VenChar

Mobile RFID readers

I wrote yesterday about passive RFID tag technology. I found (via Ars Technica) an interesting application of RFID tags that reverses the standard RFID setup by having fixed tags and a mobile reader. The tags reside at fixed locations and beam a transmission when a reader approaches close enough (a passive tag would be activated by the proximity of the reader). The applications explored in this article are to (1) navigational systems for the visually impaired and to (2) guidance systems in locations such as museums.

Looking ahead to when large numbers of devices around us sport RFID tags, a number of applications will arise for mobile readers that can extract relevant local information from the tag environment around them and resolve this information using access to Savant and ONS systems over a ubiquitous wireless network such as GPRS or WiFi.

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Reader chipsets will be embedded in laptops and PDAs connected to the Internet through whatever wireless connection is available. In this scenario, you will want access to more just than the EPC, the manufacturer, the product name, etc. - you will want to know what the product features are, what the cost is, where the nearest store is where it can be purchased, etc. You will want to be able to scan and parse the (presumably large) universe of tags around you at any given time. Environmental RFID tags will provide mobile robots (bearing RFID readers) a means of gathering information about the immediate environment and navigating it.

This vision is a little different from that of sensornets in the following respects: (1) RFID tags are passive transponders, activated only by the immediate presence of a reader; therefore they can be much cheaper(2) RFID tags do not communicate with each other, (3) RFID tags will be embedded in all devices and products, hence near-ubiquitous. By contrast, sensors will only be placed in pre-designated locations (4) RFID tags will will have little or no processing power because of cost-constraints and will only be capable of communicating a limited information set, (5) the RFID communication protocol will have to be standardized since it will have to work between arbitrary tags and arbitrary readers whereas there is no a priori driver for an interoperable communication framework for networks of sensors.

I'll have more to say on this soon.

Passive RFID tag technology

I read up recently on RFID tag technologies. RFID tags can be active or passive. From the Auto-ID Center's website:

Active RFID tags have a battery, which is used to run the microchip's circuitry and to broadcast a signal to a reader (the way a cell phone transmits signals to a base station). Passive tags have no battery. Instead, they draw power from the reader, which sends out electromagnetic waves that induce a current in the tag's antenna.

Active tags are useful when tags need to be tracked at longer ranges but are expensive (a dollar or more) which makes them infeasible for applications such as tagging low-ticket-price items. On the other hand, passive tags are much cheaper (pennies vs dollars) but are useful only when the ranges required are smaller. The Auto-ID Center is primarily working on passive tags. There are two major approaches for passive tags: inductive coupling and backscatter coupling. See here for an overview.

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Inductive coupling exploits a near-field effect (operative when the separation of the tag and the reader is much less than a wavelength). The radiating antenna on the reader creates an alternating magnetic field which penetrates the antenna coil of the tag. By Lenz's Law, this induces a voltage in the tag. A capacitor is connected in parallel to the antenna coil in the tag to create an L-C circuit whose resonant frequency matches the frequency of the radiator. In this situation, the tag draws energy from the magnetic field created by the radiator. By altering the load in the tag's circuit, it is possible to vary the amount of energy drawn from the field and these variations can be detected by the reader. It is thus possible to transfer data from the tag to the reader by using the data to modulate the switching on or off of a load in the tag's circuit.

Backscatter coupling uses a technique similar to radar. The tag uses an antenna with a high reflection cross-section for incident electromagnetic waves. Thus a portion of the power radiated by the reader antenna is reflected off the tag's antenna and is then received by the reader. By switching on or off a load connected in parallel to the reader's antenna, it is possible to vary the amount of reflected power. By modulating the switching with data, information can be transferred from the tag to the reader. The reflected power is received at the reader, passed through a directional coupler (to decouple it from the transmitted signal) and the data is decoded.

Merck alliance with Alnylam

Merck and Alnylam (a biotech startup funded by Polaris, Atlas Ventures and others) recently announced an alliance aimed at developing and bringing to market drugs using RNAi technology.

RNAi (or RNA interference) is a powerful new technique that can be used to "silence" or block the expression of specific genes in a very targeted way by introducing a species of RNA into the cell. The technique can therefore be used either as a way of discovering the function of specific genes or as a means of disabling the production of a disease-causing protein. The latter enables the creation of RNA-based drugs that can target gene-based diseases including viral diseases (related to entry of foriegn genetic material into the cell), cancers (related to gene mutations) and inflammations (related to overexpression of specific genes).

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RNAi is a form of post-transcriptional regulation - acting after a gene has been transcribed from DNA into RNA but before the RNA has been translated into protein. During transcription, the genetic code is transferred from DNA into mRNA (messenger RNA) segments that travel out of the nucleus. The RNAi technique involves the introduction of siRNA (small interfering RNA - short pieces of double-stranded RNA whose code matches that of the corresponding mRNA) segments that can be targeted to destroy a specific mRNA corresponding to a particular gene, thereby controlling the expression of that gene.

OATSystems - RFID middleware

OATSystems, an MIT startup, just raised a $11.5MM Series A from Matrix and Graylock - via VentureWire. Their product Senseware is "the first reader-independent RFID middleware, providing businesses with real-time visibility, improved velocity and product security in their supply chains."

Judging from the product description on the OATSystems website, it looks like OAT provides an implementation of the Auto-ID Center's Savant and ONS that interoperates with a range of different reader technologies. The Savant is a server that sits at the edge of the network and gathers, stores and acts on data received from the RFID readers in the local network. ONS (Object Name Service) is a technology similar to DNS for resolving Electronic Product Codes (EPC) to usable information about the associated product.

Linux desktop migration challenges

Via Slashdot, an interesting study by Paul Murphy at Ace's Hardware on the costs of migrating from Windows to Linux. Murphy discusses the architectural issues around the adoption of Linux on the desktop and the challenges it will pose for IT staff trained at and accustomed to administering Wintel systems.

What does the arrival of Lintel mean in terms of the organisation's need for the Microsoft gurus who currently support the organisation's Wintel ([Microsoft] Windows on Intel) desktops? How does the typical MCSE skill set map to what will be needed to cope with an environment in which perhaps 20% of the servers and 80% of the desktops run Linux while the remainder continue to run Microsoft suites?"

The day the music died

OligopolyWatch writes that "The Big Five [AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, BMG, EMI, and Sony] are one of those rare new oligopolies that are ripe for major disruption due to their inability to adapt to changing market dynamics, not because of music piracy. In this case, it's the dependence on blockbusters."

From an interesting Slate article by Mark Jenkins:

Meanwhile, younger fans lose interest quickly and often don't develop strong loyalties. They're less likely to investigate a breakthrough act's previous albums or buy its next one. The genres that appeal to under-25 music fans continue to sell, but individual performers fade quickly.

This is a huge problem for the big labels, who still base their marketing on long-term stars who release multimillion-copy blockbusters. One album that sells 10 million copies is more lucrative than 10 that sell 1 million, because once a CD takes off, the only fixed costs are manufacturing and shipping, which are trivial compared to production and marketing. And long-term careers make each album less of a risk, since the most loyal fans will buy everything an artist releases and profits are high on back catalogs that keep selling.

Yet maintaining superstars is hard and getting harder. They require large advances, high royalty rates, and massive production and marketing money. And they keep demanding such things even when their careers tank (notable recent examples: Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey). The risk that a contemporary superstar's latest album will bomb is high, since attempts to reach the widest possible audience can easily lead to banality and overexposure

People over 40 now constitute 44 percent of the CD market, up from 19.6 percent in 1992. However their tastes have become highly fragmented and they're had to reach through mass-marketing. The younger set have more homogeneous tastes but tend to have less loyalty, as a result of which b(r)ands marketed to this group (boy bands, etc.) tend to have short lifespans.

Of course, the recording industry has blamed the systematically-falling CD sales over the last couple of years on music piracy. The Slate article suggests that the reasons for the declining sales lie elesewhere. It draws an interesting historical parallel: the emergence of cassette tape technology in the late 70's. "In 1978, record sales began to fall, and the major labels blamed a larcenous new technology: cassette tapes... It turned out that home taping had not killed music. Instead, the central problem was the collapsing popularity of dance-pop—lively, sexy, but personality-free music whose appeal was broad but thin." The emergence of MTV in 1980 was the systemic shock that jolted the industry out of the doldrums by popularizing little-heard-of musicians to an Amercian audience and giving a "novelty-starved" population something to cheer about. The article goes on to suggest that Napster/Kazaa and the like are the shot in the arm that the industry needs right now.

Standards and commoditization

New York Times article on the changing face of consumer electronics retailing with Best Buy and Circuit City fighting to stay in the game with WalMart. The article puts its finger, in passing, on a few major and broader trends: commoditization is happening sooner in the product lifecycle and this seems to be driven by the two forces acting in concert: standardization and the entry of Chinese ODMs.

Clayton Christensen references a framework for the new product lifecycle based on the evolution of the basis of competition. Early in the lifecycle vendors differentiate their products based on functionality. As the product category matures, the basis of competition shifts, successively, to reliability, then to convenience and finally to price. Once price becomes the basis of competition, the commoditization stage has been reached. "A product becomes a commodity within a specific market segment when the repeated changes in the basis of competition completely play themselves out, i.e., when market needs on each attribute or dimension of performance have been fully satisfied by more than one available product."

The NYT article points out that the progression through these stages to commoditization is happening faster now than ever before:

The rapid succession of digital entertainment devices — the DVD, the digital camera, the MP3 player — should have created a golden age for the stores selling them. But these wonders share a common problem with a previous digital product that had been a hit with consumers: personal computers. Early in each product's life, prices have fallen and models and features have changed quickly, leaving retailers with expensive, out-of-date inventory. Once that happens, the products become a commodity, and profit margins — always tight in the electronics business — became virtually nonexistent.

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Standardization can play an important role in speeding up the product lifecycle by tending to remove competition based on features and functionality - as an example, most of the core functionality of a product category such as "WiFi AP" is now standardized and it is very hard for AP manufacturers to differentiate their offerings. The emergence of a standard also has other visible effects/implications: (1) it signals a broad consensus on specifications, (2) it encourages multi-vendor adoption of the standard, (3) competition between vendors drives down the cost, (4) lower costs drive adoption, which leads to even lower costs in a vicious/virtuous cycle. When the emergence of the standard is timed well relative to the market, each of these effects reinforces the others. WiFi is a great example of each of these effects.

A side effect of standardization is to encourage and ease the entry of Chinese/Taiwanese ODMs with their low-cost products through openness of specifications, multi-vendor support for components, faster adoption, and higher volumes.

The Wal-Mart exec quoted in the article clearly recognizes this dynamic:

"Our customer is getting smarter about technology and wants to buy it sooner," said Gary Severson, Wal-Mart's senior vice president who oversees electronics. Moreover, some digital products, particularly at the low end, are standardized around certain specifications without the subtle variations in features and quality of, say, stereo speakers. As a result, Chinese manufacturing plants now produce millions of computers or DVD players, much as they stamp out Barbie dolls and running shoes.

Telstra switch to Linux

Further to recent remarks about Linux on the desktop, news today that Telstra, Australia's largest technology company, aims to switch 85% of its desktops to Linux + thin clients.

'Telstra chief information officer Jeff Smith said he was determined to end a history of internal duplication and technology incompatibility by deploying open-source software right across the telecoms giant, which spends $1.5 billion each year on information technology. He aims to slice this cost in half within three years. "I would see a big movement from Windows and Unix to Linux," Mr Smith said... On desktop trial are Sun's Star Office on Linux, native Linux applications such as the Gnome graphical user interface, and the Mozilla browser. Telstra is also testing a Wyse thin-client terminal with XP-on-a-chip using Citrix. Mr Smith said the savings could be huge, with a total cost of ownership reduction of about 40 per cent.'