order food and drinks at the bar, he says, or they can order via a QR code.

Each table at Teeth has a card emblazoned with the code, a pixelated black-and-white square. Customers simply scan it with their phone camera to open a website for the online menu. Then they can input their credit card information to pay, all without touching a paper menu or interacting with a server.

A scene like this was a rarity 18 months ago, but not anymore. “In 13 years of bar ownership in San Francisco, I’ve never seen a sea change like this that brought the majority of customers into a new behavior so quickly,” said Ben Bleiman, Teeth’s owner.

QR codes — essentially a kind of bar code that allows transactions to be touchless — have emerged as a permanent tech fixture from the coronavirus pandemic. Restaurants have adopted them en masse, retailers including CVS and Foot Locker have added them to checkout registers, and marketers have splashed them all over retail packaging, direct mail, billboards and TV advertisements.

But the spread of the codes has also let businesses integrate more tools for tracking, targeting and analytics, raising red flags for privacy experts. That’s because QR codes can store digital information such as when, where and how often a scan occurs. They can also open an app or a website that then tracks people’s personal information or requires them to input it.

As a result, QR codes have allowed some restaurants to build a database of their customers’ order histories and contact information. At retail chains, people may soon be confronted by personalized offers and incentives marketed within QR code payment systems.

“People don’t understand that when you use a QR code, it inserts the entire apparatus of online tracking between you and your meal,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Suddenly your offline activity of sitting down for a meal has become part of the online advertising empire.”

QR codes may be new to many American shoppers, but they have been popular internationally for years. Invented in 1994 to streamline car manufacturing at a Japanese company, QR codes became widely used in China in recent years after being integrated into the AliPay and WeChat Pay digital payment apps.

In the United States, the technology was hampered by clumsy marketing, a lack of consumer understanding and the hassle of needing a special app to scan the codes, said Scott Stratten, who wrote the 2013 business book “QR Codes Kill Kittens” with his wife, Alison Stratten.

That has changed for two reasons, Mr. Stratten said. In 2017, he said, Apple made it possible for the cameras in iPhones to recognize QR codes, spreading the technology more widely. Then came the “pandemic, and it’s amazing what a pandemic can make us do,” he said.

Half of all full-service restaurant operators in the United States have added QR code menus since the start of the pandemic, according to the National Restaurant Association. In May 2020, PayPal introduced QR code payments and has since added them at CVS, Nike, Foot Locker and around one million small businesses. Square, another digital payments firm, rolled out a QR code ordering system for restaurants and retailers in September.

Businesses don’t want to give up the benefits that QR codes have brought to their bottom line, said Sharat Potharaju, the chief executive of the digital marketing company MobStac. Deals and special offers can be bundled with QR code systems and are easy to get in front of people when they look at their phones, he said. Businesses also can gather data on consumer spending patterns through QR codes.

“With traditional media, like a billboard or TV, you can estimate how many people may have seen it, but you don’t know how people actually interacted with it,” said Sarah Cucchiara, a senior vice president at BrandMuscle, a marketing firm that introduced a QR code menu product last year. “With QR codes, we can get reporting on those scans.”

Cheqout and Mr. Yum, two start-ups that sell technology for creating QR code menus at restaurants, also said the codes had brought advantages to businesses.

Restaurants that use QR code menus can save 30 percent to 50 percent on labor costs by reducing or eliminating the need for servers to take orders and collect payments, said Tom Sharon, a co-founder of Cheqout.

Digital menus also make it easier to persuade people to spend more with offers to add fries or substitute more expensive spirits in a cocktail, with photographs of menu items to make them more appealing, said Kim Teo, a Mr. Yum co-founder. Orders placed through the QR code menu also let Mr. Yum inform restaurants what items are selling, so they can add a menu section with the most popular items or highlight dishes they want to sell.

These increased digital abilities are what worry privacy experts. Mr. Yum, for instance, uses cookies in the digital menu to track a customer’s purchase history and gives restaurants access to that information, tied to the customer’s phone number and credit cards. It is piloting software in Australia so restaurants can offer people a “recommended to you” section based on their previous orders, Ms. Teo said.

QR codes “are an important first step toward making your experience in physical space outside of your home feel just like being tracked by Google on your screen,” said Lucy Bernholz, the director of Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab.

Ms. Teo said that each restaurant’s customer data was available only to that establishment and that Mr. Yum did not use the information to reach out to customers. It also does not sell the data to any third-party brokers, she said.

Cheqout collects only customers’ names, phone numbers and protected payment information, which it does not sell to third parties, Mr. Sharon said.

On a recent blustery evening at Teeth, customers shared mixed reviews of the QR code ordering system from Cheqout, which the bar had installed in August. Some said it was convenient, but added that they would prefer a traditional menu at a fine dining establishment.

“If you’re on a date and you’re whipping your phone out, it’s a distraction,” Daniela Sernich, 29, said.

Jonathan Brooner-Contreras, 26, said that QR code ordering was convenient but that he feared the technology would put him out of his job as a bartender at a different bar in the neighborhood.

“It’s like if a factory replaced all of its workers with robots,” he said. “People depend on those 40 hours.”

Regardless of customers’ feelings, Mr. Bleiman said Cheqout’s data showed that about half of Teeth’s orders — and as much as 65 percent during televised sports games — were coming through the QR code system.

“They may not like it,” he said in a text message. “But they’re doing it!”

QR Codes Are Here to Stay. So Is the Tracking They Allow. (dnyuz.com)

[Savant] Yes, QR huge in China... Also a new way to QR. These custom codes are capable...

Savant — 11/25/2020 10:03:39 PM

Yes, QR huge in China...

Also a new way to QR. These custom codes are capable of setting up customized text messages. If you want to make getting someone on your list even simpler, they can scan a generated code that will open up their phone's messenger with a message and phone number pre-loaded

[Glenn Petersen] QR codes are bar codes on steroids. Very popular in Asia.

Glenn Petersen — 11/25/2020 6:22:33 PM

[Savant] Sam's Club has had scan to pay app for some time now...uses bar codes, not QR......

Savant — 11/17/2020 11:16:39 AM

Sam's Club has had scan to pay app for some time now...uses bar codes, not QR...get a discount if using it.

[Glenn Petersen] CVS becomes first national retailer to offer support for PayPal and Venmo QR cod...

Glenn Petersen — 11/17/2020 6:48:42 AM

CVS becomes first national retailer to offer support for PayPal and Venmo QR codes at checkout

Sarah Perez @sarahintampa
TechCrunch
10:42 AM CST•November 16, 2020

PayPal announced this morning that its customers can now use either PayPal or Venmo QR codes when checking out at more than 8,200 CVS retail stores across the U.S. This is the first national retailer to integrate PayPal’s QR code checkout technology at point-of-sale, the company noted. The additional checkout option will also expand the number of ways customers can pay “touch-free” at CVS — a way to transact that’s become increasingly popular as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread across the country.

CVS and PayPal announced their plans to cooperate on a point-of-sale solution back in July. At the time, they pegged the time frame for the rollout as sometime in Q4 2020.

The QR code checkout process itself will pull the funds needed for the purchase from the customer’s existing PayPal or Venmo account balance, bank account or from a debit or credit card, just as it would if the transaction was taking place online. Venmo users will additionally have the option to utilize their Venmo Rewards.

Image Credits: PayPal
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The transaction does not include any fees, PayPal says. Plus, CVS’ ExtraCare Rewards Program members will still be able to redeem and apply savings using their ExtraCare account when using PayPal’s QR code checkout.

The entire transaction can be touch-free, as it involves QR code scanning as opposed to using a card that has to be swiped or inserted into a terminal or numbers punched into a keypad.

The new option arrives at a time when CVS says it’s seeing increased demand for contactless payments.

Since January, CVS has seen a 43% increase in touch-free transactions, according to data from Forrester. In addition, 11% of the U.S. population says they’re now using a digital payment method for the first time as a result of the pandemic, PayPal noted. The company’s own research also indicated that 57% of consumers said merchants’ digital payment impacted offerings their decisions to shop in their stores.
To use the new QR code checkout option, customers will first launch either their PayPal or Venmo app, click the “Scan” button, ten select the “show to pay” option.
The new checkout experience was made possible through PayPal’s partnership with payments technology provider InComm, which distributed the PayPal QR code technology through its cloud-based software updates to make the feature available at point-of-sale.

While CVS is the first national retailer to rollout PayPal’s QR code checkout, PayPal said it has 10 other major retailers signed up for a similar rollout, including Nike, Tumi, Bed Bath & Beyond and Samsonite, among others. It’s in discussions with well over 100 large retailers about the technology, as well.

“The launch of PayPal and Venmo QR codes in CVS Pharmacy stores will not only provide health-conscious customers with a touch-free way to pay at checkout, but also brings the safety and security of PayPal and Venmo transactions into the store with shoppers,” said Jeremy Jonker, PayPal senior vice president / head of Consumer In-Store and Digital Commerce, in a statement. “We are thrilled that PayPal and Venmo QR codes will help to maintain the safety of CVS customers and employees, especially in the essential pharmacy retail environment as we go into the winter months.”

In addition to the CVS news, PayPal today also noted that its recently announced “Pay in 4” option for splitting purchases across four installments is now fully live across millions of retailers.

Story Link

[Glenn Petersen] QR codes are finally having a moment in the pandemic Kai Ryssdal and Alli Fam ...

Glenn Petersen — 10/23/2020 6:31:29 PM

QR codes are finally having a moment in the pandemic

Kai Ryssdal and Alli Fam
Oct 23, 2020
Heard on: Marketplace

Quick Response, or QR codes were first invented back in 1994, as a way to track automotive vehicles during production, and to scan components quickly. Now, over a quarter century later, they are having a moment in the U.S., as consumers look to reduce contact in their everyday interactions to help minimize the spread of COVID-19. Maybe you’ve noticed them yourself. Many restaurants now have virtual menus that are accessed through QR codes. Digital payment systems with QR technology are also becoming more popular.

Digital payment systems with QR code technology are already widely integrated in China. The country also has been using a color-coded QR code health pass in the pandemic, to control people’s movements and to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Nicolás Rivero is a tech reporter at Quartz who’s been following the technology. “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Rivero about some of his recent reporting. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: Super quick as we get going here, a lot of people are familiar with barcodes, right? from Long, long ago. QR codes are sort of the next evolution, what makes them different? What makes them
better?

Nicolás Rivero: So the whole magic of a QR code is that it stores information in two dimensions, right? So if you think of a barcode, it’s a series of one dimensional lines. And it can only store so much information that way. Because QR codes are these little patterns of squares, they can store a lot more information, something like a webpages URL, which is why you can scan them and go to a link.

Ryssdal: Okay, so hold that thought for when we get to the what they’re being used for now. But I do want a little bit of history out of you first. Ten years ago, plus or minus, QR codes kind of come on the scene in a biggish way. But as you say, in this piece, they were just terrible.

Rivero: Yeah, there were three big problems with QR codes when they first kind of came out to consumers back in 2010. So the first is, if you wanted to actually scan one of these things, you [needed] to download a separate bespoke app to be able to do it. The second was cellular data at the time wasn’t as good as it is now. So it wasn’t a sure thing that you’d be able to actually load the webpage you were looking for when you’re out and about, which is where you’d come across these QR codes. The third thing is just that no one could actually figure out a good use for them. So a lot of brands came out with QR codes in their advertising because they wanted to position themselves as tech savvy. But they would just do it in ways that didn’t make any sense. Like you’d have, for example, a subway ad with a QR code on it that the only way you could get up close enough to actually scan the thing would be to stand directly on the subway tracks.

Ryssdal: Right, right. Okay, so now here we are 2020. More data is out there floating around. Technology is better. Smartphones mostly can read them pretty easily. How are they being used now?

Rivero: So the use that people probably have seen most often is that as restaurants have reopened, they’ve used QR codes to replace handing you physical menus. One of the more interesting uses, I think, is that PayPal and Venmo have rolled out QR codes for mobile payments in the U.S., which is something that’s been very popular in China. And there’s one more thing as well, which is that there are contact tracing apps, which are using QR codes to be able to kind of give people a way to show that they have tested negative for coronavirus before entering a building.

Ryssdal: And you could see that being sort of the passport thing, right? You get that code you show it on an airline or whatever. And in theory, you’re good to go. Right?

Rivero: Right. That’s like another big big use in China. And we’re slowly seeing maybe some rollout of that in the U.S. Abbott, that company that’s selling 150 million rapid COVID tests to the federal government has an app for that. You take the test. It gives you a QR code. A company can scan it and say OK, you’re good to come in.

Ryssdal: Let me just throw in a really quick cautionary tale here. Most — I’m sure it’s like 80% of the American population has a smartphone. But that leaves 20% of people, which is millions of people who don’t. So that’s one issue. And then another one is if you’re like — and she’s listening to this, I’m going to hear about this later. But if you’re my mom and somebody says no, I’m sorry, you need to do a QR code. [My mom], you know, she tries but she’s not the most technologically savvy person in the world. What do you do for them?

Rivero: Well, that’s exactly right. So this is definitely, as you said, a big point of caution. And something that I think is giving people pause about rolling out QR codes too widely, especially for pandemic uses, like determining whether you can port public transportation or enter a building or something like that.

Ryssdal: Right, and and one would hope there would be some workarounds for the non-technologically savvy amongst us.

https://www.marketplace.org/2020/10/23/qr-codes-are-finally-having-a-moment-in-the-pandemic/

[Glenn Petersen] QR code...and stuff that is OT. SoftBank wants to burn money Masayoshi Son zer...

Glenn Petersen — 10/7/2020 3:19:23 PM

QR code...and stuff that is OT.

SoftBank wants to burn money

Masayoshi Son zeros in on Japan, where he is ready to lose billions in a battle to conquer cash

WATARU SUZUKI, Nikkei staff writer
SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 06:02 JST

With his reputation on the line, Japan's most controversial tech investor needs a win with the PayPay app. (Illustration by Nakako Shiotsuki/Michael Tsang)
------------------------

TOKYO -- In its most extreme form, a psychological condition known as chrometophobia -- fear of money -- can take over the lives of people who suffer from it. They recoil from the sight of cash, flinch when touching or coming into contact with paper bills and coins.

SoftBank Group, Japan's most aggressive venture capital investor, thinks they might be onto something. Its latest multibillion-dollar technology bet is being marketed on a simple proposition: In the age of the coronavirus, cash is immensely dangerous.

"Many people don't want to touch paper bills and coins that may have been touched by someone else," said Ichiro Nakayama, CEO of the new SoftBank-created digital payment app PayPay, in a livestreamed news conference in July. "Cashless is the way to enable touchless and contactless."

Cash phobia could not have come at a better time for SoftBank's massive bet on digital payments in Japan. Cashiers across the country have begun asking customers to take extreme sanitary measures when paying, such as placing bank notes on a tray, wiping the tray with a sanitizer after each transaction, often while wearing plastic gloves. In South Korea, people have been cooking bank notes in microwaves to disinfect them.

That is all very encouraging, according to Nakayama. "Sixty-nine percent of respondents said that they felt resistance for bank notes and coins from the viewpoint of public health," Nakayama told the news conference devoted to PayPay's progress in conquering cash.

Hard cash: Japanese shops and venues, like this Karaoke box, have imposed extreme sanitary measures on physical money.(Photo by Takaki Kashiwabara)
-----------------------
SoftBank has invested over $1 billion in PayPay and taken nearly $800 million in losses in the year ending in March. It is wagering that it can succeed in popularizing mobile payments in a country where nearly a dozen other competitors have failed. Japan has been famously resistant to mobile payments technology: Consumers prefer withdrawing money daily from convenient ATMs to scanning a QR code on their phone. Unlike in China and India, where mobile payments quickly entered the mainstream, in Japan, they remain 1% of a $5 trillion economy.

Curing Japan of its cash addiction would be incredibly lucrative; bringing the mobile payment penetration rate on par with China's would create a $1.3 trillion industry.

SoftBank, meanwhile, desperately needs a win. It is struggling after a series of technology bets gone badly, including troubled office-sharing company WeWork and Uber Technologies' underperformed initial public offering. Despite vowing to pivot toward a cautious and defensive strategy, it hit headlines this week with reports identifying the company as the "Nasdaq whale," a massive buyer of tech stock options whose market-distorting activity caused share prices to skyrocket. Undaunted, it is quietly putting its chits on the roulette wheel once again -- this time, wagering hundreds of millions of dollars that it can transform Japan from a hinterland of cash hoarding to a digital payments powerhouse. And the coronavirus has become a major talking point for PayPay executives.

"COVID is a gift to cashless payment providers," said Michael Causton, a retail analyst writes on research platform Smartkarma. "Retailers want to protect staff from unnecessary contact with customers and contactless payments help this tremendously. Consumers, too, of course, want to avoid handling cash from stores to reduce the chances of contamination."

Winner takes all

At a glance, PayPay is the kind of mobile wallet commonly seen across Asia. Users download the app, link their bank account and top up money to their PayPay account. They can make payments either by scanning a QR code at a shop or having a clerk scan the app's unique bar code.

Since launching in late 2018, PayPay has clinched the lead in Japan's crowded mobile payments market. The app hit 30 million registered users at the end of June, equivalent to a quarter of the Japanese population. PayPay's distinctive red and white logo is increasingly visible in restaurants, at barbers and dry cleaners, and is now accepted by more than 2.3 million merchants across the country. Over a billion transactions have been processed
Tangible signs of progress are a welcome sight for SoftBank under the helmsmanship of controversial founder and Chairman Masayoshi Son. Over two decades, Son's early bet on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba forged his reputation as a technology visionary. In reality, his strategy is often centered around endless rounds of financing in companies with unproven business models, from Didi Chuxing in China to Grab in Southeast Asia, which in turn deploy the cash in desperate and expensive fights for market share: "cash burn," in the parlance of the tech industry. And PayPay's strategy is solidly part of the traditional SoftBank playbook. The aggressive promotions and sales drive have turned PayPay into a cash cremation machine. The company logged a net loss of 82 billion yen ($771 million) for the year ended March.

The object of cash burn -- a strategy of subsidizing the users of a service -- is to achieve scale quickly. Users will not use the app if a lot of businesses are not accepting it, and businesses will not start accepting it unless a lot of buyers use it. The solution to this chicken-and-egg problem is solved by buying large numbers of users and merchants, who hopefully will keep using it even when the incentives run out.

Most companies would grow queasy at the thought of losing nearly a billion dollars per year handing out money. But cash burn is part of SoftBank's DNA. Some employees compare PayPay's aggressive tactics to the days when SoftBank gave away free modems for its broadband service in the early 2000s. "The ability to scale the service with speed and money is classic SoftBank," one former executive said.

As an investor, SoftBank has been an enthusiastic proponent of burning cash, spending freely to back its champions in virtually every tech market-share war witnessed in Asia over recent years. Epic losses were endured by both Uber and Didi Chuxing in China; SoftBank backed Didi, which eventually acquired Uber's China business in exchange for a 19% stake, but not before both sides had spent billions of dollars on incentives. In Southeast Asia, SoftBank has injected about $3 billion in ride-hailer Grab since 2014, fueling a brutal price war with Gojek in Indonesia. The competition later spread across the entire region when Gojek launched operations in neighboring countries.

"In our industry, the winner takes all," Son told investors at a conference in Tokyo last year. "Compared to the physical, real industry, [with] online there is no physical distance, no physical storefronts that [matter]. [In] less than a second, it can go worldwide. So why should a No. 2 exist?"

But after a nearly unblemished track record of picking No. 1s, Son's record has been tarnished recently with a series of catastrophic decisions.

The company's performance took a hit last year after SoftBank and its $100 billion investment vehicle, the Vision Fund, sank more than $10 billion into WeWork, the U.S. shared office operator. When WeWork canceled its initial public offering last year due to weak demand, its valuation collapsed and prompted the largest loss in SoftBank's history.

Meanwhile, the stock price of Uber, the U.S. ride-sharing company and one of the Vision Fund's largest bets, remains below its IPO price of last year.

Where cash is still king; Japan is one of the richest plums left unclaimed by the mobile payment industry. (Photo by Akira Kodaka)
------------------------
Son was still reeling from his damaged reputation when COVID-19 hit investor sentiment, triggering a sell-off in SoftBank's shares. He has since pivoted to stockpiling cash, raising more than $41 billion by selling assets or pledging them to take out loans and boost share buybacks.

The strategy has helped drive SoftBank's share price to a 20-year high, and generate a 1.2 trillion yen net profit for the fiscal first quarter.

But SoftBank cannot afford another WeWork-like stumble. The saga not only led to huge losses but raised questions over Son's freewheeling investment style. Those concerns are likely to multiply with the revelations about SoftBank's "Nasdaq whale" strategy.

Meanwhile, the lavish spending on PayPay comes as some SoftBank investors complain about the wisdom of a huge bet on an industry that has proved famously hard to crack.

"SoftBank has been trying for years to create a digital ecosystem in Japan, but it is still playing catch-up," said one domestic analyst, referring not only to payments but also to e-commerce, which is led by Rakuten and Amazon, and other online services.

If Son's bet fails, it would be fuel for SoftBank shareholders who want to rein him in, seeing his unpredictable style as a liability. Son, who owns nearly 30% of SoftBank's shares, has already seen his tight control over the company come under threat. Calls from activist shareholder Elliott Management earlier this year prompted the company to boost buybacks and add independent directors.

"It's a company that is more vulnerable this year than it's been for many years," said one foreign hedge fund manager. "Institutional investors are very keen and strongly feel that a much stronger governance structure needs to be put in place."

But if it succeeds, the rewards would be immense. PayPay's aspirations go far beyond mere retail transactions. Its goal is to create the equivalent of Ant Group's Alipay in Japan -- a gateway for all kinds of payments and financial services. Ant Group, controlled by Son's longtime friend Jack Ma, is planning to raise $30 billion in an IPO that could become the world's largest flotation in history.

"Alipay is going to be bigger than Alibaba," one person close to SoftBank said. "And it is the basis of PayPay's business model."

Meanwhile, the price of not trying at all would likely be oblivion. Failing to build a mobile payments champion in Japan would be a major setback for SoftBank at a time when digital payment is increasingly becoming the entry point for all kinds of online transactions, from shopping to food delivery.

"Becoming a key player in cashless payments is critical for any firm that wants to be a dominant player in digital ecosystems in the long term," Causton said.

Son has largely stayed behind the scenes at PayPay as Ken Miyauchi, the CEO of SoftBank's mobile unit, talks about the service in public events. But industry observers say the business model follows Son's signature winner-take-all strategy.

Follow the money

Son's journey to PayPay began in India -- a country he reckoned was on a path similar to China's but also held the key to Japan's own inevitable transformation toward digital payments.

His interest in following China's model is natural, given that he is possibly the most successful foreign investor there. A $20 million bet Son made on Jack Ma's Alibaba in 2000 is now worth about $180 billion. Son had set his sights on India as the next China. In late 2016, he approached Indian tech entrepreneur Vijay Shekhar Sharma with what would turn out to be a very lucrative proposal.

Sharma's company, the Indian digital payments startup Paytm, was riding a huge economic transformation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had upended the country's financial system by rolling out a real-time payments network called United Payments Interface, and then banning large bills, a huge windfall for digital payment companies like Paytm.

"My meeting with Son-san was very, very high-energy," Sharma recalled in an interview last year. "He obviously knew what was happening in China." Ant Group, the digital payments affiliate of SoftBank-invested Alibaba, had also become one of Paytm's largest investors.

"He asked, 'How much will you raise?' My answer was, 'At least a billion dollars this time.' And then [Son] said, 'We will invest 1 billion dollars, and we will also buy secondary shares.'" SoftBank's newly launched Vision Fund ended up investing $1.4 billion in the company.

Paytm caught a wave of growth when Prime Minister Narendra Modi banned large bank notes and rolled out a real-time payments network in India. © Reuters
----------------------------
Around the same time, SoftBank unit Yahoo Japan had also begun to consider moving into payments. After starting out in 1996 as a local joint venture with Yahoo in the U.S., Yahoo Japan eventually became more successful than its parent and a leader in online advertising. But despite efforts to expand into areas like e-commerce, it was struggling to break the stronghold of Rakuten and Amazon. It saw an opening in mobile payments.

Yahoo Japan spent about two years preparing a mobile payment service, according to people familiar with the matter. But Son, who wanted to bring global expertise, invited Sharma to Tokyo months before the launch. Sharma was taken by surprise: "We did not have plans to come to Japan earlier. You never see an Indian company expand to a developed market."

Yahoo had prepared a slide presentation for Sharma. Instead, Sharma asked to see the source code underpinning the app. He quickly identified some issues. "The thing we changed about the technology is that, typically, a Japanese shopkeeper was getting money after four weeks. With PayPay, they get it on the next business day," he said. The Japanese company also agreed to cut fees to zero and enable all merchants to join first, instead of having each one vetted through a time-consuming approval process. About a dozen Paytm engineers were brought to Tokyo, and they revamped the entire app in about two months.

When PayPay finally launched, it was a late entrant in a crowded market. Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has all the elements of a lucrative digital finance business. Households stash more than 1 quadrillion yen ($9.4 trillion) in either banks or in cash, more than half of total household assets. Tapping even a fraction of the money would potentially generate huge fees for a financial technology player.

But despite years of efforts by traditional banks, startups and the government, Japanese have stubbornly stuck to cash. Cash accounted for about 80% of consumer spending in 2017, according to a government report, lagging far behind Asian peers like China and South Korea. Fintech startups in Japan have largely watched from the sidelines as even peers in emerging markets like India and Southeast Asia, which are leapfrogging traditional banking services and embracing mobile payments, raise capital at lofty valuations.

Japan's large elderly population has sometimes been blamed for the country's addiction to cash. In reality, "cashless payment is not new in Japan," said Celeste Goh, an analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. Credit cards have penetrated deep into Japan, where each consumer owns an average of three credit cards. "Consumers are open to the idea of exploring noncash payment options," Goh said.

The bigger issue is that cashless payments are not widely accepted by shops, who have long resisted going cashless because of cost and inconvenience. Digital payment providers charge an average of about 3% of retail transactions facilitated through their service, according to Goh. That compares to less than 1% for China's Alipay and its main competitor WeChat Pay. In addition, the sales are generally wired to the shop owner's bank account only once or twice a month in Japan.

"The challenge is really for Japan to get merchants on board with this idea, either by reducing the fee charges or finding a way to reduce the settlement cycle," Goh said.

Sharma explained that to convince merchants to accept PayPay, the service needed to be as attractive as cash, which they can get instantly and with no hidden fee. So PayPay decided to charge nothing for three years as long as they were small businesses -- stores with less than 1 billion yen in turnover -- and accepted its QR code payment option.

Masayoshi Son is playing the long game with PayPay, even though he has to assuage investors looking for short-term returns. (Photo by Yuki Kohara)
--------------------
Today, more than 100 engineers work around the clock to roll out updates at a relentless pace. SoftBank has brought in more Vision Fund companies as part of a burgeoning app ecosystem -- as the number of shops accepting PayPay soared, Mapbox, a U.S. mapping technology company, built a customized map so users can filter stores by category. Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing was made available directly through PayPay's app.

SoftBank also bankrolled the venture lavishly, hiring thousands of salespeople across the country that were tasked with bringing shops onboard. The stream of updates from the engineering team caused chaos in the early days, a former employee recalled, "because features that we had described to a client yesterday would be totally different the next day."

That was combined with eye-popping promotions for users, including a 10-billion-yen giveaway campaign shortly after PayPay's launch. Aggressive branding raised the app's profile; SoftBank, which owns a baseball team, even renamed its home stadium after PayPay.

It kicked off its latest series of promotions with a "2000% bonus" campaign in August, in which one in five payments will give back between 2% to 20 times the transaction value.

One reason PayPay has succeeded in attracting users is that it makes them feel like they are playing the lottery -- for free.(Photo by Arisa Moriyama)
----------------------------
"There is a lotterylike feeling to it," said one store manager at a major electronics chain that accepts PayPay. "I think that is why it attracts customers."

In far outspending its competitors, PayPay has wiped out small players from the market. Starting from nothing in 2018, it had a market share of 55% of the code payments market as of January, according to Japan's Fair Trade Commission.

But that has provoked rivals to start offering their own lavish promotions. In recent months, major telecommunications carriers NTT Docomo and KDDI have begun investing heavily to catch up. The relentless pursuit of Japanese wallets is shaping up to be a test of how far SoftBank is willing to keep bankrolling the bet, as a series of soured bets prompts its global portfolio to shift away from a growth-at-all-costs strategy.

"They are beating each other with bundles of bank notes," said Kazunori Ito, an analyst at Morningstar.

On Aug. 4, Miyauchi, CEO of SoftBank's mobile unit, said PayPay's "massive losses will peak out" but did not provide a timeline for achieving profitability. At the same time, his optimism seemed undimmed.

"We want the majority of people in Japan to be using it," he said.

A current senior executive refers to Son's business philosophy: "If the profit margin is 10%, there will be competition at 9%. ... If it is 1%, competition at 0.5%. But if it is zero, there is no competition."

The trouble with burning cash is that "you are renting users, rather than buying them," said a Shanghai-based venture capitalist who has worked with SoftBank. "Unless you can change consumer behavior, the users will run out when the incentives do."

Been there, done that: Japanese mobile payments are not exactly virgin territory. Here are some of the options available in the country. (Photo by Wataru Ito)
-----------------------------
Analysts say SoftBank will likely keep bankrolling the venture until next October, when PayPay starts charging transaction fees from its millions of merchants. If it continues to maintain a dominant position after that, companies will be lining up to pay for access to its large user base. The growing number of sellers, in turn, will attract more and more users to the app.

Creating this virtuous cycle, also known as the network effect, will cement SoftBank's reputation as a successful investor. Failing to do so will mean it has merely given away hundreds of millions of dollars.

And the kind of investors Son needs to assuage are motivated by short-term profits rather than long-term vision. SoftBank Group has an established track record of building profitable businesses in Japan. While it boasts a portfolio of tech companies around the world, it still relies on a single company for the bulk of its cash flow: SoftBank Corp., its Japanese mobile unit. The parent SoftBank raked in about $20 billion by floating some of its shares in late 2018, and sold some more as part of its recent monetization program.

But it will likely be years before PayPay turns a profit, and it is not clear if Masayoshi Son can wait that long.

"The trouble is," said Causton, the retail analyst, "no one is going to be making money out of payments for a long time -- unless PayPay stops offering all those juicy incentives."

asia.nikkei.com

[Glenn Petersen] It has almost doubled from its March low of $150.00.

Glenn Petersen — 8/19/2020 10:32:20 AM

[Savant] ZBRA has a v. nice 4 yr chart...

Savant — 8/19/2020 10:13:36 AM

[Glenn Petersen] Instagram launches QR codes globally, letting people open a profile from any cam...

Glenn Petersen — 8/19/2020 9:21:32 AM

Instagram launches QR codes globally, letting people open a profile from any camera app

Don’t open Instagram to find a profile

By Ashley Carman @ashleyrcarman
The Verge
Aug 18, 2020, 8:30pm EDT

Instagram
--------------------------
Instagram is bringing QR codes to the app. Users can now generate QR codes that’ll be scannable from any supporting, third-party camera apps. It first launched the product in Japan last year. The idea is that businesses can print their QR code and have customers scan it to open their Instagram account easily. From there, people can see store hours, buy items, or just follow the account.

To generate your QR code, go to the settings menu on your profile and tap QR code. You might still see Nametag there, but eventually, it’ll become QR code. You can then save or share the image. Instagram previously deployed a similar system called Nametags, which were internal QR-like codes that could only be scanned from the Instagram camera. It’s now deprecating the feature entirely.

Multiple other apps employ their own QR-like system, including Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Spotify. (Only Twitter supports actual QR codes.) But with the pandemic, it’s unsurprising to see Instagram embrace the more open QR system. Restaurants have begun leaving QR codes out instead of their physical menus, and other businesses request that people scan a QR code to load their website. While Nametags might have worked for this purpose, QR codes make it easier for people to scan and make them less reliant on taking out the Instagram camera to access information.

theverge.com

[Glenn Petersen] Coronavirus has turned the humble QR code into an everyday essential QR codes h...

Glenn Petersen — 8/19/2020 6:51:46 AM

Coronavirus has turned the humble QR code into an everyday essential

QR codes have been dismissed as a marketing gimmick – but in our touch-free world, they’re proving their worth

By VICTORIA TURK
Wired UK
Friday 14 August 2020

Getty Images
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Venture outside and you’ll soon see them. Printed on posters and signs, pasted on pub walls and hotel lobbies, sellotaped to picnic tables in beer gardens: QR codes.

As the hospitality industry begins tentatively to open up, bolstered in the UK by the government’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ discount scheme, restaurants and hotels are turning to technology to deliver a dine-in experience that is as touch-free as possible. Suddenly, a card menu that gets passed through the germy hands of one customer to the next doesn’t seem so appealing. QR codes – the black, barcode-like squares that can point to text or a website – have been around for a while, but was previously dismissed as largely a marketing gimmick, at least in a consumer context. Now the QR code has found its time to shine.

“Up until now a QR code, certainly to me, has just been a collection of black and white patterns on a billboard or on a bus stop or wherever,” says Edmund Inkin, who co-owns three hotels across Cornwall and Wales under the brand Eat Drink Sleep. “I’d never really thought of using them.” Now, visitors to Eat Drink Sleep hotels can access the food menu, drinks list and details on room bookings via QR code (QR stands for Quick Response).

Nils Engelking, cofounder of Egoditor, a mobile marketing company that runs an online QR code generator and works with companies to implement them, says the coronavirus pandemic was something of a rollercoaster for the business. First, customer numbers dropped off, as shops and events were forced to shut down. The main function of a QR code, after all, is to link the digital world with the physical: people can scan the code in real life to get more information on their phone. “So if there’s no sort of life out there and people gathering, QR codes are not that much necessary any more,” Engelking says.

As lockdowns around the world started to ease, however, the QR code found itself in its element: it was the perfect touch-free medium. It allowed people to interact with the world around them, while only touching their own smartphone. “Coronavirus just gave it a big push in terms of adoption in terms of technology and also in terms of the end customers,” Engelking says. He says that Egoditor has seen a huge increase in adoption, with a 25x increase in signups from restaurants in June compared to February, and 7x increase in signups from hotels .There has also been an increase in the number of customers actually scanning the QR codes, which Engelking puts down to them being implemented for more useful functions.
Many restaurants and hotels are using QR codes to display menus, or to direct people to booking pages where they can order food or reserve rooms directly online. They are also starting to be used to help with contact-tracing – keeping a record of who has been where in order to be able to track those who may have come into contact with the virus. The NHS Test and Trace service’s new app, which is currently entering trials, will allow users to scan a QR code at venues in order to keep a log of where they’ve been. Currently, venues on the Isle of Wight are able to create a QR code to work with the Test and Trace system.

Some offices are also turning to the tech to help with bringing people back to work. Software company SAP, which has reopened two of its buildings with a very limited capacity, has incorporated QR codes into its broader strategy of signage, sanitiser and distancing, in order to inform employees of updates. Scanning the QR code takes employees to information on the latest procedures and processes in place at the office.

Facilities manager Sarah Woodman says the QR code approach means the company doesn’t have to print out so many materials and results in a touch-free experience. “People don’t have to touch things – they’ve got their own phone, they can scan it, they can touch their own phone.” One other advantage is that you can easily update the information that the QR code leads to without changing the code itself. When SAP started using a different car park, for instance, Woodman was able to inform employees simply by tweaking the text that the QR code pointed to.

As well as perhaps finally finding their killer app, QR codes have benefited from technology moving on somewhat since they first began appearing in marketing materials. Whereas previously you may have had to install a special QR code-reading app in order to scan the codes, many newer phone models will now do this automatically through the main camera function. Engelking says that businesses are also using them better: if you hide a QR code in your marketing designs with no clear call to action, people won’t know what to do with it; if you put it front-and-centre on your restaurant table explaining that it’s how to access the menu, people will.

One of Inkin’s main concerns in using the tech was whether it would fit with the atmosphere of the hotels; he wanted to make sure not to lose the human element of service. For this reason, he says, Eat Drink Sleep is generally “relatively resistant” to technology, using it only where it really enhances what they do. They considered online ordering apps, but decided it took too much of the dining experience away, opting instead to use a QR code menu but still have people taking diners’ orders at the table (from a safe distance).

The hotel company also had their QR codes laser-cut onto wooden cards by a local company, to match more with its aesthetic. Inkin keeps some single-use paper menus to hand for people who really don’t want to use the technology, but he says that most visitors are more than happy to. He imagines that the company will continue using the tech even after coronavirus is a concern. “I think because it’s very likely we’re going to be needing to use this for 6, 9, 12, 18 months, and that these types of guidelines will be in place for us to be operating in a Covid-safe way, it’s going to become fairly hardwired both into how we do things and how our guests do things, what they expect.”

Some businesses have gone beyond QR codes to use other touch-free tech. Hotel chain citizenM has launched a “contactless” experience through its new app, which lets visitors check in, create their own keycard, order food and drink, and even control the lights and air conditioning in their room. The app, says Casper Overbeek, director of customer experience, was already in the works before the pandemic hit, but the company fast-tracked some features relevant to a contactless stay when this suddenly became more urgent. “It really is a way to say ‘listen, you don’t need to touch anything you don’t want to,’” he says.

Overbeek believes that even if contactless features are no longer necessary or desirable post-Covid, the frictionless experience offered by tech will be. “Any feature that we’re now building to make contactless possible actually also has a convenience element to it, and I’m sure that the convenience element will stay.”

wired.co.uk

[Glenn Petersen] h/t Ron ‘Low-Code’ Becomes High Priority as Automation Demands Soar CIOs are ...

Glenn Petersen — 11/26/2019 10:12:14 AM

h/t Ron

‘Low-Code’ Becomes High Priority as Automation Demands Soar

CIOs are expanding the use of tools that let noncoders create applications Chief information officers, on the hook to automate manual and repetitive business processes, are increasingly turning to tools designed to create applications quickly, without the sweat of writing and debugging lines of code.

Collectively known as “low-code,” these tools have been available in some form for decades. But they have grown more popular with information-technology staff and other departments as workplace automation grows and young, mobile-savvy people join the workforce.

With low-code, employees can quickly make apps by picking, dragging and dropping from a collection of ready-made software building blocks.

Johnson Controls International PLC, an Ireland-based industrial and technology conglomerate that makes heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, tapped nontech employees like engineers to create low-code dashboards that track installations, record project metrics and manage service calls, said Chief Information Officer Nancy Berce.

The company, which has about 105,000 employees across more than 100 countries, set up guardrails so the low-code apps don’t disrupt the resiliency of its central systems, she said.

“A lot of people are creating a lot of good things; how do we start to share that and make that more available to broader users? We haven’t quite figured that one out yet. That’s the next level of maturity,” Ms. Berce said.

Freeing up staff to focus on core technology issues was one of the reasons St. Luke’s University Health Network in Pennsylvania started using low-code, said CIO Chad Brisendine.

“There’s always a bigger appetite for IT than what we’re able to provide. I see this as helping meet that demand,” Mr. Brisendine said.

IT employees turned to low-code to build more than 20 applications using Microsoft Corp. tools. None of them took more than 20 hours to create.

It took eight hours to make an app that pulls information from the hospital’s systems, including a Workday Inc. platform, to track and send reminders to staff on continuing medical training, a requirement for doctors to retain their license. The author, an analyst in the IT department, didn’t know how to code, Mr. Brisendine said.

Mr. Brisendine next year plans to expand low-code training to more business units within St. Luke’s, which has about 15,000 employees.

Companies including Siemens AG , Appian Corp. , Pegasystems Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. also provide low-code tools.

Forms of low-code have been around for decades, but combining it with the use of application programming interfaces, chunks of code designed to connect systems and platforms and share data, has made it easier for those not conversant in C++ or Java to create applications with a punch, said Jason Wong, senior director at research and advisory company Gartner Inc.

Gartner is projecting that low-code will account for more than 65% of application development activity by 2024.

David Hoag, CIO at Chicago-based Options Clearing Corp., a central clearinghouse serving as a backstop for trades in the options market, said making low-code applications is as easy as dragging and dropping widgets.

The company used low-code to develop a visitor-registration system as part of an “app a day” program, where technology teams work with other departments to create applications to solve pressing business problems. The system, created in less than a day, registers visitors, logs arrival and departure times, captures visitor and badge information, and helps the facilities team generate reports on visitor activity.

Similar commercial software was quoted at costing between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, Mr. Hoag said.

OCC started building low-code apps in 2015 and today uses about 30 of them. Mr. Hoag sees low-code’s use spreading beyond IT.

“More people will be entering the workforce who have the foundational skills necessary to run with these things. Even if they’re not Java and HTML and JavaScript experts, they’ll be able to implement low-code systems,” Mr. Hoag said.

wsj.com

[Glenn Petersen] Former Tokyo-based engineer emerges as big winner from China’s love affair with ...

Glenn Petersen — 8/20/2018 10:29:04 AM

Former Tokyo-based engineer emerges as big winner from China’s love affair with the QR code

Beijing Inspiry Technology Co. is among companies cashing in on the shift to smartphone-based mobile payments in China

South China Morning Post
Li Tao
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 14 August, 2018, 7:02am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 14 August, 2018, 9:18am

Beijing Inspiry Technology's smart box provides customised services for merchandisers to support specific mobile payment service providers. Photo: Handout
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Wang Yue is one of the big winners of China’s love affair with the QR code. His Beijing-based company makes 70 per cent of the point-of-sale scanners used in the country to process transactions using the jigsaw puzzle-like digital labels.

Now the 42-year-old plans to bring his white ‘smart box’ to overseas markets, including Japan and Singapore, in a bet that mobile payments and the two-dimensional bar code will take off, just as it did in China.

His company, Beijing Inspiry Technology Co. is working closely with several organisations in Japan, as well as with Alipay and other international mobile payment brands, to boost the use of QR code payment in Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and the wider Asia region.

Inspiry has shipped more than 1 million smart boxes since 2015, still a tiny fraction of the number of payment points in China.

For Wang, the expansion to Japan and other parts of Asia represents coming full circle of sorts in a career that included a stint as an engineer for a Tokyo-based company in 2001.

It was in Japan that he noticed hospitals using QR codes, which were invented by Toyota Motor’s automotive parts unit Denso Corp. to solve the limited amount of information that conventional zebra-striped bar codes can hold.

In 2002, he returned to China to set up Inspiry to develop 2D bar codes. He started making the box scanner as early as 2008, initially to validate QR code-based coupons and membership cards. In 2015, as Alipay and WeChat Pay became increasingly popular, the company used the smart box to facilitate mobile payments. Alipay is the payment arm of Alibaba Group, which owns the South China Morning Post .

Wang’s big break came in recent years as Chinese consumers skipped paper cheques and credit cards to embrace smartphone-based mobile payments using QR codes. Today, the 6,000 KFC outlets in China use his glass-topped point-of-sale scanner that can process both Alipay and WeChat Pay, the country’s dominant mobile payment apps.

The 6,000 KFC outlets in mainland China use Beijing Inspiry Technology's glass-topped point-of-sale scanner that can process both Alipay and WeChat Pay. Photo: Handout
---------------------------------
The price, at 299 yuan, meant it is an relatively affordable option for small-time merchants like vegetable sellers and food-cart vendors, which benefit from the security and convenience of not having to handle as much as cash.

“QR code payments will become popular in developing countries, particularly where many consumers will skip credit cards but use smartphone to make payments directly,” Wang said in a recent interview in Beijing. “The smart box has fundamentally solved the pain points of current mobile payment, making it more convenient and efficient to process as mobile payment has become an indispensable part of life among Chinese.”

Wang said he believes QR code-based payments will become the mainstream form of mobile payment at least for the next 10 years due to its convenience and low cost.

That belief will be put to the test. In overseas markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong, besides cash, consumers still predominantly use credit or debit cards, or even mass transit cards, to pay for purchases. Advances in contactless and chip-based technology have also cut down processing time compared with the traditional swipe-and-sign procedure for card-based purchases.

Just how popular are mobile payments in China? The central bank put out a notice last month reminding businesses to accept cash as payment. Paying by smartphone, using either Alipay or WeChat Pay, has become so common in China that even beggars are holding out QR codes because many passers-by do not carry cash.

Mobile payment transactions surpassed 40 trillion yuan (US$5.8 trillion) in China in the first quarter of this year, according to data from Beijing-based Analysys, a market research company.

Inspiry received a further boost when regulators discouraged the use of static codes – such as those that are printed out by merchants on a piece of paper – after reports of widespread fraud involving fake QR codes to divert mobile payments. A 500-yuan limit was imposed on such transactions. The company’s scanner box instead reads the QR code generated on the payer’s smartphone and can also process electronic membership cards and coupons.

The rising popularity of mobile payments has created a wave of payment terminal makers including Fujian Landi Equipment, Newland Payment Technology and Bejing Lakala Payment. Shanghai Sunmi Technology, a POS terminal developer backed by Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, introduced scanners that can also process orders from food delivery apps. Starbucks uses Honeywell’s bar code readers in China.

“We’re still only in the spring of mobile payments,” Wang said. “Just 10 years ago, it took 17 seconds to call up a QR code. Almost nobody then could imagine the widespread use of QR code payment today.”

scmp.com

[Glenn Petersen] IBM has introduced a blockchain-ready "cryptographic anchor" that does not appea...

Glenn Petersen — 3/21/2018 4:23:32 PM

IBM has introduced a blockchain-ready "cryptographic anchor" that does not appear to incorporate RFID technology.

RFID technology has been around for decades and is established within the supply chain industry, with the market value of RFID technology alone predicted to rise to US$18.68 billion by 2026. IBM's technological development predicts a move away from RFID products, to a newer method of ensuring supply chain security, in which their products can "monitor, analyze, communicate, and even act on data" – all aided by the blockchain.

finder.com.au

------------------------------------------------

h/t FUHBO

IBM’s latest computer is a blockchain-ready CPU smaller than a grain of salt

digitaltrends.com

IBM
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IBM kicked off its Think 2018 conference today with a bombshell announcement: It has made the world’s smallest computer, and it’s designed from the ground up to work with the blockchain. The computer itself is smaller than a single grain of salt, coming in at 1 millimeter by 1 millimeter and reportedly has about the same computing power as a 1990s era CPU.

“The world’s smallest computer is an IBM-designed edge device architecture and computing platform that is smaller than a grain of salt will cost less than ten cents to manufacture, and can monitor, analyze, communicate, and even act on data,” IBM claims. “It packs several hundred thousand transistors into a footprint barely visible to the human eye and can help verify that a product has been handled properly throughout its long journey.”

Impressive as it is, for its size, it’s not the kind of chip you’re going to see in a mobile device any time soon, it’s made for something a little different. These microscopic CPUs are designed to be disposable. They’ll spend their lifetimes stuck to products in transit to ensure they arrive where they need to without being tampered with.

“Within the next five years, cryptographic anchors — such as ink dots or tiny computers smaller than a grain of salt — will be embedded in everyday objects and devices,” says IBM’s Arvind Krishna. “They’ll be used in tandem with blockchain’s distributed ledger technology to ensure an object’s authenticity from its point of origin to when it reaches the hands of the customer.”

IBM
-------------------------------------------

Essentially, these CPUs will be embedded in tags or product packaging, and they’ll log every movement the product makes, from shipment to delivery. They could also be used to ensure the authenticity of luxury goods.

“These technologies pave the way for new solutions that tackle food safety, authenticity of manufactured components, genetically modified products, identification of counterfeit objects, and provenance of luxury goods,” Krishna continues.

So, it’s fair to say the breakthrough here isn’t just the size of these computers, it’s their potential use. Think of them like the bar codes on items in the grocery store. But instead of communicating price info, these CPUs could tell you everything about the product — where it was made, by whom, and where it’s been.

[Glenn Petersen] RFID and QR codes will have a role to play in the implementation of blockchains....

Glenn Petersen — 1/23/2018 10:26:31 AM

RFID and QR codes will have a role to play in the implementation of blockchains. An example:

How blockchain is strengthening tuna traceability to combat illegal fishing

Candice Visser and Quentin Hanich
The Conversation

In a significant development for global fisheries, blockchain technology is now being used to improve tuna traceability to help stop illegal and unsustainable fishing practices in the Pacific Islands tuna industry.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand, in partnership with US-based tech innovator ConsenSys, tech implementer TraSeable and tuna fishing and processing company Sea Quest Fiji Ltd, has just launched a pilot project in the Pacific Islands tuna industry that will use blockchain technology to track the journey of tuna from “bait to plate”.

The aim is to help stop illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and human rights abuses in the tuna industry. These have included reports of corruption, illegal trafficking and human slavery on tuna fishing boats.

It is hoped the use of blockchain technology will strengthen transparency and enable full traceability, thereby countering significant threats to licensing revenue and crew working conditions and safety, and broader impacts on the environment.

Blockchain is evolving beyond Bitcoin

Blockchain technology is rapidly evolving beyond Bitcoin. Emerging applications are geared to improve business in many ways – including supply-chain transparency for all kinds of products.

A blockchain is a digital ledger that is distributed, decentralised, verifiable and irreversible. It can be used to record transactions of almost anything of value.

Essentially, it is a shared (not copied) database that everyone in the network can see and update. This system provides multiple benefits for supply chains, including high levels of transparency. This is because everyone in the network can see and verify the ledger, and no individual can alter or delete the history of transactions.

For consumers, this means you will be able to scan a code on an item you want to buy and find out exactly where it has been before landing in your hands. It will be easy to answer those tricky questions about whether or not an item – such as a fish – is sustainable, ethical or legal.

As seen here, once the tuna is caught, a reusable tag is attached, from which information is then automatically uploaded to blockchain. WWF
___________________________________

Using blockchain to trace tuna

The WWF pilot project will use a combination of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, quick response (QR) code tags and scanning devices to collect information about the journey of a tuna at various points along the supply chain. While this use of technology is not new for supply-chain tracking, the exciting part is that the collected information will then be recorded using blockchain technology.

Tracking will start as soon as the tuna is caught. Once a fish is landed, it will be attached with a reusable RFID tag on the vessel. Devices fitted on the vessel, at the dock and in the processing factory will then detect the tags and automatically upload information to the blockchain.

Once the fish has been processed, the reusable RFID tag will be switched for a cheaper QR code tag, which will be attached to the product packaging. The unique QR code will be linked to the blockchain record associated with the particular fish and its original RFID tag. The QR code tag will be used to trace the rest of the journey of the fish to the consumer.

At the moment, linking tags is not difficult because the project is focusing on whole round exports – that is, the whole fresh fish minus head, gills and guts. It gets a little more complicated when the fish is cut up into loins, steaks, cubes and cans, but the project team is now able to link the QR code tags on the packages of the processed fish with the record of the original fish on the blockchain.

While it may be possible to use RFID tags throughout the whole process, the expense of these tags could prohibit smaller operators in the fishing industry from participating in the scheme if it expands. There is also potential to use near field communicator (NFC) devices to track the fish all the way to the consumer in the future.

Marine Stewardship Council-certified yellowfin tuna processed at SeaQuest processing plant at Walu Bay, Suva, Fiji, December 2017. WWF
____________________________________

Bringing much-needed transparency to the industryWhile this use of the blockchain is the first of its kind for the Pacific Islands region, it is not a world first. A company called Provenence and the International Pole and Line Association (IPLA) has already completed a successful pilot project tracing products from Indonesian tuna fisheries to consumers in the UK.

Provenance is also working on using blockchain to track a range of other physical things – including cotton, fashion, coffee and organically farmed food products. However, the potential of blockchain goes further. For example, Kodak recently launched its own cryptocurrency to help photographers track and protect their digital intellectual property.

Blockchain technology is just starting to change the way business is done. If it delivers on its promise of supply-chain transparency, it will be a great tool to help ensure that industries – including the tuna industry – are doing the right thing.

This will give consumers more information on which to base their purchasing decisions. For the global tuna industry, which has historically struggled with illegal and environmentally dubious fishing practices, this could be a turning point as visionary fishing companies demonstrate true stewardship and begin to open up the industry to full transparency.

theconversation.com

[Glenn Petersen] No indication. I went to their website and did a search. Nothing.

Glenn Petersen — 12/20/2017 4:06:53 PM

[Cooters] Any indication Alien is involved, they are basically a Chinese entity now?

Cooters — 12/20/2017 1:32:35 PM

[Glenn Petersen] The future of grocery shopping has arrived in China Written by Karen Hao Quart...

Glenn Petersen — 12/20/2017 10:13:22 AM

The future of grocery shopping has arrived in China

Written by Karen Hao
Quartz
December 19, 2017

A little more than a year ago, Amazon announced a new grocery store concept that promised customers a human-less shopping experience. Customers would simply walk in, grab the items they need, and leave
without waiting in a line or going through a checkout—letting sensors, computer vision, and machine learning quietly do all the work to capture, calculate, and charge you for your purchases.

With much fanfare, Amazon opened a trial store in Seattle. Then, headlines went quiet as the company hit unexpected technical challenges, according to the Wall Street Journal (paywall). Last month, speculation of Amazon Go’s rollout reignited when the company began hiring store-related personnel.

But Amazon’s rival JD.com, the second biggest online retailer in China after Alibaba, has already beaten it to the punch. JD announced that, in partnership with Hong Kong real estate developer China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd, it plans to open hundreds of unmanned convenience stores with technology reportedly more advanced than Amazon’s. Its trial shops have already been tested by the 10,000 employees at its Beijing headquarters.

JD’s shops will use RFIDs and cameras with facial recognition and image recognition technology on the store ceilings to track each customer’s movement and product selection. As the store learns from a customer’s preferences over time, it will also begin to show personalized advertisements. The same tracking technology will also help store owners restock inventory more efficiently.

In addition to its fully integrated store concept, JD tested a second shop model that uses low-cost piecemeal technology solutions, such as smart shelving tools, that will allow existing stores to upgrade and increase the efficiency of their operations.

The company said that all of its technology will eventually be licensed to third-party retailers.

“These two smart-store solutions will completely change what it means to go to take a trip to the store,” said JD vice president Song Ma. “From helping small stores’ owners streamline their supply chains and increase stocking efficiency, to speeding up check out, this is a massive jump beyond anything in use today.”

Whereas Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods has given the American tech giant a brick-and-mortar presence to potentially roll out its Amazon Go vision, JD will leverage COLI’s real estate resources across China to rapidly expand. The China Daily reports JD and COLI’s partnership will extend into the development of other smart city solutions, including a last-mile delivery service using driverless vehicles that follow pre-programmed routes and have secure lockers onboard.

qz.com

[Glenn Petersen] Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organi...

Glenn Petersen — 9/19/2017 6:50:16 AM

Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems. [1]

SI systems consist typically of a population of simple agents or boids interacting locally with one another and with their environment. The inspiration often comes from nature, especially biological systems. The agents follow very simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local, and to a certain degree random, interactions between such agents lead to the emergence of "intelligent" global behavior, unknown to the individual agents. Examples in natural systems of SI include ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, bacterial growth, fish schooling and microbial intelligence.

The application of swarm principles to robots is called swarm robotics, while 'swarm intelligence' refers to the more general set of algorithms. 'Swarm prediction' has been used in the context of forecasting problems.

en.wikipedia.org

[Savant] RFly.....it can also find your lost keys...at home special circuit board...MIT ...

Savant — 9/6/2017 4:45:26 PM

RFly.....it can also find your lost keys...at home

special circuit board...MIT

msn.com

[Glenn Petersen] Is it time for a QR code comeback? Author Rebecca Sentence ClickZ July 28, 20...

Glenn Petersen — 8/30/2017 6:59:34 AM

Is it time for a QR code comeback?

Author Rebecca Sentence
ClickZ
July 28, 2017

Remember QR codes? Those blocky, black-and-white graphics that take you to a URL when scanned with your phone were everywhere from about 2011 to 2013. Brands splashed them across posters, put them in shop windows and integrated them into creative advertising.

But despite the ostensible usefulness of QR codes in linking the offline and online worlds, QR codes have since mostly died out, due to a combination of poor implementation, subpar technology, and a lack of native support for QR codes in smartphones.

In the meantime, QR codes have taken off in China in a way they never achieved in the west, where they’re used for everything from payments to exchanging personal details, proving that it’s possible to make a success of QR codes when they’re approached with a truly mobile-first mindset.

Since the demise of QR codes, we’ve managed to get by with things like shortened URLs, but nothing has quite lived up to the early promise of QR codes. However, a few resilient brands have proven that QR codes still have a role to play in mobile marketing – and with Google and Apple both having recently introduced native support for QR codes, signs are indicating that the time might be ripe for a QR code comeback.

Why did QR codes die out?

The principle behind QR codes is pretty solid: they’re effectively a gateway to the online world that you can open with your phone. A quick scan of the pattern and you’ll be taken straight to a webpage, with no fiddling around on a tiny phone keyboard trying to type in a URL.

Except that in practice, QR codes didn’t quite work like that. First of all, the early QR codes were extremely finicky about being scanned; you had to hold your phone perfectly still for quite some time in order for them to register, or the scan would fail. If you were moving, or the QR code was fuzzy or only visible for a short period of time, it just wouldn’t work.

Which made it a shame that a lot of brands and advertisers decided to place their QR codes in places that it was difficult to scan: alongside a moving walkway, for example, or on a distant billboard or train platform, or even underground, where there was no point trying to open a webpage even if the scan worked.

Image via WTFQRcodes
______________________________________

And that was assuming you got to the point of being able to scan a code: at the time of the QR code hype, no smartphones had native support for scanning QR codes, meaning that you needed to download a separate app just to be able to scan them – massively increasing the friction around something that was supposed to make the act of launching a mobile webpage quick and easy.

The lack of technological finesse behind QR codes, combined with the lack of native support, poor planning, and the fact that many QR codes also didn’t lead to a webpage that was properly optimized for mobile meant that the demise of QR codes was swift and inevitable.

Many industry commentators will insist that QR codes are dead for good, and that there could never be a convincing enough case to justify using QR codes over something like a short URL or Near-Field Communication. But we only have to look at China to see what can truly be achieved with QR codes given the right support.

Case study: QR codes in China

QR codes in China have effectively managed to succeed in every way that they fell down in the west. QR codes in China are convenient, quick and painless to use, lead to experiences and services that are designed specifically for mobile, and most importantly, they have native support via one of China’s most ubiquitous apps: WeChat.

WeChat is one of China’s most popular messaging apps, with more than 900 million monthly active users mostly concentrated inside the country. So when an app that’s installed on virtually every smartphone in China has in-built support for QR codes, you’ve effectively got native support for QR.

Add to that the fact that WeChat is much more than just a messaging app – it has in-built functionality for making payments, transferring money, hailing a cab, hiring a bike, and donating to charity to name just a few – and you start to see how WeChat became a game-changer for the uptake of QR in China. Scan a QR code with WeChat, and you can do almost anything.

Ecommerce, or more specifically payments, is one of the most natural uses for QR codes, and thanks to the integration of WeChat Pay (sometimes called WeChat Wallet), the payment functionality of WeChat, QR codes can be used in China to pay for almost anything. According to the Wall Street Journal, many Chinese users simply leave their wallets at home and use their mobile phones to make payments.

“More than 95% of China’s 731 million online population access the internet via their smartphones,” writes the Journal, “and half made offline, in-store mobile payments in 2016, according to a report released by the China Internet Network Information Center.”

Alipay Wallet, the mobile app from China’s most widely-used mobile payments provider, also supports QR codes, giving Chinese consumers another ubiquitous option for payments if for some reason they don’t want to use WeChat.

In a 2015 article for ClickZ on why QR codes have taken off in China, Sophie Loras detailed how WeChat’s messaging functionality has become a forum for brands to market to consumers.

“Brands [in China] are using QR codes to drive online to offline (O2O) sales, especially in retail. It’s not uncommon in China to see a poster at the entrance to a shop or near the cash register asking consumers to “add” them on WeChat.

“WeChat’s user appeal lies in its intimate and closed environment. For example, unless the user has agreed to follow a brand’s official subscriber account, the brand cannot send personalized and targeted content to them.

“Brands are also limited to sending just four direct messages a month to each follower. But it outlines why brands are so eager to increase their followers on WeChat through a QR code – better, and more direct, consumer engagement.”

Chinese brands have also used QR codes for everything from creating interactive marketing campaigns to helping to authenticate genuine products. In short, once you have the underlying support for QR codes, all sorts of things are possible.

But the QR code revolution in China came about through a specific combination of factors, most of which aren’t present in the west. So how could QR codes stage a comeback in other parts of the world?

Why the time could be right for a QR code comeback

One of the biggest things that separates China – and much of East Asia – from countries like the USA, the UK and Australia is a truly mobile-first mentality. Whereas western countries moved gradually from PCs to laptops and finally to smartphones and tablets, China went straight to mobile, and thus they approach the internet with a mobile-first – if not mobile-only – mindset. While we in the west have evolved much more slowly towards mobile, things have reached the point where brands need to crack a mobile-first approach to marketing or risk falling by the wayside.

QR codes could be the key to achieving this, and the environment for widespread QR code adoption is much more friendly now in 2017 than it was back in 2011. Let’s review the factors that led to the failure of QR codes four or five years ago, and examine how things are or could be different now.

Poor implementation and planning

A lot of the early problems with QR code marketing campaigns came from poorly-thought-out code placement, but this is one of the easiest mistakes to learn from.

If and when QR codes start to become more popular, brands need to learn from what didn’t work last time, and make sure the locations of their codes are conducive to quick and easy scanning. Of course, this would be aided considerably by:

Poor technical implementation

The early QR codes were extremely slow and finicky to scan, and required users to line up their smartphones exactly and hold them completely still in order for the scan to work. But technology has come a long way since then, and we could undoubtedly improve on our ability to scan QR codes in order to reduce a lot of the friction around using them.

In China, writes The Register, “in most cases a QR code will scan before you can blink, even when it’s poorly aligned, or moving, or on a fuzzy TV screen. And of course they’ve done the maths to make this work well – when you rely on QR codes this much, it makes sense to make them as painless as possible.”

It would take a bit of initial investment and commitment to developing the tech to make QR codes really great, but the case of China shows how worthwhile it can be.

Lack of mobile optimization

The mobile web has also come a long way since 2011, and brands are now much more mobile-focused in their mindset, and thus better placed to create truly mobile-optimized campaigns and experiences.

Lack of native support

This is the big one that will ultimately make or break a QR code revival. All of the other factors will come as long as there is an incentive to make QR codes work, but for this, you need some kind of native support for QR codes.

A couple of brands are already making a success of QR codes by integrating them with their existing mobile app. McDonald’s, for example, allows British consumers to order using its mobile app in select restaurants. After choosing their meal, customers ‘check in’ to the restaurant of their choice by scanning a QR code, which then confirms their order to the restaurant, who will start to prepare it.

Image: Marketing Week
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US retail giant Walmart has also been a keen adopter of QR codes. It first introduced QR codes to its paper receipts which customers could scan using the mobile app, uploading them as a digital receipt from which they could then create a shopping list.

In 2016, it then launched Walmart Pay, a new feature of its app which allowed customers to use their smartphones to pay for in-store purchases by scanning a QR code at checkout. In a blog post entitled ‘ Open, Scan, Done: The Case for Walmart Pay’, Walmart wrote,

“We live in a digital world. We receive alerts about news breaking around the world in real time, rather than waiting for the Sunday morning newspaper. We can control temperature in our homes, lock doors and set alarms from our smartphones. So it’s time for the retail industry to step up – to allow customers to shop in new ways.”

Walmart certainly has the kind of clout that could get millions of shoppers used to using QR codes to pay for their purchases, but its app is still standalone, and doesn’t integrate with other apps or brands in a way that could allow QR codes to be used for payments outside of Walmart. So how are QR codes going to break out of these single-brand silos to become more widespread?

WhatsApp could be one way. With 1.2 billion monthly users across the globe, WhatsApp has a reach that is comparable to that of WeChat (if not as geographically concentrated), and it is working on implementing some of the features that make WeChat such an omnipresent part of daily life in China.

For example, it is reportedly due to roll out a payment functionality – and it already has QR code scanning built-in thanks to WhatsApp Web. If WhatsApp (or more accurately Facebook, its parent company) chooses to go down that route, it could become the west’s answer to WeChat, and set itself apart from messaging competitors like Signal and Telegram by becoming the one to drive mainstream usage of QR codes.

Two other big developments might tip the scale towards a true comeback of QR codes. Google Chrome has how introduced native support for QR codes into its iOS app, meaning that iPhone users who browse with Google Chrome now have the ability to scan QR codes built in and ready to go.

Apple has also decided to introduce a QR code reader to its camera app in iOS 11, giving iPhone and iPad users on iOS 11 the ability to scan QR codes using their phone’s camera.

There’s been no word from either of the tech giants over why they decided to introduce this functionality now, but maybe they know something we don’t. Either way, the potential is there for marketers to unlock, and if this native functionality extends to Android, there will be an even bigger cohort of ‘QR code-ready’ mobile users for brands to target using QR codes.

While a QR code comeback isn’t going to happen overnight, we no longer have most of the problems that caused QR codes to die out several years ago. Technology and infrastructure-wise, we’re in a much better position to make QR codes work properly as a link between the online and offline worlds, something that brands have been trying to crack for years and years.

You might ask why we can’t just use Near-Field Communication for mobile payments, or AR apps to create interactive mobile marketing experiences in the offline world – why bother with the outdated technology of QR codes when we have other options?

My question is, why not have all three? NFC and AR can exist alongside QR codes, and anything that gets consumers used to interfacing with the offline world using their smartphones benefits the uptake of all of these.

If we’re truly becoming a mobile society, why should we limit ourselves to just one or two methods of linking the online and offline worlds via our smartphones? If anything, it makes sense to have as much choice as possible.

Rebecca Sentance is the Deputy Editor of ClickZ and Search Engine Watch.

clickz.com

[Glenn Petersen] Drones relay RFID signals for inventory control System could save retailers bil...

Glenn Petersen — 8/26/2017 6:27:20 AM

Drones relay RFID signals for inventory control

System could save retailers billions lost through faulty inventory records

ScienceDaily
Date:August 25, 2017

Source:Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Summary:Researchers have developed a system that enables small, safe, aerial drones to read RFID tags from tens of meters away while identifying the tags' locations. The system could be used in large warehouses to prevent inventory mismatches and locate individual items.

MIT researchers have developed a system that enables small, safe, aerial drones to read RFID tags in large warehouses at a distance of several meters, while identifying the tags’ locations with an average error of about 19 centimeters. (stock image)
Credit: © petrovk / Fotolia
__________________________________________

MIT researchers have developed a system that enables small, safe, aerial drones to read RFID tags in large warehouses at a distance of several meters, while identifying the tags’ locations with an average error of about 19 centimeters. (stock image)
Credit: © petrovk / Fotolia
_______________________________

Radio frequency ID tags were supposed to revolutionize supply chain management. The dirt-cheap, battery-free tags, which receive power wirelessly from scanners and then broadcast identifying numbers, enable warehouse managers to log inventory much more efficiently than they could by reading box numbers and recording them manually.

But the scale of modern retail operations makes even radio frequency ID (RFID) scanning inefficient. Walmart, for instance, reported that in 2013 it lost $3 billion in revenue because of mismatches between its inventory records and its stock. Even with RFID technology, it can take a single large retail store three months to perform a complete inventory review, which means that mismatches often go undiscovered until exposed by a customer request.

MIT researchers have now developed a system that enables small, safe, aerial drones to read RFID tags from tens of meters away while identifying the tags' locations with an average error of about 19 centimeters. The researchers envision that the system could be used in large warehouses for both continuous monitoring, to prevent inventory mismatches, and location of individual items, so that employees can rapidly and reliably meet customer requests.

The central challenge in designing the system was that, with the current state of autonomous navigation, the only drones safe enough to fly within close range of humans are small, lightweight drones with plastic rotors, which wouldn't cause injuries in the event of a collision. But those drones are too small to carry RFID readers with a range of more than a few centimeters.

The researchers met this challenge by using the drones to relay signals emitted by a standard RFID reader. This not only solves the safety problem but also means that drones could be deployed in conjunction with existing RFID inventory systems, without the need for new tags, readers, or reader software.

"Between 2003 and 2011, the U.S. Army lost track of $5.8 billion of supplies among its warehouses," says Fadel Adib, the Sony Corporation Career Development Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, whose group at the MIT Media Lab developed the new system. "In 2016, the U.S. National Retail Federation reported that shrinkage -- loss of items in retail stores -- averaged around $45.2 billion annually. By enabling drones to find and localize items and equipment, this research will provide a fundamental technological advancement for solving these problems."

The MIT researchers describe their system, dubbed RFly, in a paper they presented this week at the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Data Communications. Adib is the senior author on the paper, and he's joined by Yunfei Ma, a postdoc in the Media Lab, and Nicholas Selby, an MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering.

Phase shift

Relaying RFID signals and using them to determine tags' locations poses some thorny signal-processing problems. One is that, because the RFID tag is powered wirelessly by the reader, the reader and the tag transmit simultaneously at the same frequency. A relay system adds another pair of simultaneous transmissions: two between the relay and the tag and two between the relay and the reader. That's four simultaneous transmissions at the same frequency, all interfering with each other.

This problem is compounded by the requirement that the system determine the location of the RFID tag. The location-detection -- or "localization" -- system uses a variation on a device called an antenna array. If several antennas are clustered together, a signal broadcast toward them at an angle will reach each antenna at a slightly different time. That means that the signals detected by the antennas will be slightly out of phase: The troughs and crests of their electromagnetic waves won't coincide perfectly. From those phase differences, software can deduce the angle of transmission and thus the location of the transmitter.

The drone is too small to carry an array of antennas, but it is continuously moving, so readings it takes at different times are also taken at different locations, simulating the multiple antenna elements of an array.

Ordinarily, to combat interference, the drone would digitally decode the transmission it receives from the tag and re-encode it for transmission to the reader. But in this case, the delays imposed by the decoding-encoding process would change the signals' relative phases, making it impossible to accurately gauge location.

All radio systems encode information by modulating a base transmission frequency, usually by shifting it slightly up and down. But because an RFID tag has no independent power source, its modulations are detectably smaller than those of the reader. So the MIT researchers devised an analog filter that would subtract the base transmission frequency from the signals that reach the reader and then separate the low-frequency and high-frequency components. The low-frequency component -- the signal from the tag -- is then added back onto the base frequency.

Frame of reference

At this point, however, another problem still remains. Because the drone is moving, the phase shift of the signals that reach the reader result from not only the drone's position relative to the RFID tag but also its position relative to the reader. On the basis of the received signal alone, the reader has no way to tell how much each of those two factors contributed to the total phase shift.

So the MIT researchers also equip each of their drones with its own RFID tag. A drone alternates between relaying the reader's signal to a tagged item and simply letting its own tag reflect the signal back, so that the reader can estimate the drone's contribution to the total phase shift and remove it.

In experiments in the Media Lab that involved tagged objects, many of which were intentionally hidden to approximate the condition of merchandise heaped in piles on warehouse shelves, the system was able to localize the tags with 19-centimeter accuracy while extending the range of the reader tenfold in all directions, or one hundredfold cumulatively. The researchers are currently conducting a second set of experiments in the warehouse of a major Massachusetts retailer.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Original written by Larry Hardesty. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

sciencedaily.com

[Savant] I'm not against it, per say, however having a 'money chip' implanted? Not so su...

Savant — 8/4/2017 10:26:42 AM

I'm not against it, per say, however having a 'money chip' implanted? Not so sure about that.

Medical history would be v.good, if they can update as time goes by.

I'm fairly certain there are still fundamentalists and others that are, and always will be, against implants.

That's the nature of the beast....(humans).

[Glenn Petersen] The day that I started this board 14 years ago I posted five articles about priv...

Glenn Petersen — 8/4/2017 10:06:56 AM

The day that I started this board 14 years ago I posted five articles about privacy concerns, and those addressed the use of external chips. I have also posted a number of articles over the years about fundamentalists who felt that a chip implant was akin to the "Mark of the Devil." We have come a long way.

It won't be long before we are implanting chips on people with references to their medical history. Having cared for parents who were unable to effectively articulate their medical histories (Parkinson's and Alzheimer's), I would have been receptive to the idea of tagging.

[Savant] Hmm, prolly inevitable....however..saying they're .'encrypted & secure'?...until...

Savant — 8/4/2017 9:51:00 AM

Hmm, prolly inevitable....however..saying they're .'encrypted & secure'?...until they aren't
...could give 'body hackers' new meaning, as they chop off your hand to get your money chip...
as for giving some people an 'unfair advantage'...who the H ever thought life is fair..
Trying to make life 'fair' for everyone....is a fool's errand.....call me a cynic.
Never was, & likely, never will be.

[Glenn Petersen] Dawn of the bionic age: Body hackers let chips get under their skin By Tim John...

Glenn Petersen — 8/4/2017 9:36:02 AM

Dawn of the bionic age: Body hackers let chips get under their skin

By Tim Johnson
McClatchy Newspapers
August 03, 2017 6:16 PM

LAS VEGAS — If you’re prone to forgetting your card key for the office or your computer password, here’s a solution: Get a microchip implanted in your hand.

That’s what Brian McEvoyhas done multiple times. He’s got five implants, mostly for functional reasons but one just for fun.

“There’s a glow-in-the-dark implant on the back of my right hand,” said McEvoy, a 36-year-old electrical engineer from St. Paul, Minnesota.

For years, owners have implanted microchips in their pets to recover them if they go astray. Farmers use them in cattle. Now, humans are experimenting with subdermal microchips, which are the size of a large grain of rice, to make modern life easier.

Ever so slowly, a trend that began in the hacker community is moving toward the mainstream. A Wisconsin firm that specializes in designing company break rooms, Three Square Market, announced last monththat it was offering implanted chips to all its employees.

The chips will allow employees to “make purchases in the company’s break room market, open doors, log in to computers, use copy machines, among other things,” it said in a statement.
“
It can emulate every card in your wallet, so you can chuck your wallet away.

Many hackers gathered here for a recent global hacker conference, DefCon 2017, view implants as a way to interact seamlessly with a technological world and to enhance human senses. They await the day when microchips give humans the ability for echolocation, and to see infrared and ultraviolet light, enhance the capacity to smell, sense direction, even feel vibrations that reveal movement in the stock market.

It is a sharp departure from the use of implants, like pacemakers and insulin pumps, to restore function lost through impairment or ill health.

Tim Cannon, a software engineer who co-founded a company that sells implantable chips, Grindhouse Wetware, said some critics believe tinkering with the body’s capabilities is improper, even unethical.

“It tends to be viewed as something like hubris,” Cannon said.

But he doesn’t care. The coming years will be “about breaking through that barrier and saying it’s okay to want to be more than what biology offered you,” he said

Dozens of hackers lined up on a recent night at the DefCon conference to have microchips installed in the fleshy web between thumb and index finger of their hands.

The biohackers call themselves “grinders,” a term taken from a comic book by Warren Ellis. The technology they implant is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Most opted for a small radio frequency identification (RFID) or a Near Field Communication (NFC) chip suitable for subdermal use.

“This is my train ticket,” said an Australian hacker who goes by the name Meow-Ludo Meow-Meow, pointing to a spot on his hand where a chip containing a rechargeable rail token was implanted. He said he just swipes his hand, rather than a ticket, over a rail sensor.

Implantable chips will soon carry out the functions of credit cards and keys, he said.

“It can emulate every card in your wallet, so you can chuck your wallet away,” he said.

Some consumers fear that an implanted microchip will allow greater government surveillance, and only advances that “are spectacular can overcome that queasiness,” he said.

“If Johnny Depp puts one of these in his hand, they’ll be everywhere,” he added.

The public is certainly not there yet. A 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center found that seven in 10 Americans were “somewhat” or “very” worried about implanting a computer chip in the brain to improve concentration and the processing of information. The more religious the respondent, the less likely they were to favor such an implant, it found.

Cannon said the melding of technology and physiology can improve human experience.

“We need to stop pretending that we are perfect and the pinnacle of evolution,” he said.

Implanting a chip can cause discomfort.

“There will be some blood, some pain,” said Doug Copeland, who works with one of the handful of companies that offer implants, Dangerous Things, based in Seattle, as he implanted a chip in a client’s hand.

“A lot of people frown on this kind of thing but it’s really not anything much different than getting a body piercing or a tattoo,” said a California man, giving his name only as Keith.

Others asked if the implanted chips could allow government surveillance (they contain no GPS, so no), or cause problems if a patient undergoes an MRI test in a hospital (maybe not advisable).

Copeland said he’d been through airport checkpoints numerous times and never been flagged: “Unless you show it to them, they don’t know it’s there. And if you show it to them, they say, ‘What the hell?’”

Some high-profile proponents of implants include Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla cars and SpaceX, who said last year that humans must reach greater symbiosis with computers in order to stay relevant in a world of artificial intelligence.

But the trend toward implants carries risks, warned Walter Glannon, a Yale-trained bioethicist who teaches at the University of Calgary, Canada. Studies have not yet determined “whether implants are safe,” he said. Even if safe, a social minefield may lay ahead.

“They would raise ethical questions about fairness and unequal access to devices that could give some people a competitive advantage over others. Unlike the drugs used for cognitive enhancement, implants would not be so accessible over the internet and would not be cheap. Many people would not be able to afford them,” Glannon said.

“This could be an unfair advantage.”

The threat that microchips could be hacked, possibly monkeying with people’s cognition or perception, is also a latent threat, he added.

For now, though, experimenters like McEvoy see no harm in what they do. The shielded tiny tube with a phosphorescent layer that he had implanted on the back of his hand is just for fun. It works like the dial of a watch that glows in the dark.

“There is no battery or switch so it is continuously bright. It's possible to see in a dark room and I have shown it to people while at bonfire parties,” McEvoy said.

Manufacturers say implantable chips with greater memory and more “out of the box” functionality – such as starting a car, or measuring body functions such as blood sugar and oxygen levels – may be in the offing soon.

Eventually, said Meow-Meow, an implant could save lives.

“It can call an ambulance for you before you have a heart attack,” he said.

Tim Johnson: 202-383-6028, @timjohnson4

mcclatchydc.com

[Glenn Petersen] What once was unthinkable: Wisconsin Company To Implant Microchips In Employees...

Glenn Petersen — 7/23/2017 10:28:39 PM

What once was unthinkable:

Wisconsin Company To Implant Microchips In Employees

Josh Rosenthal
ABC News
July 22, 2017 07:24 AM

A Wisconsin company is about to become the first in the U.S. to offer microchip implants to its employees.

Yes, you read that right. Microchip implants.

"It's the next thing that's inevitably going to happen, and we want to be a part of it," Three Square Market Chief Executive Officer Todd Westby said.

The company designs software for break room markets that are commonly found in office complexes.

Just as people are able to purchase items at the market using phones, Westby wants to do the sam thing using a microchip implanted inside a person's hand.

"We'll come up, scan the item," he explained, while showing how the process will work at an actual break room market kiosk. "We'll hit pay with a credit card, and it's asking to swipe my proximity payment now. I'll hold my hand up, just like my cell phone, and it'll pay for my product."

More than 50 Three Square Market employees are having the devices implanted starting next week. Each chip is about the size of a single grain of rice.

Along with purchasing market kiosk items, employees will be albe to use the chip to get into the front door and log onto their computers.

Each chip costs $300 and the company is picking up the tab. They're implanted between a person's thumb and forefinger. Westby added the data is both encrypted and secure.

"There's no GPS tracking at all," he said.

No one who works at Three Square Market is required to get the chip implant.

kstp.com

[Glenn Petersen] h/t Bill Hammond IMO, a well-balanced Impinj backgrounder with quality links s...

Glenn Petersen — 6/23/2017 8:21:33 PM

h/t Bill Hammond

IMO, a well-balanced Impinj backgrounder with quality links

seekingalpha.com

[Glenn Petersen] Ripple effects from the Amazon/Whole Foods deal: Impinj: Amazon Just One More R...

Glenn Petersen — 6/17/2017 6:07:34 PM

Ripple effects from the Amazon/Whole Foods deal:

Impinj: Amazon Just One More Reason Not To Short It, Says RBC

By Tiernan Ray
Barron's
June 16, 2017 4:48 p.m. ET

Mitch Steves of RBC Capital surmises Impinj's radio-frequency tags and related technology could get a big lift from Amazon's deal to buy Whole Foods, just one more reason he thinks you shouldn't short Impinj shares despite a 58% run-up this year.

Shares of Impinj ( PI) today closed up $8.94, or over 19%, at $55.71, bolstered by speculation that its technology for radio-frequency identification, or R.F.I.D., tag systems may get a lift from Amazon’s ( AMZN) announced deal to acquire Whole Foods Market ( WFM).

As I mentioned in my prior story, RBC Capital’s Mitch Steves, who has an Outperform rating on shares of Impinj, thinks there may well be a direct connection between Impinj and Amazon, having speculated back in December that Impinj’s technology was being used for Amazon’s “Go” concept stores.

Steves this afternoon followed up with a fresh research note, raising his price target to $59 from $50, and declaring that Impinj is on the “Do not short list,” even though Impinj stock is up 58% this year.

The Whole Food deal could take RFID systems to “scale” deployment, he thinks:

With the acquisition of Whole Foods there is potential for RFID technology to be rolled out at scale. Importantly, we think there are too many catalysts that could send the stock higher including 1) Kaiser; 2) new airlines; and 3) another major grocery store acquisition from Amazon. Net/net: while we do not anticipate a major announcement on July 18-20, we think investors should avoid shorting Impinj stock. Overall, Amazon and Impinj are not incentivized to announce a potential partnership given a pending $13.7B transaction (AMZN/WFM). We are increasing our price target due to higher conviction in step function changes to revenue numbers – new customers.

Steves thinks you don’t want to sell into this rally in Impinj:

With Impinj now up +13% on the news, we think the key takeaway is to avoid a short position. If Impinj announces any new catalyst another step function could occur. Key potential catalysts include: 1) Kaiser announces partnership with Impinj at RAIN Alliance; 2) Amazon and Impinj announce an official partnership; 3) a new airline announces a partnership similar to the Delta announcement - United for example; and 4) bank shots where if Amazon acquires another large grocery store we think it is clear there will be a price reaction from Impinj.

barrons.com

[Glenn Petersen] Impinj and Everspin Memory Chips Could Be the Next Big Thing Memory chips are g...

Glenn Petersen — 6/6/2017 11:35:41 AM

Impinj and Everspin Memory Chips Could Be the Next Big Thing

Memory chips are gaining importance over venerable microprocessors. Two ways to play the trend.

By Tiernan Ray Biography
Barron's
Updated May 20, 2017 1:23 a.m. ET

Pixabay
_____________________

In the world of computer chips, all glory goes to the microprocessor, and especially to the kind that Intel sells, which serves as the brains of your personal computer.

But there are many other kinds of chips in the universe of semiconductors, some increasingly more important.

This magazine argued in a 2015 cover story that memory chips may represent the most important kind of chip in years to come (“ Watch Out Intel, Here Comes Facebook,” Oct. 31, 2015). That’s because tasks that are taking center stage, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, continue to place greater and greater emphasis on retaining and analyzing vast amounts of data.

We recommended Micron Technology (ticker: MU) in that article. The shares are up more than 70% since then, which probably doesn’t leave a lot of upside at this point. The good news is that there are two other companies worth taking a look at that are incredibly promising, Impinj (PI) and Everspin Technologies MRAM 1.2561274509803921% Everspin Technologies Inc. (MRAM). They are both small companies that recently came public, and a bet on their stocks is not without substantial risk.

But they offer genuine innovations that have been years in the making, real breakthroughs. That could position them at the forefront of the kinds of developments we highlighted in the 2015 story.

The memory chip is, as it sounds, the repository of data. It stores the ones and zeros so the microprocessor can do something with them. For years, the microchip industry has tried to find the perfect balance between DRAM, which is fast but doesn’t retain data, and flash, which is slower and more prone to failure, but which holds data when the power goes out.

So-called nonvolatile memory chips, an in-between solution, are one of the industry’s holy grails. “Nonvolatile memory is a big deal in almost everything you do,” says Carver Mead, the Gordon and Betty Moore professor of engineering and applied science, emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology. “You have to have it,” he tells Barron’s.

Mead was the CEO of Impinj when it was founded 17 years ago and is now an advisor to the CEO, Chris Diorio, a former University of Washington professor for whom Mead served as a mentor.

What they developed is a chip that can operate on fractions of a watt of power. It is built into “tags” that can be attached to any number of objects, such as your luggage when you go on a Delta Air Lines flight. The tag can then be scanned by a wireless reader situated tens of feet away, which retrieves the identifying data on the tag. On a Delta flight, you can use an app to actually see if your stuff is on the plane. No more lost bags, at least in theory.

THE KEY IS THAT THIS PARTICULAR nonvolatile memory doesn’t need its own power source. Instead, it is activated when the wireless signal from the reader strikes the receiving antenna. That means it can be added to a vast amount of objects for pennies per piece—retail items in a warehouse, clothes on a rack, driver’s licenses, and on and on.

Impinj is interesting because it is not a chip company per se, but a systems business. It sells the nonvolatile chips, the radio-frequency circuitry, the technology for the wireless reader, and the software that makes it all work.

Diorio envisions expanding uses as semiconductor technology continues to make circuits smaller and more efficient. “We can put more and more smarts into them,” says Diorio, so that every object will be able to express all kinds of information about its nature, its capabilities, and its contents.

Impinj went public on July 21 of last year. Since that time, it is up 128%. The company is growing fast, with sales expected to rise 30% this year, and it is already profitable. Like most startups, its stock, at $40.96, is pricey, trading for 78 times next year’s projected 53 cents per share in net income. If confidence rises and the multiple gets attached to projected 2019 earnings of 82 cents, you could be looking at a $63 stock.

THE OTHER OUTFIT, EVERSPIN, is not actually that young, even though it went public last year, on Oct. 7. The technology came out of what had been the chip division of Motorola, which was folded into Freescale Semiconductor and later spun out before Freescale was sold to NXP (NXPI).

Everspin’s chip’s speed is close to DRAM, but it keeps files when power is off, like flash, though it is more reliable; flash tends to break down over time.

Today, the company sells a part that is used in industrial equipment requiring small amounts of memory. Newer parts with greater capacity are being designed into data storage systems coming to market later this year or early next. Traditionally, such computers pass memory from DRAM to flash, but there is a risk that data will be lost in between. Extra circuitry and batteries are added to the storage systems to keep the data alive, driving up cost. By replacing DRAM with Everspin’s chips, system makers can save on all that extra stuff.

“For every $10 worth of DRAM it replaces, it also gets rid of $70 of batteries and other stuff,” says Richard Shannon, who follows the company for Craig-Hallum.

As a result, “this is not a commodity chip,” says Rajvindra Gill, with Needham & Co. “This is an application-specific part that is saving companies money on their total system cost.”

“Where it gets really exciting,” says Shannon, is when Everspin can replace the combination of DRAM and flash in mission-critical computing systems such as a database. Those machines have an appetite for far greater amounts of data, which means more-expensive parts from Everspin, boosting both revenue and, presumably, margins.

The company is expected to have only $43 million in revenue this year, and it is losing money. Matthew Ramsay of Canaccord Genuity says the stock is currently worth 14 times projected earnings of 85 cents per share in 2018, or $12, above a recent $9.90. But it could have a multiple of four or five times sales if its newer markets take off, he says, which would put the stock price well above $12.

The whole history of memory-chip technologies is laced with agony and ecstasy, so this is not for the faint of heart. But then, companies with true breakthroughs can be worth the risk.

TIERNAN RAY can be reached at: tiernan.ray@barrons.com, www.blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily

Follow @barronstechblog
Like Barron’s on Facebook
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barrons.com

[Glenn Petersen] Slightly OT: The rise of the QR code and how it has forever changed China’s soc...

Glenn Petersen — 5/30/2017 6:41:56 AM

Slightly OT:

The rise of the QR code and how it has forever changed China’s social habits

It’s being used to encourage tipping at restaurants, receive cash gifts at weddings...even beggars are using it to collect handouts. The little barcode is driving China’s rapid shift towards a cashless society

Stephen Chen
South China Morning Post
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 27 May, 2017, 11:02am
UPDATED : Sunday, 28 May, 2017, 12:03pm

A little girl plays in a special QR code tunnel in a shopping mall in Nanjing. Consisting of 400 QR codes for brand products and creative games, the tunnel in this April file photo points to how the technology’s acceptance has changed China. Photo: Xinhua
______________________________

On one of the hottest May days on record, Wang Jiarui walked out of school to see his grandfather, who had come to pick him up, standing in a sweat-soaked shirt.

The seven-year-old Beijing primary school pupil pointed at a nearby convenience store, proposing that his grandfather cool off with an ice-cold Coke. But the old man had forgotten his wallet.

No matter. Jiarui then took his grandfather’s smartphone and summoned to the screen a payment app with a QR code.

“He told me those black and white dots were money,” Jiarui’s grandfather, Wang Meng, recalled later, after that revelatory day in the heat.

“So I tried it [myself] and bought a pack [of cigarettes].”

With his mother’s permission, Jiarui helped his grandparents set up an account to let them buy things on the internet with a mobile phone using QR code scanning. He then showed them the technology could also work at a store counter just by presenting a QR code on the mobile phone to the cashier and letting them scan it to effect payment.

Placards on a seafood stall show various non-cash ways to pay, including QR codes of WeChat and AliPay, at a market in Beijing, in 2016. Photo: EPA
______________________

A QR code is a two-dimensional barcode with a random pattern of tiny black squares against a white background, capable of holding 300 times more data than a traditional one-dimensional code. According to internet consulting firm iResearch, payments made via mobile devices by Chinese consumers last year reached 38 trillion yuan (US$5.5 trillion, HK$43 trillion), more than half the nation’s GDP.

QR code scams rise in China, putting e-payment security in spotlight

Thanks to QR code’s rapidly increasing usage at off-line shops, the amount of mobile payments on the mainland is now 50 times greater than that of the US. Mobile payments in the US totalled US$112 billion in 2016, according to Forrester Research.

To consumer behaviour researcher Chen Yiwen, we are witnessing the dawn of “codeconomy”.

“China has started the transition to a cash-free economy faster than anyone could have imagined, largely because of the viral spread of two-dimensional barcode,” said Chen, a professor and researcher with the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. “It creates a new economy based on scannable codes.”

A restaurant in China has pinned barcode tags to the chests of its waiters and waitresses to encourage tipping. Photo: Handout
_______________________

From big cities to remote villages, the codeconomy is already changing Chinese social behaviour, according to Chen.

Some restaurants have pinned barcode tags to the chests of waiters, waitresses and even chefs. Customers can scan the code to leave a tip if they are satisfied with service.

Umbrellas the latest trend in China’s sharing economy

Though the measure initially caused controversy after it was introduced last year as many people on the mainland tend not to be in the habit of tipping, customers are noticing a significant improvement in service and some servers are earning an extra 3,000 yuan in tips per month, thanks to the incentive the QR code seems to provide, the Beijing Morning Post reported this month.

Last month, a bridesmaid wore the code tag to collect gift money from guests at a wedding ceremony in Beijing, triggering a verbal fight between the bride and her red-faced, soon-to-be mother-in-law, China Youth Daily and other Chinese media outlets reported.

The bridesmaid with a QR code tag around her neck at a wedding ceremony in Beijing last month. Photo: Handout

A beggar in China has come up with an innovative way to collect his handouts. Photo: Handout
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A beggar in Jinan, Shandong province, last month wore a QR code tag around his neck. He was mentally ill, according to mainland media reports, but the code allowed passers-by to give him money through a quick scan. Many other beggars on the street followed suit, according to reports.

The QR code has also helped expand the emerging sharing economy. To rent a bike, for instance, a customer needs only to phone-scan a barcode on the item and the bicycle will unlock itself automatically. Umbrellas and battery packs can be rented similarly, among other items.

Cars to batteries: is China’s sharing economy in bubble territory?

But the QR code stoked farmers’ concern in remote villages when it was reported that county governments were exploring a plan to use the technology to tighten control and governance. By sticking QR codes on farmers’ houses, government inspectors could use a code scanner to find out family names and other information and whether the building they occupied was violating any laws.

A giant QR code is seen near a housing construction site owned by Chinese developer Vanke in Hefei in Anhui province in this 2013 file photo. The 6,400-square-metre QR code, formed from marbles and lawn, can be scanned by mobile phone to enable the phone to play audio and video content of nature, attracting home buyers. Photo: AP
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Chen said what seems like disruptive technology today eventually will be diffused into society and become an element of normal life tomorrow.

“The younger generation in China will grow up in a world full of two-dimensional barcodes,” he said. “They may develop a new understanding of money.”

“Maybe, in their eyes, money [will be seen as] not just a means to purchase commodities and services, but also socialise.”

China’s internet giants throw weight behind sharing economy after endorsement by Beijing

Mobile payments began to grow in China as people increasingly used social media platforms such as WeChat to distribute the red money envelopes known as hongbao in Mandarin, or lai see in Cantonese, to friends and relatives in the traditional Spring Festival. Last year, the average WeChat user sent out 28 packets of hongbao every month, according to the platform. Much of the money was used to compliment a well-taken photo or well-written post.

Such behavioural changes are poised to profoundly affect the Chinese economy, according to Chen.

“When the credit card emerged, consumers were found to spend more than when they used cash. The QR code is even more convenient than the credit card, so we have good reason to expect it will increase consumption,” he said.

A two-dimensional quick response QR code is affixed to a tombstone in this 2013 file photo to offer smartphone users extended information about the person buried beneath in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. Photo: ChinaFotoPress
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The QR code was invented in Japan in the 1990s, initially to track automotive industry-related goods. Efforts had been made in other countries, such as South Korea and Japan, to use it in consumer payment, but none has produced the level of success seen in mainland China.

In Western nations, as well, credit cards continue to be preferred over mobile payment, though people increasingly are using Apple Pay in the US.

How QR codes are adding a load more memory to loved ones' memorials

Xue Chengqi, a researcher specialising in human-computer interface at Southeast University in Nanjing, said the QR code’s China success is partly due to efforts by large Chinese internet companies such as Tencent and Alibaba to bring mobile-payment capability to every vendor.

“From supermarkets to street pedlars, the QR code has been accepted and is used by every merchant,” he said. “The technology is simple and easy to use. A transaction can be completed almost instantly in any place with mobile phone signal coverage.

“It is hard to resist. In other countries, there is no such user-friendly environment,” he said.

A photo illustration of a WeChat user scanning a QR code to retrieve a digital red envelope on the WeChat app on a mobile phone during the Chinese New Year period in Beijing. Photo: EPA
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Compared to other cashless payment methods, such as the near field communication technology used by ApplePay, the QR code was not seen as safe. Scanning a malicious code could lead the user into a trap set by criminals. For instance, the code could take one to a website used for ill purposes such as stealing bank accounts or other sensitive information.

According to a March report in the Southern Metropolis Daily, about 90 million yuan had been stolen via QR code scams in Guangdong province alone. A suspect in the case replaced the legitimate codes of merchants with fake ones embedded with a virus programmed to steal consumers’ personal information.

Two-thirds of smartphone users now paying by mobile

Speaking at the National People’s Congress in Beijing earlier this year, Liu Qingfeng, deputy chairman of voice-recognition cloud-service provider iFlytek, told mainland media that “over 23 per cent of Trojans and viruses are transmitted via QR codes. The [difficulty] threshold to make QR codes is so low that fraudsters could implant Trojans and viruses into a QR code very easily.”

Some cybersecurity experts have estimated that a quarter of malware found on smartphones is transmitted through QR codes. But Xue said China can no longer turn back.

“Consumers have already developed the habit, and can use (the QR code) almost anywhere. These are the biggest attractions,” he said.

“The technology itself and security issue may be the last thing people considered.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as:
scanning the horizon of the cashless society

scmp.com

[Glenn Petersen] Is The 'RFID Retail Revolution' Finally Here? A Macy's Case Study Barbara Thau ...

Glenn Petersen — 5/27/2017 11:26:49 AM

Is The 'RFID Retail Revolution' Finally Here? A Macy's Case Study

Barbara Thau
Forbes
May 15, 2017 @ 08:45 AM

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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I remember back in 2000, my headline was something like, “Get Ready For The RFID Retail Revolution,” or, “Wal-Mart Kicks Off The RFID Revolution.”

Turns out the revolution never materialized. But it might this time around; at least that’s what retailers are hoping.

After nearly 20 years of aborted takeoffs— including a much-watched failed push by Wal-Mart —radio frequency identification technology finally seems poised for widespread retail adoption, if the renewed industry buzz on the inventory-tracking tech is any indication.

RFID automates the tracking of merchandise throughout the retail supply chain — from the warehouse to the store floor — replacing the process of employees scanning products manually.

And retailers are betting on RFID to take inventory-management accuracy, crucial to a solvent retail operation, to new heights.

Inventory management is that unsexy-yet-critical retail discipline that has gained infinitely more importance since my RFID story went to print 17 years ago.

Today, $427 billion in e-commerce sales are now flowing through the supplier-to-store/direct-to-consumer pipelines, exponentially complicating retail supply chains.

As the cost of RFID has fallen dramatically — a RFID tag was priced at about $1 in 2003, and is roughly 10 cents today —retailers are starting to upgrade to the technology to access an item-level view of their in-store and online inventory.

Macy’s And RFID: ‘It’s How We Do Business’

For Macy’s, RFID “is not a project, it’s very much integrated into how we do business,” Bill Connell, senior vice president of transportation, store operations and process improvement for the department store, said in an email message.

Macy’s set plans last year to expand its use of RFID to track every item across its fleet of stores and fulfillment centers by the end of 2018. “We are already halfway to this goal of tagging 100% of products,” he said.

So far, Macy’s has noticed “a big impact” on sales and profitability across several product categories from RFID, Connell said, but will not disclose actual figures until a full year has passed since its implementation.

But according to a presentation by Melanie Nuce, vice president of apparel and general merchandise for standards organization GS1 US1 at the Internet of Retail conference last fall, after Macy’s expanded RFID to its fashion departments, the retailer’s sales volume surged more than 200%, she said then.

Connell did say Macy’s has reaped both financial and operating gains from RFID. “With an increase in the inventory accuracy, out-of-stocks are significantly reduced,” he said. “And by cutting the out-of-stocks, item availability is increased, which can lead to substantial and measurable sales increases.”

Indeed, inventory accuracy and the resulting benefits are hailed as RFID’s biggest payoff. The technology raises inventory accuracy from an average of 63% to 95%, and reduces retail out-of-stocks by up to 50%, according to the RFID Lab at Auburn University.

As retailers are increasingly “selling inventory from their stores online” amid the growth of buy online, pickup in-store programs, an inaccurate read of where an item is at any given moment only compounds the potential for profit–draining markdowns, said Michael Kingston, a director in the digital practice of management consulting firm AlixPartners.

For example, a seasonal item like sundresses that belongs on the sales floor might be mistakenly sitting in a retailer’s backroom due to an inventory tracking error. And just as that error could lead to a missed opportunity to sell the dresses at full price, retailers now also run the risk of promoting the dresses online when they’re incorrectly stocked at the store.

RFID theoretically insures that, when fulfilling an online order from a store, “I actually do have that inventory that I committed to the customer,” McKinsey said.

Show Me The ROI

Macy’s asked outerwear vendor Herman Kay to RFID-tag all of its product with the goal of 100% unit accuracy and full “source-to-store” product visibility.

Herman Kay, which designs and manufacturers coats under its own label as well as licenses such as Michael Kors, Ann Klein and London Fog, worked with GS1 US to implement the necessary standards requirements to do so.

For Macy’s, the upgrade to RFID hangtags on Herman Kay outwear automated product verification and order picking processes that were previously manual, which “virtually eliminated” human error and enabled “unprecedented inventory visibility,” Connell said.

“What suppliers like Herman Kay gain is the same as what we as a retailer gain,” he said. “We can all have confidence that was is picked, packed and transported is exactly what was ordered.”

forbes.com

[Glenn Petersen] Another good quarter for Impinj: RFID maker Impinj tops earnings expectations f...

Glenn Petersen — 5/6/2017 10:43:03 PM

Another good quarter for Impinj:

RFID maker Impinj tops earnings expectations for 4th quarter in a row

by Nat Levy
GeekWire
on May 4, 2017 at 2:58 pm May 6, 2017 at 1:02 pm

Impinj’s Monza chip.

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This story has been updated to include more details on stock price.

Impinj has exceeded Wall Street expectations in each of its four quarters as a public company, after posting another strong quarter to start 2017.

The Seattle-based maker of radio frequency identification tags posted non-GAAP earnings of one cent per share on $31.7 million in revenue, an increase of 47 percent over this time last year.

Analysts surveyed in advance by Yahoo Finance expected Impinj to post losses of a penny per share on $30.7 in revenue.

Impinj CEO Chris Diorio

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“We delivered a solid first quarter, with revenue growing 47% over last year driven by the team’s strong execution and continued market adoption of our platform,” said Chris Diorio, Impinj co-founder and CEO. “We are pleased with the steady progress toward our vision of digital life for everyday items, and we will continue investing in this massive market opportunity to further enhance our leading market position.”

Impinj stock dropped in after-hours trading following the earnings report, but rallied and hit an all time high point of close to $44 per share Friday afternoon.

After raising $69.2 million in its IPO in July, Impinj raised another $39 million in a follow-on public offering this past December, which sent shares up 25 percent.

Impinj was an early player in RFID technology, which uses radio frequencies to track tagged items. The RFID market took longer than the company expected to come to fruition, but the company has been able to capitalize on growing use of the technology in recent years. Its RFID tags and technologies are now used across industries such as healthcare, retail and manufacturing, with Boeing using it to tag parts in aircraft assembly and Macy’s using it to track inventories at retail stores.

geekwire.com

[Glenn Petersen] How Fast is Retail Adopting RFID? By Dean Frew, CTO and SVP, RFID Solutions, SM...

Glenn Petersen — 4/28/2017 4:20:07 PM

How Fast is Retail Adopting RFID?

By Dean Frew, CTO and SVP, RFID Solutions, SML RFID — April 28, 2017

If recent news and information about the apparel business and omnichannel retailing are any indication, universal RFID adoption is an industry fait accompli.

Except when it isn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Statistics from retail reporters, industry groups and retailers themselves share RFID usage numbers ranging from 50 percent to 96 percent. In actuality, these numbers are inaccurate, exceedingly optimistic, and obscure the actual realistic pace of RFID adoption, which is far slower and more methodical.

While the aim among retailers to integrate RFID technology into their operations rates is near 100 percent, actual deployment of full RFID systems still hovers in the single digits.

Fully deployed RFID systems — including tags, readers and the supporting software and where retailers are experiencing measurable results and ROI — presently range from only 4 percent to 8 percent.

Why such inaccurate estimates? It comes down to the word “intent.” So many retailers have it in mind to test and install RFID technology. But reality is firmly planted in the present and that goal is significantly different than permanent deployment numbers to date.

And that is where the current statistical confusion of RFID adoption stems from: those actually using the technology versus those who plan to, or are in the preliminary planning stages. For instance, if a large company has a pilot in a single store, that indicates its interest in RFID, but the sheer volume of tagged items is still low.

Beginning to walk

We’re still in the earliest steps of a long race toward mass adoption of RFID systems in retail. Actual apparel market penetration is conservative and considerably less than some reports. GS1, for example, estimates the adoption percentage at more than half, whereas the RFID Lab at Auburn University Retail Study, the retail RFID performance and testing group, puts the installed base closer to four percent.

How did SML come by its dramatically smaller use numbers?

Dissecting the industry

A year and a half ago, we started conducting a deep analysis of the industry to help companies identify where they should focus marketing strategies, as well as planning the geographic location of service bureaus intended to provide encoded tags and what solutions and business requirements were emerging across different segments.

While dissecting public information and mentions of units sold among apparel and footwear retailers (with at least 40 stores located in the U.S. and Europe), we noticed that while tag growth was rising steadily, the number of stores using RFID was still relatively small. That got us curious.

We then examined RFID tag volumes sold by us and other global tag suppliers, which tallied out in 2016 at only a small fraction of the total market of 35 billion to 37 billion tags. Looking at the approximately 200,000 stores in the apparel and footwear market in the U.S. and Europe that will adopt RFID over time, we arrived at the 8 percent penetration rate.

So what does this mean for the industry? Looking ahead, growth is almost assured. SML’s own RFID technology sales have surged 50 percent every year for the past four years, and 2017 is projected to be no different.

Much of that growth results from the pressure of online sales that is prompting retailers to offer omnichannel purchasing for customers who can buy a product from the nearest store, buy online, or purchase online and pick up the product at the nearest store. This omnichannel model requires a highly accurate inventory count in each store.

Fear factors

But there are other factors that have contributed to RFID’s slower than expected acceptance.

First-generation RFID deployment was rocky. Early adopters were in some cases surprised at the cost of the installation when compared against the early benefits. Technology adoption was also hampered in some cases by an inability for companies to align behind its deployment and integration with enterprise data.

Now, system set-up and integration is easier. We’re seeing a shift from where the RFID technology industry as a whole was making RFID too complicated for retailers. Customers want the tech to work, and to use proven technology and solutions. The emphasis is offering solutions that best fit the retailer’s operations, and make pilots and full installations more palatable for the end users and generate proven ROI.

Second, the bigger obstacles revolve around change and how badly a retailer’s leadership believe it needs to.

The “if it’s not broken, why fix it?” attitude stems from comfort and familiarity. We still manage inventory like we have for the past 30 years with SKU (barcodes) vs. Item-Level (RFID) inventory management. The use of RFID technology in retail has demonstrated improvements in inventory accuracy of more than 30 percent (from high sixties to more than 98 percent). It has been proven that, in addition to out of stock and inventory reduction, effective omnichannel can only be executed with this higher level of inventory accuracy.

After a number of deployments, you can get a sense for when a customer’s RFID adoption is going to be successful based on the engagement process with the customer’s steering team. This includes managers of all departments, with the leadership acknowledging unanimously that inventory accuracy has room for improvement.

Just where the RFID investment fits on the company’s priorities list is another issue that can make or break an installation. Apparel and footwear growth is taking place most among brands with their own outlets, and among chains of vertically integrated specialty stores. Department stores, which carry merchandise from a wide variety of brands, are seeing less immediate benefit from RFID deployments.

Yet despite industry tumult, and perhaps because of it, broader acceptance is inevitable. Over the next five years about one third of apparel and footwear retailers will adopt RFID technology because power is now in the hands of consumers. They have a myriad of options in product, cost and delivery. Retailers will have to vault over this ever-rising high bar of shopper expectations to keep and expand their customer bases. It’s up to them on how quickly they want — and need — to change.

Dean Frew is CTO and SVP RFID Solutions for SML Group. He served on executive teams for several supply chain software and RFID solution companies and founded Xterprise in 2002 that was purchased by SML in 2013. He earned a bachelor's of science degree in mechanical engineering from New Mexico State University, and a master's of science degree in industrial systems from Virginia Tech. He also holds multiple patents in electronic packaging and RFID systems, plus pending patents for RFID and inventory and asset systems.

apparel.edgl.com

[Glenn Petersen] According to the article, RFID is now officially an "old technology." Tech march...

Glenn Petersen — 4/24/2017 11:06:00 AM

According to the article, RFID is now officially an "old technology." Tech marches on.

[Glenn Petersen] How 7-Eleven Will Beat Worker Blues \ By ...

Glenn Petersen — 4/24/2017 10:57:24 AM

How 7-Eleven Will Beat Worker Blues
\
By Andy Mukherjee
Bloomberg Gadfly
April 23, 2017 4:00 PM EDT

A 7-Eleven store in Japan can no longer afford its most prized possession: the checkout clerk.

The nation's employee shortage is now too acute to waste pricey labor on routine tasks -- like scanning low-value merchandise -- that have proven frustratingly expensive to automate.

But now an old technology is coming to the rescue. 7-Eleven owner Seven & i Holdings Co. is joining forces with rival operators Lawson, Ministop, FamilyMart UNY Holdings and East Japan Railway to introduce radio-frequency identification, or RFID, by next year. That should preclude the need for manual bar-code scanning, Nikkei reported last week, adding that by 2025 all Japanese convenience stores would have fully automated checkouts.

RFID tags are already widely used by retailers in anti-shoplifting devices. Turning them into price tags would enable customers to walk out of stores without having to scan items at checkout counters. Exit gates would open when mobile or card payments have been received.

At 7-Eleven alone, the switch could translate into 50 billion yen ($460 million) in demand for RFID tags, Pelham Smithers Associates wrote in a research note on the Smartkarma website.

New scanner orders for hardware makers like Toshiba TEC Corp., Panasonic Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. may be a blip on earnings reports; a bigger winner would probably be Sato Holdings Corp., a maker of labels and tags, especially if supermarkets and drugstores follow suit, according to Pelham Smithers researchers. The company's shares have risen almost 10 percent on news of RFID adoption.

What's likely to matter much more to investors, however, is the extent to which Japanese retailers can embrace automation to boost margins. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Thomas Jastrzab expects operating profit growth at Seven & i to outpace sales gains over the next two to three years, aided by fewer money-losing stores and demand for its higher-margin private-label offerings.

Lawson, meanwhile, is expecting its first decline in annual profit in 15 years, partly because of investment in labor-saving technologies as well as in a newer product mix to appeal to an aging population.

While convenience stores should still come out OK, it's the large-format retailers in Japan that are particularly in need of a miracle cure for weak profitability. As my Gadfly colleague David Fickling noted recently, margins in the core business of supermarket and mall giant Aeon Co. are now so abysmal that it garners the bulk of earnings from financial services and mall development, which account for less than 10 percent of revenue.

Although fashion retailers like Zara use RFID extensively to manage inventory, investing in a 10 yen tag to sell stuff priced 200 yen or lower at a 7-Eleven is a far more challenging proposition. To help consumers warm to the technology, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry might offer subsidies, the Nikkei article said.

The government's involvement is understandable. With the unemployment rate at 2.8 percent, and more than two job openings in Tokyo for every applicant, the country needs to extract the most out of a scarce resource.

Commerce will never entirely move online. But needing a checkout clerk to sell a soda at 7-Eleven is just too expensive a luxury -- both for Japanese society and for shareholders of Seven & i.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Andy Mukherjee in Singapore at amukherjee@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Matthew Brooker at mbrooker1@bloomberg.net

bloomberg.com

[Glenn Petersen] Impinj the ‘Best Way to Play’ the ‘Tipping Point’ in RFID, says Morgan Stanley ...

Glenn Petersen — 3/25/2017 9:11:59 AM

Impinj the ‘Best Way to Play’ the ‘Tipping Point’ in RFID, says Morgan Stanley

By Tiernan Ray
Barron's
February 23, 2017, 11:45 A.M. ET

Shares of Internet of Things technology maker Impinj ( PI) are up $1.45, or 5%, at $29.94, after Morgan Stanley’s Craig Hettenbach and Joseph Moore today offer up a team effort, initiating the stock at Overweight, with a $40 price target, writing that it is the “best way to play” what they see as a “tipping point,” in so-called “radio-frequency ID,” or RFID, technology.

“We see the company leveraging its technology leadership (200+ patents) and strong market position (60% share), capitalizing on a $10bn+ opportunity in RFID and connectivity,” write the duo.

RFID, the authors write, is “reaching a tipping point,” and Impinj is the company that has all the parts to capitalize on that:

We see accelerating RFID adoption, as evidenced by a strong uptick in end point IC shipment growth for Impinj to 71% in 2016, up from 21%/52% in 2014/15 (Exhibit 1). The company’s initial focus markets of Retail and Healthcare offer a substantial ~$10bn opportunity by 2020, while newer verticals such as Data Center, Travel, and Automotive should propel growth further. Importantly, with less than 10% penetration in retail and 1% overall, there is still significant runway for growth in RFID technology in the coming years. The company is the only supplier with all 3 elements of the RFID solution (End point ICs, Reader ICs/Readers and software). As a founding member of the Radio Frequency Identification Alliance (RAIN), we also think Impinj is in a strong position to optimize its technology solutions. The company has over 60% market share in end point and reader ICs, while competitors such as Zebra and Alien buy its ICs. In addition, we see merits to its platform sales approach allowing the company to sell higher margin connectivity and software solutions and expand upon its already entrenched position in end point ICs.

They like the growth outlook:

We model a 3-year revenue CAGR of 26%, which could prove conservative relative to recent growth of 43%. In addition, we see favorable GM trends, estimating 310 bps of expansion to 57.1% through 2019. We view the next 1-2 years as a time for the company to reinvest in the business and drive outsized growth, followed by a period of substantial operating leverage in 2019/20. Our PT of $40 is based on a EV/S multiple of 4.2X. This is above the current multiple of 3.6X, but essentially in line with other high growth small cap stocks, despite Impinj’s faster growth and greater operating leverage.

Mind the looming lockup expiration on insider shares, though:

On March 2, 2017, an additional 1.34mn shares (6.5% of Impinj’s outstanding stock) will be eligible for sale in the public market. The company has no other lock ups after that. We recommend using any volatility around this lock up to add to positions. Impinj has traded off 19% since earnings last week vs. the SOX index up 2%, which we view as an attractive entry point ahead of the upward revisions we anticipate for 2017 revenue and EPS.

blogs.barrons.com

[Glenn Petersen] Amazon's new grocery store could be driving up the price of a $600 million co...

Glenn Petersen — 12/8/2016 10:51:04 AM


Amazon's new grocery store could be driving up the price of a $600 million company (Impinj) siliconinvestorm

[Glenn Petersen] When Information Storage Gets Under Your Skin Tiny implants can replace keys, s...

Glenn Petersen — 9/20/2016 9:14:04 AM

When Information Storage Gets Under Your Skin

Tiny implants can replace keys, store business cards and medical data—and eventually a lot more

By Nina Adam and William Wilkes
The Wall Street Journal
Sept. 18, 2016 10:11 p.m. ET

Patrick Paumen doesn’t have to worry about forgetting his keys and being locked out of his apartment. That is because he doesn’t need a key anymore—he simply unlocks the door with a wave of his hand.

The 32-year-old IT expert from the Dutch city of Heerlen is one of a growing number of people with electronic implants under their skin, mostly to use as keys or for identification.

Mr. Paumen has several such implants, or tags, embedded in the fatty tissue of his hands and his lower arm. He uses separate tags to unlock not only his apartment door, but also his office and the gate to a secure parking lot at work. Another stores information he would otherwise put on a business card—name and contact details—and yet another holds similar information for nonbusiness encounters.

The implants can be activated and scanned by readers that use radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. Those include ordinary smartphones and readers already installed in office buildings to allow entrance with a common ID card.

Mr. Paumen says the tiny devices simplify his life. When nearing the secure office parking lot, he says, “I just roll down the window, stick my arm out and let the reader at the gates scan the implant, which is just below my little finger. I don’t have to worry about losing my access card.”

Done in secondsThere is no comprehensive data on how many people have RFID implants in their bodies, but retailers estimate the total is 30,000 to 50,000 people globally.

The fact that the tags can’t be lost is one attraction. Another, users say, is that the tags don’t operate under their own power but rather are activated when they’re read by a scanner. That means they can never be rendered useless by a dead battery like smartphones.

It only takes a few seconds to inject the small glass cylinder containing a tag, the size of a grain of rice, under the skin. It can be done by anyone, but proponents say it is best done by a trained person with sterilized equipment to lower the risk of infection.

Once a tag is implanted, there can be an adjustment period: “They can move a little bit depending on skin type and activities,” says Quentin Inglis, owner of the Kalima Emporium, a tattoo and piercing studio in Worthing, England, who has implanted tags for several customers. Mr. Inglis keeps his business card on an implanted tag. “I do a lot of climbing, so mine moved around a bit until it found a position it was happiest with,” he says.

Medical potentialImplanted tags have a demonstrated potential for use in travel. Andreas Sjöström, the head of digital solutions at Sogeti, a technology consulting unit of Capgemini Group, used an implanted tag loaded with information identifying him as a Scandinavian Airlines customer to board an SAS flight from Stockholm to Paris for the first time in December, and has since used the tag several times for SAS flights. The tag contains the same information some SAS passengers normally have on a sticker used for the same purpose, and is read by the same scanner the airline uses for those stickers.

Electronic RFID tags that go under the skin are being used to store personal information and give users access to secure areas. Photo: Henrik Andree/Telefónica BASECAMP/Digiwell.com
___________________________________

Some people list emergency contacts on an implanted tag. And others see potential for the use of the tags in medicine, though one big challenge needs to be addressed for those visions to become reality: Medical personnel or anyone else trying to help someone in a medical or emergency situation will need to have some way to know that the person they’re trying to help has potentially lifesaving information available under his or her skin.

For instance, Kevin Warwick, deputy vice chancellor at Coventry University in England and an expert in cybernetics, says that people who suffer from epilepsy often wear pendants that identify them as having epilepsy and sometimes provide emergency contacts and some basic information on how to help a person having a seizure. But the pendant can be lost or forgotten—a tag cannot. Paramedics and other first responders could be trained to check for tags, he says, and perhaps people with epilepsy could have a small tattoo or some other marker to help other people find the tag.

Another idea for medical use: “In hospitals, you could have a small thing implanted to make sure this is the right patient or person for this operation, to reduce the number of errors there are in medical operations,” Dr. Warwick says.

The tags also can be used to access medical records. Information stored on a tag can easily be updated with the tag remaining in place.

Advocates also hope it won’t be long before the implants will allow them to make payments in cafes or shops, the way smart cards are used. Mr. Sjöström says the technology is capable of enabling such transactions, if software standards are developed to allow them. Data security is also an issue here, he says, as the current generation of implants isn’t capable of the same level of encryption as existing electronic payment systems.

Ethical issuesSkeptics point to ethical concerns that will have to be addressed before tag implants become more common. While there may be no issue with implanting a tag under the skin of consenting adults, things could become tricky if a person doesn’t want it or isn't in control of the tag’s content.

For instance, the use of a tag “is ethically straightforward and even useful” for people who can’t grip a key because of extreme arthritis or the loss of a hand, says Arianne Shahvisi, a lecturer in ethics at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School in the U.K. But while tags also could be used by people with dementia to carry identifying information and to ensure that they would never lose their keys, it would be “troubling” in such cases because the patient may not be able to give proper consent to the procedure.

Privacy concerns will also have to be addressed before tag implants can reach their full potential. Although people promoting them say the implants currently on sale can only be picked up by readers in very close range, some people worry that strangers could still tap their personal information without their knowledge or consent.

And while many adults are repelled by the idea of manipulating a perfectly healthy body, young people may accept it as they do most technology surrounding them. Take Patrick and Birthe Kramer, a couple in Hamburg, Germany, who have implants that unlock the door to their home. Their 2-year-old son, whose body remains chip free, already imitates his parents by trying to open the front door with a swish of his hand.

Ms. Adam and Mr. Wilkes are Wall Street Journal reporters in Frankfurt. They can be reached at nina.adam@wsj.com and william.wilkes@wsj.com.

wsj.com

[Glenn Petersen] RFID tag maker Impinj prices IPO at $14, shares soar in rare public offering ...

Glenn Petersen — 7/23/2016 10:57:21 AM

RFID tag maker Impinj prices IPO at $14, shares soar in rare public offering

by John Cook
GeekWire
on July 21, 2016 at 9:39 am

geekwire.com

Impinj’s Monza chip
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Wall Street likes what they see in Impinj, a 16-year-old Seattle-based maker of Radio Frequency Identification technology that today went public on Nasdaq at $14 per share. That was the upper end of the range for the company, which makes RFID chips that allow retailers to track inventory or manufacturers to track parts.

It marks the first initial public offering for a Seattle-based technology company this year. Impinj sold 4.8 million shares, raising $67.2 million. It also granted underwriters the option to buy 720,000 shares at the offering price.

Impinj, which is trading under the ticker PI, is doing well in its debut. The stock shot up more than 20 percent, and it is now trading around $17.17.

The company, which expects to post a net loss this year, is backed by ARCH Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Polaris Partners, Madrona Venture Group and GF Private Equity. But revenues are on the rise. It is led by founder Chris Diorio, an affiliate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.

The company posted revenue of $78.5 million last year, up from $63.8 million in 2014. It first turned a profit in 2013, and showed net income of $900,000 in 2015. Even so, it has accumulated a deficit of $187.6 million over the years.

More on Impinj and its financials in this SEC filing, where it offers this explanation of its business:

Our platform connects billions of everyday items such as apparel, medical supplies, automobile parts, drivers licenses, food and luggage to applications such as inventory management, patient safety, asset tracking and item authentication, delivering real-time information to businesses about items they create, manage, transport and sell. We believe connecting everyday items and delivering real-time information about them is the essence of the Internet-of-Things, or IoT.

[Ahda] In the field of neuro science some day the benefits I hope will be enormous. The...

Ahda — 6/12/2016 4:48:00 PM

In the field of neuro science some day the benefits I hope will be enormous. The brain controls the body and the key is to aid control of the brain. Fabulous to think of the body ridding itself of parts that are not working properly or creating new parts minus the surgical procedure.

In the field of entertainment I can visualize a series of wires intertwined with tattoos the bearer of said walks into a toy shop lights up totally and walks out with every magnetic toy in the store attached to him.

Of course if the antennae pop up like rabbit ears the mall would empty out pretty quick,

[Glenn Petersen] Implanting chips into humans was a controversial subject when this board was sta...

Glenn Petersen — 6/12/2016 3:26:46 PM

Implanting chips into humans was a controversial subject when this board was started 12 plus years ago. Less so now. Biohacking has become quite the rage.

Biohackers implant computers, earbuds and antennas in their bodies

By Jurica Dujmovic
MarketWatch
Published: Feb 10, 2016 10:47 a.m. ET

They’re trying to improve human performance — to be smarter, more capable

Body implants are a staple of science fiction. They turn members of futuristic societies into super-humans, making them stronger, smarter and more capable than an average person.

Implants helped Johnny Mnemonic increase his memory capacity; they fuel Iron Man’s suit and keep him alive; and they do much, much more.

As amazing as body implants sound, though, how close are we normal humans to getting one of those? In other words, are contemporary science, medicine and technology advanced enough to allow us to seamlessly meld with the technology and actually improve our lives? Keep reading to find out.

We’ll start by introducing Northstar, a subdermal LED sensor that lights up when it’s in the vicinity of a magnet. It can be used to detect the magnetic north and act as a compass. Implanting such a basic device may sound like a silly and needlessly dangerous procedure to go through, but these biohackers did it anyway.

Ryan O’Shea/Grindhouse Wetware
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Before dismissing it for being an “LED tattoo,” note that the device, dubbed Northstar V1, is still in its first iteration. The next version due to be released sometime this year will allow users to control the device via hand gestures. Grindhouse Wetware, the company behind the product, acknowledges that Northstar may seem like a simple gadget, but its purpose is to be much more than just subdermal bling — it exists to “prove the possibility of implanting technology in the human body, and will pave the way for more advanced and functional augmentations.”

Enrique Calvo/Reuters
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If you think having LEDs in your forearm is silly, you may like this better: an antenna implanted in the skull. In 2004, Neil Harbisson had the device implanted in his cranium in an effort to fight color blindness. A camera at the far end of the device records whatever he is seeing and converts the image color data into a series of sound waves, which he has memorized. Instead of seeing various hues, he “hears” them with the help of a camera he calls Eyeborg.

Speaking of senses, here’s one implant that gave Rich Lee, a biohacker, one sense that humans usually don’t have: the power of echolocation.

Rich Lee
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Can you spot it? The implant is in his earlobe! To be more specific, within the tragus, the fleshy protrusion in front of the ear opening. On both of his ears are tiny magnets that Lee uses to listen to music without earbuds ( here’s how) and sense objects in his vicinity. He achieved echolocation by converting data from an ultrasonic range finder (a device used to determine how far away an object is) into audio, which he then sends wirelessly to his headphone implants.

If you had trouble seeing magnets in Lee’s ear, I reckon this one will be much easier to spot. That huge lump under this biohacker’s skin is actually a bulky biometric computer that’s capable of transmitting body temperature and pulse data wirelessly. While using a simple thermometer seems like a much better idea than having an electronic device inserted under your skin (without local anesthesia), the company behind it (yet another Grindhouse Wetware project) says that the device (Circadia) is merely in the early stages of development. Many more features are coming soon — hopefully a more compact size will be one of them.

John Rogers, University of Illinois
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If these implants seem too much, here’s something a bit lighter — and in my opinion, much closer to mass adoption: flexible, wireless tattoos that can be used to track vital body stats. Data about sweat (which can be used to assess the metabolic health of the wearer), heart rate and more are captured by the tattoo and then sent wirelessly to a device, such as a mobile phone or a computer. Although these tattoos aren’t exactly implants (they are non-invasive and can be easily removed), they still prove that the integration between the human body and technology isn’t something that’s easily dismissed.

If you’re like me, many of these implants will make you cringe. They seem crude, basic and impractical. Biohackers may seem like people who don’t care much about their health or safety. Experiments they’re currently conducting seem to show just undeveloped biohacking is and how little it can do for us — for the time being.

However, there’s a different side to this story. If history has taught us anything, it’s that even the greatest inventions had humble beginnings. Seeing the recordings of the first planes trying to take off invokes exactly the same thoughts about the pioneers of flight. Were they brave or foolish? Were their machines laughable or simply in “early development”? If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have planes today.

Does the same apply to biohacking? Only time will tell. Until then, we’ll keep a close eye on the biohacking community and perhaps one day become a part of it. What do you think about these implants and biohacking in general? Please let me know in the comments below.

marketwatch.com