TraceEncounters is a social network technology that debuted at the Ars Electronica festival last week. One-thousand infrared-enabled stickpins were distributed to attendees. The pins "remembered" the unique identifier of every other pin that comes into range. When the wearer walked past a central display, his or her data was downloaded into a PC that generated a visualization of the entire network.
Link (via Near Near Future)
TraceEncounters sounds like an extremely stripped-down nTAG, a digital namebadge that helps wearers at conferences identify what they have in common and build their social networks. My friends Rick Borovoy and George Eberstadt spun nTAG out of Rick's PhD research at the Media Lab. Link
