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RFID and NFC aren’t really new, but up til now, the most exciting use for the tech has been either keeping track of razor blades at Wal-Mart or playing music from your Nokia cellphone on a set of speakers. Enter Tikitag, which is about to change all that with their platform that allows average Joes off the street to come up with all sorts of fun and clever ways to link stuff in the real world to stuff in the online world. More after the clicky thingie…

The Tikitag Alpha went live today, and the store officially opens on October 1st, when you can go to the Tikitag website and buy tags, readers or packages containing both. Then it’s up to you to either use or create applications to take advantage of Tikitags. Such as?

The simplest is to associate a tag with an URL. Put the tag near a reader and the web browser opens up to the URL you specified. Think ahead a bit: Just as many computers now have multiple memory card readers, if computers start shipping with Tikitag readers (or other NFC readers compatible with Tikitag), it’s only a matter of time before business cards start shipping with tags built in. Put the card near your computer, and there’s the contact’s website or vCard.

Plenty of other uses for Tikitags are possible. Their site lists city games, smart toys, time registration, loyalty programs, event access, interactive posters and collection management to name a few. But I’m sure a lot of fun uses will be thought up by creative people. Personally, I’m working on using Tikitags to come up with ways to confuse and annoy my wife and our dog, which I’m sure will be really funny (to me) for about 15 minutes, until I’m barred from using them ever again for the purposes of EEEEvil. But for those 15 minutes…

Tags will be about $5 initially (in packs of 10), so plan your Tikitag apps carefully. Maybe the first thing to do is come up with an app that keeps track of your Tikitags so that you don’t lose them!

Tikitag via Gizmodo