Monday, November 06, 2006

Here's Looking At You Kid


In the very near future you will be able to securely lock and unlock your cell phone, pay bills by that cell phone and with a single swipe of the phone purchase items like you would with a credit card.

All this will be possible with iris recognition technology in your cell phone.

So what happens in the near future, when your phone recognizes you and decides it doesn’t like you anymore?



On November 6, Oki Electric announced the development of iris recognition technology for camera-equipped mobile phones. Unlike Oki’s previous iris recognition technology that relies on infrared cameras for the iris scan, the new technology uses ordinary cellphone cameras.

With plans to make the technology commercially available in March 2007, Oki hopes to boost the security of cellphone payment systems.

According to Oki, any camera-equipped cellphone or PDA can perform iris recognition once the special software is installed. Identification accuracy is said to be high, with only 1 in 100,000 scans resulting in error, and the system can tell the difference between flesh-and-blood eyes and photographs.

Sources: Nikkei Net, Oki press release

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