BarbieToken. Brilliant!
It’s only a matter of time before identity tokens, like cell phones today, become a sort of fashion accessory. The company in pole position to make tokens hip is Apple of course. Imagine a new device, call it the iKey (with built in strong authentication, such as a thumb print scanner or something), looking much like a Nano, but used as a universal key to open everything in your life, virtual and physical. Leave it to Apple to make access cool, personalization hip and one-click purchasing via wireless a mainstream activity. To pull this off, Apple would have to aggregate at critical mass of relying party devices and online services. What’s interesting is that Apple most likely has enough in their own universe of devices and online services to pull this off. Publish the API’s to hook the device and let the world go wild. Now that’s interesting, and with enough muscle, quite achievable within 2 to 4 years.
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Barbie Becomes an Authentication Device for Pre-Teen Friendship
At last, a USB security token for girls!
Pre-teens in Mattels’ free Barbie Girls
virtual world can chat with their friends online using a feature called
Secret B Chat. But as an ingenious (and presumably profitable) bulwark
against internet scum, Mattel only lets girls chat with “Best Friends,”
defined as people they know in real life.
That relationship first has to be authenticated by way of the Barbie
Girl, a $59.95 MP3 player that looks like a cross between a Bratz doll
and a Cue Cat, and was recently rated one of the hottest new toys of the 2008 holiday season.
house, and sets it in Tiffany’s docking station — which is plugged
into a USB port on Tiffany’s PC. Mattel’s (Windows only) software
apparently reads some sort of globally unique identifier embedded in
Sally’s Barbie Girl, and authenticates Sally as one of Tiffany’s Best
Friends.
Now when Sally gets home, the two can talk in Secret B Chat. (If
Sally’s parents can’t afford the gadget, then she has no business
calling herself Tiffany’s best friend.)
and snap-on hair styles. THREAT LEVEL foresees a wave of Barbie Girl
parties in the future, where tweens all meet and authenticate to each
other — like a PGP key signing party, but with cupcakes.
Without the device, girls can only chat over Barbie Girls’ standard
chat system, which limits them to a menu of greetings, questions and
phrases pre-selected by Mattel for their wholesome quality.
In contrast, Secret B Chat lets girls chat with their keyboards —
just like a real chat room. But it limits the girl-talk to a white list
of approved words. “If you happen to use a word that’s not on our list
(even if it’s not a bad one), it will get blocked,” the service
cautioned girls at launch. “But don’t worry — we’re always adding
cool new words!”
