Near Field Communication (NFC) is certainly a promising technology and some standardization processes are on-going at nfc-forum.
Microsoft announced extended support for this technology in Windows 8, but renamed it as Near Field Proximity. I'm investigating on the Proximity API that developers can use to create NFC-enabled apps; it is surprisingly simple..
Read more on my first-part article:
http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/Near-Field-Communication-in-windows-8-part-1.aspx