FedEx jumps on the “smart” wagon with a new web-based service.
FedEx Corp. (FDX) today is announcing a sensor-enabled device that can wirelessly feed real-time data about a package’s whereabouts, condition and other metrics to the Internet.
The service, called SenseAware, will launch this spring. Its initial target markets are the health-care and life-sciences businesses, industries that often need to know the precise location of the products (drugs, test results, samples) they ship.
The new device, when attached to a parcel, contains sensors that can provide temperature readings, data on whether a shipment has been opened or exposed to light, and precise data about a package’s location.
But FedEx says the new service will allow shippers and recipients to do more than merely track a package and its condition. The platform will help customers compile and aggregate data about shipments that will help them monitor quality or make better decisions about how to deploy their resources.
And so FedEx joins the ranks of companies building so-called “smart” products and services that apply computer networks and intelligence to various problems. (For a fuller explanation of various “smart” systems, see Fortune’s Jeffrey M. O’Brien’s story on “IBM’s Grand Plan to Save the Planet.”)
Groupon.com, a website that helps consumers find great deals and stores, restaurants, and other services where they live, has received $135 million in funding to support the site’s global expansion and also facilitate liquidity for employees and early investors. The funding round was led by Internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies (DST) and Battery Ventures.
Groupon is a great site that helps consumers find deals in neighborhoods and locations close to where they live, currently numbering over fifty cities in the U.S. and Canada. The collective deals consumers have found through Groupon, ranging from fine dining to beauty treatments, totals to more than $150 million in savings. Groupon plans to extend its presence to 100 cities by the end of this year.
A big part of Groupon’s success is thanks to the site’s innovative and pioneering efforts at harnessing the power of social networking, allowing consumers to not only find great deals in the region in which they live but also share those deals with other people through platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
QR Code
A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.
QR Codes are common in Japan, where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes. Moreover, most current Japanese mobile phones can read this code with their camera.
Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR Codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging).
QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that users might need information about including items in stores. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks. Google’s cellphone OS Android heavily uses QR codes.
Users can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites. QR codes and RFID, are leading technology to enable the “Internet of Things” which some believe will be a huge growth phase for the Internet. The “Internet of Things” is a vision where physical world objects link to cyberspace and cyberspace to the physical world.
Is the concept of the “Internet of Things” hindering RFID deployment?
It’s a grand vision: everything in the world talking to every other thing in the world. A frozen meal communicating with the refrigerator, microwave and automated shopping list; clothes giving instructions to a washing machine and dryer and consulting with an artificial intelligence fashion consultant in the wardrobe; a medicine cabinet reading medication instructions and automatically dispensing them for geriatric patients and reporting the dosage and time taken to the patient’s doctor…the list goes on.
Many of these grand visions are consumer-facing and that helps generate awareness of how RFID can provide everyday benefits to the average citizen. But they are also bad because…
SmartShopIt.com releases its Smart Compare feature that provides valuable nutrition and price comparisons for grocery products nationwide.
SmartShopIt.com is a free site that helps its members eat healthier, shop more effectively, and save money at the grocery store. They have incorporated a new Smart Compare feature which helps their members by allowing them to easily and quickly compare grocery products. The Smart Compare feature leverages its database of price, nutritional information and ratings on over 90,000 products. The Smart Compare tool can be accessed on the desktop and mobile web device interfaces.
The Internet has quickly become a meaningful selling channel in its own right, one that is replacing catalogs and is the biggest retail channel besides store based shopping. Technology and lessons from tracking best practices at retail web sites has the potential to enhance store-based shopping. It is inevitable that the distinction between store based shopping and Internet shopping becomes blurred as each channel incorporates ideas and successes from each. In time stores will become smart stores and web sites will incorporate retail services to give you a seamless experience in shopping.
Just what each channel will embrace with trial and error is anyones guess. It does seem possible that we may eventually end up with a single service that incorporates both real stores and virtual stores using a mix of smart technology in hardware with useful data and online services.