I live in Zurich, I have kids and it's via Nouvo that I hear from Kindercity and their use of RFID technology.

(A bit later) my wife tells me that she knows about it for a long time, that it was in all newspapers...

Via Smoothplanet

Mobile Music in Japan - Japan's reality is our future

In my view [Jan Michael Hess], the carrier-centric model for managing the mobile economy is better suited to deliver mobile data services that consumers pay for than the device-centric model - favoured by Nokia - which is still dominant in Europe. This is a key reason why Japan leads the pack and it is also the main reason why Vodafone adopted the carrier-centric model on a global scale.

To make the carrier-centric model work in Europe at least three conditions have to be fulfilled:

1. the cost of GSM, GPRS and 3G data traffic has to go down severely
2. third parties need to get a bigger share of the end user price (like in Japan where the third party gets between 88 to 91%)
3. the carriers have to work in cooperation-competition (price strategy for the mobile internet, communication towards the user, open standards)
   or as a less good alternative - there should be only a small number of european carriers