Laetitia Gazel-Anthoine, Connecthings

How is your organisation involved with RFID technology?
Connecthings uses RFID as part of our contextualised content management systems, which connect mobile phones to information. “Contextualised” means content that is related to where a person is as well as what day or time it is. In cities and towns across the world, a network of public tags is being constructed. These tags can by read by mobile phones. RFID technology is one of the many ways that those tags could be read, along with barcodes, text messages or GPS.

Why might businesses be interested in this?
Our clients are outdoor advertisers, public transportation companies, public authorities, museums, event organisers, brands, retailers and the like. So, for example, instead of going through the expense of manufacturing a touch screen information map to put in the lobby of a museum, we could help that museum to install tags that can be read by the mobile telephones their visitors already have in their pockets or bags, whenever they come near one. Connecthings can provide the tools to create location and time based content, manage tags and view them on a map, and develop and adapt mobile content, applications and websites.

What is your vision for RFID in the future?
Most people cannot begin to imagine all the interesting things RFID could do! Public tags and the systems and devices that manage and read them can bring all sorts of very pertinent information straight to consumers, exactly when and perhaps more importantly where they need it.