Keep the buzz on

Near Field Communication: Secure mobile commerce

Add Near Field Communication to your list of what to know about wireless communications. NFC, the brainchild of Royal Philips Electronics and Sony, promises to be a safer, more affordable option than competing close-range wireless options.

Equipment vendors and wireless network service providers see a number of advantages in using NFC for information exchanges. NFC, which supports transmission speeds up to 212K bit/sec, is inexpensive, costing 10 to 20 times less than alternatives, and requires one-half to one-third as much power as options such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. And best of all, NFC has a transmission range of only a few feet, which makes it difficult - some would say impossible - for intruders to tap into.

While a number of NFC trials are underway in Asia, a group of about 50 diverse vendors, including MasterCard International, Microsoft, Motorola and Visa International, have formed the NFC Forum to promote the technology. The group is focusing on NFC's ability to authorize e-commerce payments in devices such as mobile phones, digital cameras and game consoles. In effect, these devices will function like credit or debit cards and offer users one more way to buy products and services.

"NFC could play an important role in helping vendors realize the promise of mobile commerce," says Allen Nogee, wireless technology analyst at In-Stat/MDR.

Podcasting: An enterprise challenge

After plunking down the cash for an iPod - and Apple reports that more than 20 million people have done so - consumers are often quite open to putting the device to novel use. Consequently, determining what is growing faster has become difficult: iPod acceptance, which Apple says has seen more than 500% annual growth in shipments, or the cottage industries that have sprung up around it.

The latest rage is podcasting; market research firm The Diffusion Group expects the number of U.S. consumers who engage in podcasting to grow from 4.5 million in 2005 to 56.8 million in 2010.

With podcasting, if users miss their favorite radio programs, they can later download the broadcasts down their iPods - or other MP3 player - as Really Simple Syndication files, an XML variation designed to aggregate news feeds. Public Radio International's Christopher Lydon is one radio host who podcasts his show, while Stephen Downes, a senior researcher at Canada's National Research Center, uses the technology to augment his blog, as do many others. "Most Web sites already put their content in MP3 format, so tweaking it for podcasting is a simple process," says Mike McGuire, a Gartner research director.

In June 2005, Apple blessed podcasting with the announcement of its iTunes Podcasting Directory and then delivered more than 1 million podcasts to customers in two days. "Eventually, all mainstream media organizations will view podcasting as one of their necessary distribution channels," says Marc Freedman, an analyst with The Diffusion Group.