Of all the interesting new tech that seems poised to garner a lot of buzz in 2011, near field communication (NFC), is probably the most exciting. If it takes off, it will transform the ways we communicate, share, and make payments with digital devices. This will likely take years to happen, but the groundwork is being laid right now. And RFinity is one of those companies at the forefront.
While Google and Apple are responsible for generating much of the buzz about NFC at the moment, the technology goes far beyond simply having the right type of chip in your mobile device. For example, how do you handle different types of data transfers being made from one device to another? And how to you ensure that they happen as quickly as possible? And most importantly, how do you ensure that they happen securely? Those are the things that RFinity is thinking about.
The company has just raised $4 million from Horizons Ventures in Hong Kong. And the space has gotten so red hot, in fact, that we hear they’re already out raising another round.
And it’s an easy bet for investors to make not only because of the space, but because of where the project originated: The U.S. Department of Energy. Specifically, RFinity was born when a bunch of infrastructure security experts working for the government were assigned to find all the vulnerabilities in cell phones. Through software they came up with, they were able to quite easily eavesdrop, manipulate SMS messages, and even compromise LAN security. Then they set out to figure out a way to stop people from doing those very things. That work led directly to RFinity.
Work originally began in the person-to-person and person-to-vendor sales space by way of mobile applications that route transactions through RFinity’s own secure servers. But now that NFC appears ready, RFinity is making sure they’re ready for it. The idea is that their technology could cut out the middle man here: themselves.
Obviously, the company isn’t going to share all the details on how they secure NFC transfers. But the basic overview is that they verify an incoming NFC signal and ask for a user’s permission before taking any action. Further, if the action is a transaction, it requires a PIN, just as you might do an ATM withdrawal. That’s all pretty standard. But the key is one-time-use transaction codes that RFinity creates on the fly along with complex cryptographic signatures. These ensure that an transaction is secure since it means that every transaction can only happen once. Even if those numbers were intercepted by a hacker, they would be useless beyond the one-time payment.
And even if your phone is lost or stolen, a thief couldn’t do anything without your PIN. And you can remotely shut down your NFC capabilities via RFinity. It’s enough to make me wish I could throw out all my credit cards right now. “Today’s identification and transaction systems are based on what? A magnetic strip on the back of a card, based on a 1950’s technology that relies on a base station to read the information embedded as a series of simple magnetic markers in plastic tape,” writes Josh Jones-Dilworth, who is working with the company to bring them to market.
Again, NFC as a technology is great and potentially game-changing. But the software is still needed to make it actually work. And some of the big guys began realizing that early on as companies like PayPal, Bank of America, and even Subway have been testing out different things with RFinity for some time. In fact, RFinity has actually been doing field tests of the software end of their technology since 2009 in places like Idaho, well before most people in the U.S. had ever thought about NFC.
But now people are starting to care. And soon, they could be caring a lot more. NFC is already built-in to Google’s new Nexus S device — and the company has put out a call for developers to start using the tech. Rumors have the next iteration of the iPhone gaining the technology as well. In other words, I suspect we may be seeing acquisition rumors starting to fly around RFinity in about six months or so. Provided their technology proves up to the NFC challenge, of course.
Silicon Prairie News gives its start-up community a voice
You’ve heard of Silicon Valley, and likely Silicon Alley, but have you heard of Silicon Prairie?
Silicon Prairie is geographically hard to define but it’s there– somewhere between Chicago and Colorado, Dallas and the Dakotas–and it’s getting noticed because of one local news source The Silicon Prairie News.
And the Prairie’s entrepreneurs can thank one man, a native Nebraskan named Jeff Slobotski, who decided he wanted to write about the tech sector. After a few days of writing about California’s burgeoning scene, he decided to refocus his efforts on his own community. Recalling the words of my college professor, if you’re going to be a writer, write about what you know.
Slobotski decided to give his community a voice and that voice goes by the name of Silicon Prairie News. He called on the skills of his then friend, now CTO and co-founder Dusty Davidson, who runs BrightMix, a small, local software company. In July 2008, Slobotski started blogging as a hobby, interviewing local entrepreneurs on his lunch breaks and publishing stories at night.
In June 2009, Slobotski took on Danny Schreiber full time as SPN’s Managing Editor. Schreiber’s favorite players in the SP scene? Dwolla, a mobile payments service that is giving PayPal a run for its money and RockDex, a start up that is capturing the social metrics of plays on YouTube, LastFM and MySpace for musicians.
The boys had a lot to write about, they just needed people to listen. Slobotski, Davidson and Schreiber decided to throw an event to grab the world’s attention; they called it Big Omaha.
Last year’s Big Omaha was a success with over 550 people from 20 states including Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, Charity: Water‘s Scott Harrison and Zappo’s Tony Hsieh. SPN was suddenly profitable, making money off of sponsorships and ticket sales from the event. Soon they had local businesses and Omaha’s Chamber of Commerce knocking on their door, asking if they could advertise on SPN. The readers came.
SPN currently has 4 full-time employees, 12 freelance writers and 3600 RSS feed email subscribers. At the end of November, the site averaged 25,000 unique visitors, 45,000 page views, and was growing at 10% a month.
“If it weren’t for Silicon Prairie News, there wouldn’t be a start-up scene in the mid-west. They are our voice. Their existence reinforces our culture.” says Ben Milne, the CEO of Dwolla.
Monday through Friday, expect fresh, daily content focusing on Silicon Prairie entrepreneurs like Dwolla and Hudl, an online coaching application, recently named by Inc. magazine’s 30 under 30. On the weekends, to keep traffic flowing, they’ll repurpose TED Talks or big interviews from other more well-known tech blogs.
“Our first goal is to highlight the story, the angel investors and the entrepreneurs. Our second goal is to tighten, build and connect the community and ecosystem here,” says Slobotski. “There’s value in what we’re doing by reporting on it but our events build communities that get people talking and brainstorming ideas together.”
The overall scene in Silicon Prairie is comprised of a lot of consumer related tech starts up. With the large amount of capital potentially available (read: Berkshire Hathaway and everyone else who is connected to Warren Buffet by one string or another), the scene could be well funded with the right connections.
This coming week, they will launch Silicon Prairie News’ Kansas City bureau, of which Kansan Royce Haynes will be involved. Haynes, like many SPN readers found the site through hearing about Big Omaha on Twitter. “I didn’t expect something of this caliber to take place in Omaha, Nebraska,” he says, “It’s going to be great to now be a part of it and to able to highlight all of the entrepreneurial activity going on in Kansas City.”
Interested in getting in on the Silicon Prairie fun? Save the date for a sweet SPN party Sunday night at SXSWi in March and a Big Omaha style event in Des Moines, Iowa this fall.
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