NY Times has got the right idea
by Jeremy Rue
The New York Times Research and Development Lab have come out with a really cool idea for getting the newspaper right on your mobile phone. They developed a product using hacked Radio Frequency Identification chips (RFID) whereby you can transfer data to your cell phone seamlessly.
The idea, once it’s fully developed, would work like this: Set your mobile phone on an area of your desk that has a special reader pad. The pad signals your computer and takes you to a site that would allow you to download RSS feeds, news stories, blog, personal notes and even directions to say a restaurant right to your phone.
The RFID part of it is more of a gimmack, the real beauty is in the software. Making it simple to, well, put the newspaper on your phone. There are a ton of programs right now that will technically do that, but none with the beauty and simplicity as this one. And one thing software developers are quickly learning these days is that User Interface is everything.
Their idea was so cool, they won the Yahoo Hack Day London 2007 competition. (I admit, I didn’t even know that was going on)
They are going to have the software ready “very soon” on their Web site ShifD.com.
Watch the video of them explaining their product far better than I could in this blog: