NuEra-ID Pty Ltd
NuEra-ID began as an idea for a worldwide register of unique identifiers: a single, bottomless source of IDs that anyone, anywhere, could draw on to individually identify anything of interest, from a bottle on a shelf to an item of military equipment. The idea had its roots in 2005, when I was recalled into military service and found myself auditing units across Land Command, the formation comprising around 85% of the Australian Army's assets. It became apparent to me that there were considerable savings to be made if it were possible to uniquely identify everything being held on inventory, and NuEra-ID grew from that observation.
The original dPId logo.
A DataMatrix barcode, the format NuEra-ID eventually adopted.
The NuEra-ID technology suite: reader hardware and application software.
The company itself was formed in 2007, initially under the name dPId Pty Ltd. Said quickly, the letters sounded like "deep ID", which was exactly what the idea was about: a bottomless source of IDs for everyone in the world to use as they wished. Even the company's symbol nodded to this ambition; it was based on the formula for the surface area of a sphere (A = πd2), fitting for a system intended to cover the globe.
Initially, we intended to develop our own barcode, one with a high level of redundancy so that it would be resistant to damage. At the time, we had the then-revolutionary idea of reading a barcode using a high-resolution digital image sensor, and we built a prototype to prove it could be done. Later, we decided to use DataMatrix instead, since it already existed and was well accepted.
For a while, everything was going well. We developed a reader capable of reading the new barcode, intended to impress investors, and there was a genuine prospect of a multi-million dollar investment from UBS; one that would have allowed NuEra-ID to list on the Australian Stock Exchange and given us the money to publicise the idea properly and win some significant clients. Then the Global Financial Crisis struck. UBS disappeared as a serious investor, and with it went the enthusiasm of most of the other investors to proceed.
One person stuck with us: Mr Peter Bartter. Peter became a good friend of mine, and he went on to invest in another idea of mine as well, KegMo, a keg-monitoring system that grew out of our attempts to introduce NuEra-ID into the hotel and club industry for managing bar stock. (KegMo is another story for another time.) Unfortunately, Peter's prostate cancer, which had been in remission for many years, resurfaced. Based on testimony given by Professor Angus Dagleish, I believe the return of his cancer was a direct result of Peter being forced to submit to COVID-19 mRNA injections before he was permitted to travel abroad to visit his grandson and other relatives. The cancer was very aggressive, and Peter passed away a short time later.
With no prospect of further investment, I decided to fold all of my businesses and move to Ballina with my wife, to be near our son, who was by then married and starting a family of his own. (One of my better decisions!) I deregistered NuEra-ID, KegMo, and Automating Anything, and we went to Ballina to start a new life.
The old NuEra-ID website has been preserved exactly as it was. Visit the archived NuEra-ID site to see the full detail of the technology, the people involved, and the case we made for it at the time.