As Near Field Communication (NFC) functionality becomes more ubiquitous in mobile devices, workflow applications provider Flowfinity Wireless Inc. has added NFC to its enterprise mobile application software to enable users to capture and store information faster. The technology is now being tested by several of the company's consumer goods manufacturing customers.

The New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) is partnering with X-wave Innovations Inc. (XII), a research and development firm specializing in the defense, homeland security, transportation and energy fields, to develop an embedded sensor system for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The solution is capable of measuring the levels of temperature, pressure and strain on various rocket propulsion engine components.

New Zealand agriculture technology company WaterForce is providing an Internet of Things-based water-management and irrigation system for New Zealand farms using sensor technology and software from Schneider Electric, built on a Microsoft Azure and Azure IoT technology platform. The technology, adopted this year by BlackHills Farm, has reduced water consumption by 30 percent, according to Schneider Electric.

Augmented reality is frivolous, we're told. It's mainly for gimmicks and games. But an important transformation is about to get under way. Starting next year, AR will begin transforming enterprise communications, logistics, manufacturing, analytics, product design, training, marketing, field service and more.

A new low-cost, digital seal has been developed for the CORE (Consistently Optimised REsilient Secure Global Supply-Chains) European Research Project by Dutch software company Itude Mobile.