The BBC has an article today about the evolution of RFID tags. They can now hold more complex information than simple product bar codes and people are doing increasingly clever things to enable normal household goods to interact over the internet. One example of this is Nabaztag wi-fi rabbit, a cute gizmo that can read RFID tags and communicate with the internet. Now some book publishers are adding RFID tags to their books, so that when the book is waved in front of the rabbit it starts to ‘read’ the book out loud – well, stream a recording of it being read from the internet anyway. Cute. But that’s not all. It seems the Rabbit, which according to the website is ‘good for lovers’ (coff), has a PR guy whose last name is Kitten. Maybe this is just a coincidence, or maybe the sinister Rabbit Corp forces every staff member to change their names to be cute just like their product… Hmm… if I ever join them I’d be Mr Fluffy.
