Shifd: A Clever Mobile App From The NY Times

the RFID chip - does it go where the micro san-disk would go, or is it embedded in the device?

Too bad, it is not an external device - that would be much easier

That’s quite possibly the worst imaginable way of doing that.

Really using Bluetooth and a custom app on the phone would be better (you could even have the host PC dynamically bundle the data into an app which gets deployed every single time if the user experience is better) - mainly because whilst on many of the worlds subways you won’t have a data connection to use - you want it all bundled up and blasted at your phone in one lump.

Web 2.0 heads generally just don’t get mobile at all.

It looks like they took an RFID tag and sandwiched it in the battery compartment.

Bluetooth sucks. No one has it enabled by default. It’s a serious pain to connect bluetooth devices - especially phones. It’s a battery hog. RFID is self powering. Their solution is workable because it’s universal and its simple. They don’t have to write a custom app for every phone on the market. I’ve tried to find a custom phone app for JahJah or other VoIP software for any of my phones and they just don’t exist.

RFID isn’t out on devices in the userbase today. Bluetooth is, it works and is used a lot by consumers. It also would allow you to bypass the ludicrous data charges on the cellular network.

VoIP is one area you certainly won’t find on phones because it would upset the operators. Other apps work great - just see the fuss over only deploying web apps to iPhone.

Drew, nige,

Thanks a lot for you comments and feedback….curious to see what people think of the idea.

Shifd is something that Nick Bilton and I built over the course of about 20 hours at the Yahoo! BBC Hack Day in London a few weekends ago. RFID may or may not have been the best choice, but it was one of the few things we had in our ‘toolbag’ and could put together in the 24hour time constraint of Hack Day.

We’re going to build a version of the app/site that doesn’t require RFID - it’ll be optional for those who are looking to put their extra RFID tags/readers to work

-Michael Young
NYTimes R+D
shifd.com

This is a pretty cool application, despite its complete unnecessary use of RFID technology. The tag could have just as easily been attached to a keyring or placed in a wallet, and would have provided the same presence function. It is not as if the tag and phone were communicating. Using RFID technology was a way for this application to appear more convergent than it really is; it really just distracts people from the true usage, I believe. Using the Nokia 5140 with NFC would make this whole idea more cohesive.
Use your NYT connections to get better HW from Nokia and NXP, they would love this!

Call me a rube, Why isn’t everything just managed through the Web and SMS? Seems like you don’t really need the RFID/Bluetooth hardware other than for the “neato factor.”

rfid was a good choice /

- Bluetooth - wasn’t was it was sold as being. Besides being a wireless headset thing - everything else about it sucks

I like it. Bluetooth is horrid, the RFID thing is nice for real proximity stuff and you putting the phone on the reader is a tactile signal of intent. The use case demonstrated looked very natural and I think this idea has a lot more mileage especially with some nice personalization done in the back end. Nice work.

I think it’s a great idea, but they willl have seriously crippled the potential of this product by relying on RFID - as everyone else has already stated.

It may just be too far ahead of it’s time. Can’t wait to see the version that does not rely on RFID technology.

Pretty impressive Michael!

Thanks NYT.

Sharing has revolutionized the way we use the web.
Today, most online business model that offer a sharing component are successful.Users want their voices to be heard.

RFID will be pretty sexy.

So this is for people that don’t have smartphones? Don’t understand the use when there is Bloglines mobile, and notes/tasks built into Windows Mobile OS. I assume iCal for iPhone.

I don’t see how RFID is adding value here, as mentioned above by many.

The sync up is a good idea but the use case according to me is not really as strong as it should have been. But then obviously, you have made it under the constraints and that you are planning to make a non-RFID version as well, this time try to think on some better use case, like adding personal alerts for critical tasks that are peding, but all this without manually feeding stuff into it.

Like, have an application that crawls your email account or other notes etc. and finds out what might be like a urgent bill payment for your credit card or dentist appointement made three months back that you have completely forgotten about. Or stock exchange trends for your favored stocks etc.

That might add more value to your concept.

You could also check out some of the existing Desktop RIA platforms that you can leverage for creating your desktop application interface.

For instance: http://www.dekoh.com might be a good platform to try out.

~Accidents lead to Patterns
http://accidentalpatterns.blogspot.com

Why the hell RFID ???
Just use bluetooth.

1. why external device when you have bluetooth?
2. why use data transfer to open website if you could simply send those information using bluetooth?

it’s one of those ideas “oh, we are so smart so let’s do it more complicated”

Neither RFID nor Bluetooth are in any way required to make this work. But without the RFID piece it would not have won the prize. So fair enough. Taking things apart is always a good sign of serious hacking, right?