A way to give your stuff wireless IDs

RFID technology
Companies such as Wal-Mart and Procter and Gamble and the US government dream of what they call the Internet of Things, in which every manufactured object is tagged and tracked via radio frequency identification technology.

In other words, just as you can quickly find individual photos, videos, and blog posts on the Web, physical objects will one day become completely "visible" in cyberspace.

Corporations and the feds can already locate an RFID-tagged item anywhere in the supply chain, from the factory to the dumpster, provided they have enough reader devices along the way to detect the object. Now the Parisian company Violet is promoting the Internet of Things idea to consumers, with a cute new RFID reader for the home.

The Mir:ror, due out this week, is a hip-looking device you plug into your computer that makes your tagged car keys or paperweights into application-and-content-launching doodads.

The folks at Violet believe humans "were born on the wrong side of the (computer) screen" to experience much of the Internet's magic.

Mir:ror Pack helps you create your own kicks: The $59 kit (available at www.violet.net) includes a reader and a Mirror:skin. (You can swap in other skins to change the surface's looks.) It also includes a handful of programmable RFID tags and miniature versions of Violet's Internet appliance, the Nabaztag, which looks like a bunny.

The Mir:ror also recognizes and can distinguish between the RFID objects already around your home, such as smart cards and radio-tagged books and DVDs. Each item takes on its own identity with the Mir:ror and can be associated with specific media files or applications.

For example, you might want a tagged item, placed on the Mir:ror, to launch your Pandora homepage, signaling the end of your workday. Or you could program the Mir:ror application to associate a credit card with an online credit account manager, giving you quick access to your monthly statement.

The Mir:ror works with both PCs and Macs.

Mobile phones

Street-level forecasts and conditions, via Android

In New England, if you're not chasing the weather it's chasing you. A snow squall can wreck a barbeque. A sudden rain can wash out a White Mountains weekend. Now G1 Android owners (the device is available through T-Mobile) can see storms coming, even at street level. (Micro-forecasts are the final frontier for weather forecasting, my meteorologist friends tell me.)

IMap Weather, a downloadable service from Weather Decision Technologies, provides radar images that show current conditions. You can select a specific area on your Android G1 phone for a local forecast. Thanks to your phone's GPS transponder and iMap Weather's "follow-me" option, you can also watch as the WDT's radar maps show storm fronts nipping at your heels, as you race home from mom's house this Thanksgiving.

IMap Weather's forecasts come from the National Weather Service and are updated hourly. WDT's service is free.

OLED technology

Flexible screens still need to be sturdier, cheaper

Organic light-emitting diodes ain't cheap. And the displays made from them will not be, either, until someone licks OLED's manufacturing challenges and creates applications that excite consumers.

Sony recently showed a prototype flexible display (OLED displays can be made thin and flexible) at a Japanese trade show. The 11-inch OLED screen Sony exhibited is 0.3 millimeters thick.

But it is telling of a technology's flimsiness when an exhibitor has to keep it locked in a display case, as Sony did this fall in Japan.

Other electronics companies, such as LG and Universal Display Corp., are working to make OLED screens sturdier, even as they retain the flexibility, brilliant color, and clarity the technology can deliver.

Universal Display is also working on super-efficient and powerful lighting applications for OLED. The company last month announced its receipt of a $750,000 US Department of Energy grant to build a 6- by 6-inch solid state lighting panel - much like the one featured in a Star Trek episode, "The Return of the Archons."

OLED devices are likely to prove more efficient than anything you are screwing into your lamps these days, and they will not have any of the mercury found in fluorescent bulbs.

Mark Baard can be reached at mark@baard.com.