WHAT IS NEAR FIELD COMMUNICATION???

I?m writing this page to help get my readers familiar with what nfc is and what it does. Near field communication is using a device such as a NFC enabled phone to send information or data a small distance. An example of this would be to use your cellular phone as a credit card by sending your account information from a NFC enabled chip to a reader next to a cash register simply by waving your phone by it. This would be the equivalent of swiping a credit card through a card reader. NFC will truly make most aspects of a busy person?s life much easier and much more enjoyable. This includes but is definitely not limited to simplifying transactions at your local store, data transfer with your friends and document transfers at the office.

 I soon found out while researching this ?new? technology, This isn?t technically a new technology at all. It has been used in many different applications for many years and even had a precursor which was briefly popular. RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification was created many years ago to send data from one device to another. Technically, we use near field communication every single day when we use your wireless internet connection in your home or office. It sends internet data a certain distance to your computer. While this is a bit of a stretch it is the same general idea. Just like the newly popular ?qr codes? you can now do things such as access websites, receive images, videos and articles just by swiping your phone past certain specially marked ?NFC TAGS? or ?smart spots? as they are sometimes referred to. 

This wonderful technology was invented partly by Sony at the beginning of the millennium and has enjoyed many advances and increased use ever since. Soon they are expected to be included just about everywhere. NFC uses magnets and something called inductive-coupling which sends electricity and information usually only a couple of inches to or from a near field communication enabled device such as a smartphone.

The uses for NFC devices and applications are endless. As referred to earlier, NFC will make interactions in the office, at home, social settings, at the store and many others, more convenient and innovative. Using this technology you could wave your phone near a product in a store and instantly be brought to their website on the internet. You could swipe it past an nfc tag in a movie theatre and see all the movies currently playing, coming soon or even watch their trailers. Using this technology you could even send movies and music to your friends? smart phones without having to first connect to a computer or connect to their phone with a cable. None of the mentioned ideas are currently being used (as far as I know) but my point is all of these could easily be implemented. I thought of these ideas in a couple minutes, imagine what we could come up with once all phones are nfc enabled and major corporations are using this technology regularly. Near field communication can and probably will change the future of just about everything we do today. Are we getting lazy? Probably. Is it still really cool? Definitely.