NxpSemiconductor
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BMW and NXP's prototype smart-key knows more about you than the NSA
Ok, we didn't see this one coming. Then again, our idea of a Sunday drive is taking a taxi uptown. So imagine our surprise to find that the people at NXP Semiconductor and BMW thought it was a good idea to integrate a car key with a contact-less payment system. The prototype key features NXP's SmartMX security chip -- the same chip at the heart of many of the world's e-passports -- making it possible to use the key to pay for fuel at the pump, tolls (after uh, switching off the engine in the toll lane), or at any number of places where flagrantly flaunting your BMW logo-adorned key could get you noticed. What piqued out interest, however, is the promise that such a key could hold your personal access rights to unlock, and then start the engine of your own car or that of a rental company's while automatically configuring the interior with all your custom in-vehicle settings such as radio presets, mirror and seat adjustments, etc. It would even authorize (and pay for) future on-line BMW services across the entire fleet of Bimmers you don't own, but might choose to outfit the family with if the smart key option was available. The prototype on display at the CARTES & IDentification show in Paris next week will likely closely resemble the image above... only without the transformer.[Thanks Stop_Spam_ming, transformer image courtesy of Luis Duran]
Geotate wants to geotag the world
The highlight of an otherwise lackluster PMA 2008 came not from Nikon, Canon, or any of the other big name companies, but rather General Imaging: GE's new camera division announced that it will release one of the world's first point-and-shoots with embedded GPS. Well, to say that the E1050 has true GPS would not be totally accurate -- but the very features it lacks are what make it possible to incorporate geotagging capabilities in the first place. You see, this model only contains a GPS radio courtesy of New Zealand-based Rakon, but no baseband chip to process the data in order to create a "fix"; rather, an NXP Semiconductor spinoff called Geotate provides server-connected software that does the heavy-duty calculations once photos have been transferred over. This results in almost no hit to battery life or endless waits for a solid fix.It works like this: every time the shutter is triggered, the camera's memory card briefly captures the raw data from the GPS radio, associating it with each photo. Then, once the pictures have been imported into Geotate's proprietary client, auxiliary location data is downloaded from a central server, which is then synthesized with the camera data using local resources to establish actual coordinates. What's more, the Geotate software hooks in to Wikipedia as well as the popular mapping and photo-sharing services, giving you real-world information about your shots while also allowing you to map them out and upload to Flickr, Picasa, and friends. Geotate tells us that besides the E1010, we can also expect to see the platform incorporated into future cams designed by Taiwanese OEM Altek, with such a reference design pictured in the gallery below, along with one for a geotagging peripheral that snaps into a DSLR hotshoe. In the longer term, Geotate hopes to embed its low-cost solution (all that's needed is a small radio and some flash memory) in all sorts of products, from PCs to sneakers to soda bottles. And that's where the name of the company comes from: Geotate stands for "GEOgraphic noTATion," with the ultimate goal being the creation of an ecosystem in which we search not by "what," but by "where."%Gallery-15065%
