NFC to transform retail

An emerging mobile phone technology called near field communication (NFC) will play a key role in enabling retailers to create a single view of their customers across multiple channels, says a new research report 'NFC: The road to commercial deployment', states Internet Retailing.

Consumers with NFC-enabled phones will be able to simply touch their phone in-store to a 'smart' poster or product label containing an RFID chip to sign up for a loyalty programme, collect a money-off coupon, update their Facebook status, or go online to read a product's customer ratings and reviews or place an online order.

NFC phones can also be used to store virtual versions of retail loyalty cards and discount coupons and are compatible with POS terminals that accept contactless bank cards.

According to research released by Gartner, CIOs working to return to business growth have made technologies such as virtualisation, cloud computing, Web 2.0, networking and mobility top priorities for 2010, says the San Francisco Chronicle.

CIOs don't expect to see a big change in budget dollars in 2010, with US budgets expected to increase 2.5% over 2009 levels - which dropped an average of 8.1% worldwide over 2008 IT budgets. But Gartner's global annual CIO survey of 1 600 IT leaders found CIOs do expect to begin a transformation process requiring them to adopt new technologies.

According to Mark McDonald, group VP and head of research, Gartner Executive Programmes, CIOs in 2010 plan to transition from: recession to recovery and growth; strategic cost-cutting to raising enterprise productivity; and owner-sourced technologies to lightweight social technologies.

The new Insite Programmable Global Alert and Monitoring System can be set up to monitor almost anything, then send text updates and alerts to the user's cellphone, according to Gizmag.

Insite can be used to monitor liquid levels, pressures, voltages, temperatures, weights, switch states - anything that can be measured. It can be used in agriculture, the energy sector, manufacturing, data storage, food storage, construction and other fields.

On a more personal level, it can also be used for home or office protection, alerting the user when their security system is tripped, the power goes out, or the temperature changes. It can even track the location of vehicles, yachts, planes or even skateboards, presumably.