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Alcatel-Lucent launches consumer service portal

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: Alcatel-Lucent announced that Alcatel-Lucent Ventures had launched tikitag, a consumer service, in India. 

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tikitag, leveraging innovations within Bell Labs, would enable consumers and third-party application developers to increase the value of everyday items by connecting them to online content or applications using identification technologies like radio frequent identification (RFID).  

The tikitag service would enable the launching of online applications by simply touching an RFID device such as a cell phone to an item tagged with an RFID chip. tikitag could be used in a variety of environments: for example in an in-home application a father can use tikitag to link his toddler’s teddy bear to an online story about that same bear;  in an outdoor environment tikitag makes it possible for a visitor to an art gallery to wave his RFID enabled mobile phone at a painting and then see the painter’s Wikipedia profile appear on the phone’s screen. Or in a business/logistics environment, a cleaning company can, for example, use it to record that a room has been successfully cleaned through a simple touch of an RFID-enabled mobile phone to a tikitag-linked RFID tag that has been placed in the room

tikitag offers a starter package that would include a USB-enabled RFID reader and 10 RFID tags, and provides access to a community website http://www.tikitag.com where users can create and share new and off-the-shelf tikitag applications. Initial applications available for download would include the ability to link tags to URLs or linking tagged souvenirs to photo albums. Teenagers would be able to link a tagged photo to their social network profile or steer an online music services player to perform pre- programmed actions via a tikitagged object. 

Anthony Belpaire, GM, Alcatel-Lucent, tikitag venture, said: “Over the last few years there has been explosive growth in the range and types of online content – much of it related to real world objects, events or activities. But how do you connect this online content with a person’s business card, for example, or a concert poster, or a work of art, etc….tikitag provides this missing link."

tikitag features a flexible API that would enable third parties to customise and embed tikitag functionality into their offerings – either seamlessly extending their existing applications or creating new applications to enable interaction with tangible things. This could be used to create loyalty applications, rental services or even mobile workforce solutions. At the same time they can promote and sell their applications on the tikitag website. This part of the open innovation initiative that Alcatel-Lucent Ventures are promoting in the market.