Think of all the things you could do with an electronic Post-it note, one that's smaller than a grain of rice. Hewlett-Packard's research laboratory has invented it -- an inexpensive, wireless, battery-free microchip that can store documents, audio files or video clips -- and someday it could change the way we live.
This microchip has an adhesive back, so it can be pressed like a sticker to the surface of just about anything. Put it on a photo to carry a voice recording of the person featured in the 4-by-6 glossy print. Stick it on passports so officials can examine images of travelers' fingerprints and iris patterns. Add it to soldiers' dog tags and diabetics' medical-alert bracelets so emergency responders can view their full medical records and make life-saving decisions.
The "memory spots," as HP calls the microchips, are probably two to five years away from being sold on the market, if HP indeed decides to run with this new technology.
HP researchers envision the dozen of pages of text, 15-second video clip or other data, stored on a spot, could be displayed on the screen of a cell phone that's waved in front of the chip, doing away with the need for a computer or Internet connection.
HP emphasizes its budding technology is meant to complement, rather than compete with, RFID tags. RFID tags are the equivalent of electronic bar codes that are expected to help track 1.3 billion postal packages, pallets of inventory, animals and other objects this year.
RFID tags transmit their basic identification data when scanned from many feet away, whereas memory spots only reveal their data to a reading device waved less than 1 millimeter from its surface. That's like the difference between shouting your name across a room and whispering a story into someone's ear.
The memory spot could easily replace the paper manual that comes with consumer goods, providing instructions that will never be misplaced. And it could substitute for the pages of appendices accompanying reports and legal documents. And upstage any other printed materials that would be easier to view or listen to and update digitally.
That's a smart move for the computer and printer giant, which held about 43 percent of the market share worldwide in 2005 for the highly profitable inkjet printer cartridges, according to Lyra Research.
"Here we have a company that is a specialist in printing coming out with one of the big next-generation technologies replacing printing," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, a San Jose-based technology consultancy. "This is HP assuring that if the industry does move, then it's on HP technology."
The memory spot is still a prototype. Analysts say the technology is promising but would need to become ubiquitous. The scanners that read and record more data onto the spots could be built into new cell phones and digital cameras or plugged into already-purchased PDAs through the accessory card slot.
HP would receive licensing fees from consumer-electronics companies that adopt its scanner technology. It also would benefit from repeating revenue if it chose to be the primary supplier of the spots, much like its sales from printer ink cartridges.
The genesis of the memory spots reaches back to the late 1990s when HP Labs' branch in Bristol, England, wanted to add audio to printed photographs. Researchers glued a postage-stamp size microchip to the edge of a 4-by-6 print and slid the protruding chip into a handheld audio player. That enabled the viewer admiring a photo of a crawling infant, for example, to also hear the baby babbling.
But that model was a bit bulky and unsightly, especially with the exposed, overhanging chip. In an effort to create a more acceptable format for consumers, researchers shrunk the chip to a laminated dot about the circumference of a pencil-top eraser and made it a sticker that consumers could add to the front corners of photos.
The memory spot can transmit 10 megabits of data per second, which is as fast as a Wi-Fi Internet connection. Because the radio frequency it uses can move data faster than the one used by RFID tags, huge audio or video files can be transferred from a spot in a fraction of a second instead of taking many minutes. So while an RFID tag may give people a Web site address where they can find a multimedia presentation, the spot cuts out the additional step of going online by storing that presentation in its memory.
The 256-kilobit memory spot can hold up to 15 seconds of video, while the 4-megabit spot can hold 42 seconds. HP said future versions of the spot could have larger storage capacities.
And because it's ultra-compact -- with a tiny antenna built directly on the chip instead of the inch-long external one usually hanging from RFID tags -- the spot can unobtrusively be stuck to smaller objects.
"If I put an RFID tag on a business card," Taub said, "it would consume half of the card."
An RFID tag usually also lacks a processor, a computing brain that enables the memory spot to encrypt data and recognize whether a pin code entered into a scanner for security authentication is correct.
"The nice thing about this is the regular stuff you use to protect any data, any place, can be used here," Enderle said. "If used properly, it actually solves some privacy problems."
For example, people who carry their medical information card or prescription in their wallets risk exposing those private details to whoever who gets ahold of the wallet.
"Anyone can read that stuff," Enderle said. "If they put that on a spot on a medical card, it wouldn't matter if they lost their wallet or not. It provides a better way to carry information that is important to you and to protect that information from people who shouldn't have it."
And because data can only be retrieved when a scanner more or less touches the memory spot, it could keep ID data more private when added to passports rather than attaching RFID tags, which the U.S. government has decided to do. RFID tags can be accessed by powerful scanners up to 20 feet away, which has caused an outcry by privacy advocates, who said extremists could scan for the tags to pinpoint Americans in a crowd. The State Department is adding security protections to its passport RFID tags.
Katherine Albrecht, co-author of Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID, said the increasing prevalence of RFID tags tacked to items people carry in their pockets or purses enable "a form of virtual frisk" and a way to track an individual's movements.
But she is less worried about a microchip tag that would require actual contact, like the spot.
Tim Bajarin, principal analyst at Campbell-based Creative Strategies, said he would love to have a card with a memory spot containing his
medical files that he could keep in his wallet.
"I'm diabetic," said Bajarin, who wears a medical-alert bracelet engraved with his type of diabetes and the medication he uses. Because the physical space on the bracelet is so limited, there's barely enough room to include his identification code and a toll-free number people can call in an emergency to find out more of his medical details.
"If I had the spot, they could have all that almost instantly," Bajarin said. "This is the tip of the iceberg for the use of this technology. ... The trick is to get people's creative juices flowing and driving costs down over time to make it ubiquitous."
HP estimates a simple spot scanner could be sold to consumers for less than $20 and the spot itself could be purchased for tens of cents if there was large enough demand to make them. But the company also would look for ways people can use the spots so it would be worth paying a dollar for one.
"That wouldn't be too bad," Taub said. "I pay $30 for an inkjet cartridge."
------
(c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via Newscom.
