Mobiles Do Even More

Hot on the heels of the eLens project mentioned yesterday comes news of NFC, or near-field communications technology. NFC is based around RFID chips and mobile devices (at the moment, customised phones) that can communicate with each other when in close proximity. The transit authority of Frankfurt in Germany has just completed a ten month test of the system which they report was a great success, enabling public transport users to either use their mobile phone in place of a ticket, or to use it to purchase bulk lots of tickets. And given the constantly improving versatility of mobile devices, there will be a slew of new applications in no time at all. Then what will we do when we have our phone stolen?