Of all the interesting new tech that seems poised to garner a lot of buzz in 2011, near field communication (NFC), is probably the most exciting. If it takes off, it will transform the ways we communicate, share, and make payments with digital devices. This will likely take years to happen, but the groundwork is being laid right now. And RFinity is one of those companies at the forefront.
While Google and Apple are responsible for generating much of the buzz about NFC at the moment, the technology goes far beyond simply having the right type of chip in your mobile device. For example, how do you handle different types of data transfers being made from one device to another? And how to you ensure that they happen as quickly as possible? And most importantly, how do you ensure that they happen securely? Those are the things that RFinity is thinking about.
The company has just raised $4 million from Horizons Ventures in Hong Kong. And the space has gotten so red hot, in fact, that we hear they’re already out raising another round.
And it’s an easy bet for investors to make not only because of the space, but because of where the project originated: The U.S. Department of Energy. Specifically, RFinity was born when a bunch of infrastructure security experts working for the government were assigned to find all the vulnerabilities in cell phones. Through software they came up with, they were able to quite easily eavesdrop, manipulate SMS messages, and even compromise LAN security. Then they set out to figure out a way to stop people from doing those very things. That work led directly to RFinity.
Work originally began in the person-to-person and person-to-vendor sales space by way of mobile applications that route transactions through RFinity’s own secure servers. But now that NFC appears ready, RFinity is making sure they’re ready for it. The idea is that their technology could cut out the middle man here: themselves.
Obviously, the company isn’t going to share all the details on how they secure NFC transfers. But the basic overview is that they verify an incoming NFC signal and ask for a user’s permission before taking any action. Further, if the action is a transaction, it requires a PIN, just as you might do an ATM withdrawal. That’s all pretty standard. But the key is one-time-use transaction codes that RFinity creates on the fly along with complex cryptographic signatures. These ensure that an transaction is secure since it means that every transaction can only happen once. Even if those numbers were intercepted by a hacker, they would be useless beyond the one-time payment.
And even if your phone is lost or stolen, a thief couldn’t do anything without your PIN. And you can remotely shut down your NFC capabilities via RFinity. It’s enough to make me wish I could throw out all my credit cards right now. “Today’s identification and transaction systems are based on what? A magnetic strip on the back of a card, based on a 1950’s technology that relies on a base station to read the information embedded as a series of simple magnetic markers in plastic tape,” writes Josh Jones-Dilworth, who is working with the company to bring them to market.
Again, NFC as a technology is great and potentially game-changing. But the software is still needed to make it actually work. And some of the big guys began realizing that early on as companies like PayPal, Bank of America, and even Subway have been testing out different things with RFinity for some time. In fact, RFinity has actually been doing field tests of the software end of their technology since 2009 in places like Idaho, well before most people in the U.S. had ever thought about NFC.
But now people are starting to care. And soon, they could be caring a lot more. NFC is already built-in to Google’s new Nexus S device — and the company has put out a call for developers to start using the tech. Rumors have the next iteration of the iPhone gaining the technology as well. In other words, I suspect we may be seeing acquisition rumors starting to fly around RFinity in about six months or so. Provided their technology proves up to the NFC challenge, of course.
Why The Arguments That The Huffington Post Must Pay Bloggers Is Misguided: Payment Isn't Just Money
from the you-made-the-choice dept
We didn't mention the whole AOL buying Huffington Post story earlier this week, because there just didn't seem to be that much to say about it. It was an interesting deal, to be sure, and I'll be curious to watch what AOL does with the property, but, beyond that, it seemed like just another content acquisition deal. However, almost immediately after the deal went through, I started seeing some rumblings on Twitter, picking at the scab that has always annoyed a certain group of people about The Huffington Post: that it doesn't pay most of its writers. Sure enough, it didn't take long for this issue to start to spread, with the inevitable summary line of: "Hey, HuffPo became famous because all these people worked for free, and yet, they don't get a cut of the sale."
That story is now snowballing. Dan Gilmor wrote a blog post arguing that it was the "ethical" thing to do to start paying bloggers. Douglas Ruskoff said that he'd no longer blog on the site for free. And, of course, a bunch of cranky HuffPo contributors have created a whole campaign arguing that Arianna Huffington had no right to sell the site, since it was built off of their free labor.
They're all wrong.
Of course, we've been through this before. Five years ago, Nick Carr tried to argue that all the various big Web 2.0 sites like (at the time) Digg, YouTube and MySpace were really digital sharecroppers exploiting labor. As we argued at the time, this was hogwash. People were using those sites because they provided a valuable service. The reason they provided labor was because they got something of value in return -- whether it was attention or hosting or distribution or reputation.
Three years ago, we saw an almost identical controversy after AOL bought Bebo and musician Billy Bragg demanded some of the $850 million AOL paid (in retrospect, a massively bad decision). Bragg argued that Bebo made this money based on all of the "free labor" of musicians who used the site. But that ignored the fact that those musicians got tremendous value in using the Bebo platform to connect with fans and distribute their music... all for free. The folks who got to keep the money were the ones who took the actual risk. The ones who had to cover the expenses to keep the site and the service running, even when it wasn't making enough revenue. They took the risk, they should get the reward. The people who used the site did so of their own free will knowing quite well that the benefit they got from using the service was worth it to them at the time. Along those lines, if Bebo had struggled and faced bankruptcy instead of a massive buyout, would Bragg have felt obligated to give them money to keep it going? Similarly, if HuffPo had been running out of money, and Arianna had gone back and demanded that those who used the platform pay up retroactively, how would these people have reacted?
There are more ways to "get paid" than with money.
The reason that people chose to blog for free at the Huffington Post was because it's a fantastic platform for exposure. It brings traffic like no one else out there, and if you want to present something in a way that's likely to get more attention than on your own blog that no one visits, posting at HuffPo can be quite a good way to go.
And that's the point: the people who chose -- of their own free will -- to post at the Huffington Post for free did so because they clearly got value out of doing so. Otherwise, why would they have done so in the first place? To then say that the only proper thing is to pay them is completely missing the point. It's an attempt to retroactively go back and change the terms of a deal. If you wanted to get paid directly for what you write, fine, don't write for the Huffington Post. It's that simple. Go out and pitch your stories to publishers who pay freelancers. But don't go back and complain afterwards when the folks who actually did take the risk of putting together the site, financing it, organizing it, hiring the staff, buying the servers, paying for the bandwidth, and building it up so that it was such a successful platform, then get paid for their efforts.
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CBS <b>News</b>' Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt | Fancast <b>News</b>
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CBS <b>News</b>' Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt | Fancast <b>News</b>
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bench craft company me
CBS <b>News</b>' Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt | Fancast <b>News</b>
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Scientists, telescope hunt massive hidden object in space – This <b>...</b>
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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt
Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.
bench craft company credit card
CBS <b>News</b>' Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt | Fancast <b>News</b>
Shocking details have been released regarding the incident involving CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan during the protests in Egypt. CBS News issued a statement Tuesday revealing that Logan is currentl in the.
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You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.
Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt
Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.
bench craft company credit card
CBS <b>News</b>' Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt | Fancast <b>News</b>
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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt
Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.
bench craft company me
CBS <b>News</b>' Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt | Fancast <b>News</b>
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You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.
Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt
Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.
bench craft company me
CBS <b>News</b>' Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt | Fancast <b>News</b>
Shocking details have been released regarding the incident involving CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan during the protests in Egypt. CBS News issued a statement Tuesday revealing that Logan is currentl in the.
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You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.
Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt
Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.
bench craft company credit card
CBS <b>News</b>' Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt | Fancast <b>News</b>
Shocking details have been released regarding the incident involving CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan during the protests in Egypt. CBS News issued a statement Tuesday revealing that Logan is currentl in the.
Scientists, telescope hunt massive hidden object in space – This <b>...</b>
You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.
Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt
Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.
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