John Walko just wrote a piece for EE Times on NFC, and I want to add my two cents. If you're not familiar, NFC, or near-field communications, is a very short range, very low power method of communications. It's short range adds to its high security.

We've been hearing about this technology for a long, long time. I first heard about it from someone who tried to adapt a wireless headset to something you wear on your belt. Then it moved to the handset arena, to be used a payment system. If you had the technology built into your handset, you put the handset near the payment device, within a few millimeters, and a transaction could occur.

Both of these were (and still are) good ideas, but neither gained the momentum to sustain itself. But as Walko points out, the effort isn't dead. At the third annual Global NFC Developers Summit, held in Monaco late last month, there was lots of optimism. Now it's time to turn that optimism into real products. I suspect that if we are to see handset-based products, they'll come from Nokia. But it's time to stop talking and start building products.