RFID Gazette

RFID Gazette - Tues May 15, 2007

This is a roundup of recent RFID-related news and views.

Tracking Steel
ThyssenKrupp Steel has managed to run a successful test on a thousand tagged steel slabs using EPC UHF RFID tags. The slabs were shipped from Brazil to Germany and tracked along that route. As a result, they'll continue the process for 100,000 slabs per year, maybe more, using special SATO FlagTag RFID labels. [via RFID Journal]

A Japanese RFID Island
Depending on what country you're in, RFID tags are an everyday thing or their not. In Japan, there's a plan to set up a special tech zone on an island where RFID tags will be ubiquitous. Not only that, they'll use the zone to monitor elderly patients, the movement of pedestrians, and more.

Passive RFID Tag Market Growing
The passive RFID tag market is expected to grow to nearly US$500M by 2013, compared to just under $125M in 2006. This information comes courtesy of a Frost & Sullivan report.

Earthquake Protection With RFID and Nanotechnology

RFID seems to be enjoying a lot of hybrid use lately, combined with other technologies. Some are actually in use, others are still at the theoretical or testing stage. One such hybridization will combine RFID and nanotechnology to protect homes from earthquake damage. A group of British researchers are working on a self-healing house [via ETechTrends].

The nanotech is applied to the house walls, which can liquify under pressure, then re-harden, thus reducing the chances of crumbling during an earthquake. The RFID is used in conjunction with wireless sensors to warn residents.

RFID hybridization is something that I think we'll see a lot of over the next few years, especially with sensor technology, and as nanotechnology matures.

RFID Gazette - Mon Apr 23, 2007

More Hybrid RFID Technologies
A number of companies have spent the last few years creating hybrid technologies that combine RFID and something else. HAMMER is a system that goes further by combining not two but multiple technologies: RFID, GPS, mapping, and sensors. It also combines a digital camera and PDA. The system helps map archeological sites as well as helps track bar-coded artifacts, amongst other uses. [via RFID Journal]

China To Use RFID For 2008 Olympics
Given the success of RFID implementations in sports stadiums and events in the past couple of years, it's not surprising that RFID will be used by China in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Usage will include security and anti-fraud, such as ensuring that tickets are legitimate. [SDA Asia via RFID News] This is how the 2006 FIFA World Cup (Soccer) event used RFID.

Spanish Reebok Sports Club Using RFID
Sports clubs, too, are implementing RFID technology. A 6,000 member club in Madrid, Spain, uses RFID for a variety of purposes: entry, access to facilities, and payment for various purchases. The club says that over two years, they've been saving the equivalen in Euros of nearly US$100K per year. This is partly due to the fact that memberships are getting updated more often. [via RFID Journal]

Smartdust Explorers and RFID Sensors

New Scientist/Space talks about using currently theoretical shape-shifting smart dust for exploring alien worlds. They describe the functionality of the motes, which is to actually float over a surface, carried by inconstant winds. They have wireless sensors that allow them to communicate with each other.

While there's no mention of RFID in the article, the fact is, these motes could likely be built with RFID technology. Consider the powder RFID chips that Hitachi just came up with. They're not quite nanotechnology, but they're close. Make them smaller, then add a small array of environmental sensors, then have the chips communicate as part of a sensor network. This would probably require some sort of base station, but that could be the space vechicle sent to the alien world.

Boston Marathon Adopts RFID

The Boston Marathon has announced that they'll be using RFID technology that allows monitoring of athletes' whereabouts. This is partly for the purposes of sending wireless or email alerts to friends and family of runners. [via PC World]

They are not the first race to use RFID, but it wouldn't suprise me if more marathons converted to this. (Many sports - such as baseball, golf, soccer, car racing, parkour - are finding interesting ways to use RFID.) Marathon fans often want to watch but cannot be at the event. RFID allows for near real-time monitoring, as well as ensuring that only registered athletes are participating. For the Boston Marathon, RFID tags are slipped over shoelaces before they're tied.

Zipcar RFID-Based Car Sharing Service Expands

Car sharing services have existed for years in North America in many large and even some small cities. But Zipcar is a service with a difference: they use RFID contactless cards to open the doors, making it much easier to schedule more efficient sharing. The other difference is that Zipcar is the first car sharing service to go international. Besides service offerings in US cities, they are in Toronto, Canada, and more recently, Vancouver.

Cars have had RFID tech in various components including door keys for many years now - even if consumers are not aware of this fact. However, the Zipcar technology means the ability to produce multiple keys per car.

This is actually an ideal time to get into Vancouver, what with the Winter Olympics coming in 2010 and a cramped road infrastructure. Visitors to the games are going to want to rent vehicles, especially since the events are actually spread out over at least two sites. Vancouver area's roads supposedly cannot take a surge in vehicles. So a service like this might be a boon to everyone, especially if they're set up to handle short-term use.

RFID + Sports: Parkour - Urban Acrobatics

Back in the late 80s, when I lived in Toronto, I had a skinhead buddy who liked to intimidate people. One trick he'd pull was to have me stand still on the sidewalk and he'd run, vault over my shoulders, and virtually float over my head. He'd then do the same over parking meters, over and over until he got a reaction from passersby. I can't remember if he was a Jackie Chan fan, but people either thought it was cool or would be scared of him.

Nowadays, this sort of urban acrobatics (aka parkour, freerunning, freestyling) is becoming commonplace, as witnessed by the 20 videos in the SplashCast included in this post. (Works like a slideshow, but each "slide" is a YouTube video.)

What some Parkour fans have done, though, is turned their acrobatics into a sort of performance course using RFID tags and readers. The gist of it is that they'll wear tags on their clothes or as part of a wristband. A course will have been plotted out beforehand, and RFID readers will be placed at key points, recording when a participant passes by.

It's an ingenious use of technology, but with or without it, it's incredible to watch these guys and gals defying gravity. Of course, the standard disclaimers apply: don't try this at home without someone to train you. Somewhere on YouTube is a video of people getting hurt in Parkour.

RFID Gazette - Tues Mar 13, 2007

Mobile Payments Initiative
Two organizations have launched a joint initiative for the financial services industry to enable mobile payments. They are looking at two types of payment. One would be for purchases via NFC and other contactless technology. The other would be transfer of funds between the accounts of two consumers. It should be noted that PayPal, the payments processor owned by eBay (who also own the Skype VoIP software company) already allows mobile payments through SMS text messaging.

Apple Into RFID?
Not quite. However, they have filed a patent for a wireless home networking system that uses an RFID reader. The system would assume that a variety of devices (laptop, PDA, iPod) would have an RFID tag and the network would automatically configure a network connection for it. [via RFID Update; they have a link to the patent.]

Very exciting application. I heard nothing about this until now. The drawback is that Apple technology has traditionally been very singular, with the company typically not licensing/ authorizing clones. This sounds like a fascinating application, but it might only ever be used for Apple products.

If You Can't Beat'em, Confuse'em:
So IOActive's researcher Chris Paget was told to put off his "clone RFID cards" talk at the Black Hat conference recently, based on the charge that the demonstration would violate HID Global's patents in card readers. Huh? Defeat "enemies" with confusion? I don't even know where to start with this one. The validity of this claim is questionable. Other RFID presentations did continue, however. Still, this is a bad precedent and stinks of bullying.

RFID Applications: Tiny Chips For Currency?

The tiny powder RFID chips that Hitachi recently debuted are small enough to be embedded in paper. Reading that in the York Dispatch, it triggered a thought: the US government (collectively) has long desired a way to track paper currency. Some or all American bills have had a thin strip of metal for at least a decade. (My apologies: I don't know which denominations.) But now they may have the means of embedding RFID chips into paper currency.

If you watch enough police dramas on TV like I do, you start thinking of all the times monitoring the literal flow of ransom money would have been helpful. Then there's the other side of the coin, so to speak: the Big Brother scenario, which RFID more than any other technology could support, especially if it becomes as ubiquitous as being in currency. And with RFID in powder form, the potential for abuse grows. Hopefully, that's not the case.

New Diet Courtesy Of Your RFID-Enabled Fridge?

This sort of thing has been tried with different technologies in the past, but now Samsung has a refrigerator that uses RFID to tell you when certain foods are running low. [All Headline News via RFID News] Of course, to facilitate this, all of your food would have to have item-level tags. (Though there are a few produce suppliers who are experimenting with food grade RFID tags.)

Now here's where the really interesting stuff comes in: connecting a refrigerator to a cell phone. So, if both your phone and fridge have a wireless technology such as Bluetooth, the fridge could transfer information to your handset. In fact, if you had the right application, the whole setup could create a shopping list for you. My feeling is that we'll see more of these types of solutions. Though whether they are a good thing for humanity or will just make us more lazy has yet to be seen. Just make sure you pay your cell phone bill, or you may you go hungry.

RFID Roundup - Mon Jan 01, 2007

RFID In China
China's RFID market reached nearly 800M (about US$100M) Renminbi in Q3 2006 and increase of 30% over Q3 2005.

Managing Patient Records
Advanced Pain Management (APM), a clinic in Wisconsin state, is using RFID tech from Alien Technology and Symbol Technologies (Motorola) to manage the records of 50,000 patients. The legacy system involved medical assistants driving records back and forth between a central location and 28 other satellite offices on a daily basis. The middleware, SmartInstrument, is from Reltronics. The entire solution, hardware, software and integration, is US$5,000, and was integrated into APM's ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system.

Gutter Think: RFID In The Sewers
Warendorf, a German city, is using RFID technology to maintain its 127 miles of seweres. Their system, which is tied in the city's GIS (Geographic Information System), tracks maintenance checks and allows workers to not have to use pen and paper. The result is more accurately recorded maintenance data. [via RFID Journal]

RFID Roundup - Sat Dec 30, 2006

Walgreen's Expanding RFID Use
Drugstore chain Walgreen's started an RFID trial project in late 2005, in which 50 of their 5500+ stores took part in. They are now deploying another RFID system, Wireless Asset Net from I.D. Systems, for materials handling vechicles. The system will help control access to these vehicles, which is a requirement of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration).

RFID Aids Process Improvement
Managing Automation reports on a ChainLink Research survey finding of 275 manufacturers that RFID use is tending towards operational efficiencies. Another important finding of the survey is that many of the companies plan to spend twice as much on RFID in 2007 compared to 2006.

RFID 2007: NFC Contactless Payment Use To Grow
Mohammad Khan, President and founder of ViVOtech, Inc., says that contactless payment has become a worldwide phenomenon, with North America leading. There have been over 18M cards issued in the US and Canada, and over 250,00 POS (Point of Sale) systems accepting those cards. By the end of 2007, there is expected to be 40-50M cards and 400,000 POS systems. Then there's the rest of the world, with several dozen countries already in the middle of trials, and many more millions of cards lauched.

Options For Disabling Your E-Passport's Chip?

A couple of weeks ago, there were a couple of articles around the blogosphere talking about how to disable the RFID chip in your new e-passport. Engadget has a great photograph of a simple, low-tech option. Now, while one article said that a passport is still valid even with a disabled chip, The Inquirer says that a tampered passport might get you "25 years in prison and a special customs search with rubber gloves.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. The security issues have yet to be resolved and might be worse than formerly thought. Two European tech consultants found that cloned e-passport data can be purchased on the Internet. Not only that, the RFID reader they bought on eBay had a blank chip and software for cloning and copying the data onto the chip.

RFID For Predictive Maintenance

For the most part, many industries such as aerospace fix things when they need fixing (beyond any scheduled maintenance). That's mostly out of a lack of options. However, RFID's use in MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) is growing, and the technology can be used for predictive maintenance. This means that costly, even deadly, maintenance problems can be caught before they happen, simply by allowing easier data collection of maintenance checks and equipment status. Boeing is employing RFID in a similar fashion on their new 787 Dreamliners, each of which will have around 2,000 high-memory passive tags.

Nortel Adding RFID To Wireless Services

Nortel, the telecom equipment maker, is making it easier for wireless ISPs (Internet Service Providers), to offer RFID-based services. Nortel offers a municipal wireless platform, and now plans to enhance this with solutions for RFID applications. An example use might be for a municipal fleet management (cars, trucks, school buses, small aircraft?), monitored through RFID tags integrated with GPS receivers.

This could be where the ROI for municipal networks comes in. Municipal networks either have to be paid for by taxes, subscriptions, or advertising - or some combo. If RFID-based services could produce a return on investment, the savings could subsidize part of the infrastructure costs.

Nortel's Municipal Wireless Solutions combines a number of technologies including Wi-Fi, wireless mesh and WiMax.

Gentag Wins RFID Patent For Sensor Networks

Gentag, Inc., has received a broad patent entitled "RFID Based Sensor Networks" that apparently covers a wide range of wireless devices including cell phones, PDAs, and laptops. Such devices, if RFID-enabled, would be nodes in sensor networks such as those used in crowdsensing applications. [via MoreRFID]

It's hard to say right now what the implications of this patent are, by my own personal opinion is that this could be a coup, as sensor networks based on mobile devices will very likely grow in importance in the medium to long-term. This would be both for experimental community-based projects and commercial applications. Combined with Internet databases, some very powerful applications could result.

The patent is actually co-owned between Altivera (Gentag) and Symbol (Motorola).

Tagging Tokyo With RFID + Wireless Tech

Ginza shopping district is being blanketed with 10,000 RFID tags and infrared + wireless transmitters as part of the Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Project. Each beacon has its own unique code and the tags and transmitters will supply location information. The beacons are synced with an Internet server, and the idea is that, eventually, the system will help shoppers navigate this very popular shopping area. And in four languages, no less: English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (three of the big four Asian languages, typically labelled CJKV - though Vietnamese seems not to be part of this trial. [Korean is no surprise, as South Korea has been investing in RFID.]

This a brilliant, innovative use of RFID and wireless technologies. I'm assuming that besides the 3.5 inch touch panel terminal displays they're using in the trial, suitable RFID-enabled wristbands/ watches or even smartphones might possibly used in the future. For a different look at RFID-enabled grids, see the badge-tracking array experiment conducted at the latest Chaos Communication Congress.

Now Here's How To Track People With RFID

Wired's Quinn Norton writes about the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Berlin, Germany, and how attendees are paying 10 euros each for an RFID badge that reports their location. There's an array of 35 monitoring stations that pick up badge locations and produce a constantly updated public XML feed.

The badges are part of an experiment and are voluntary, but it reflects exactly what I've been saying as to how RFID could be used to track people, given the right technical environment. There have been vocal naysayers here on this blog, but the CCC is proving exactly that it's possible. If you doubt me, consider that electronic civil liberties pioneer John Perry Barlow, one of the founders of EFF (Electronic Frontier Founddation), is talking at the CCC. One of this badge project's leaders also openly states:

The idea was most of this surveillance technology slowly faded into your lives, and we accepted them.... [we want to] make it possible to bring it into people's heads.

Meaning, if I've interpreted everything correctly, they want the general populace to be aware of what's going on and the potential misuse of RFID. Before you get your knickers in a knot, noticed I said potential, not actual. And that's all I've really been trying to do. Embrace the good, legit uses of RFID. Beware the questionable. You'll have to define the latter for yourself, but I partially define it as anything that violates a citizen's privacy and gives them no benefit whatsover.

RFID World Map

RFID Tribe has put together an RFID map of the world (via The RFID Weblog) using Google Maps. The map geocodes uses of RFID by companies, associations, universities, etc. And you can add your own RFID points of interest. There are 233 points as of this writing What would be interesting is to cross-reference this map with IDTechEx's RFID case studies database containing over 2400 instances of projects in 92 countries around the world (as of Dec 23/06). The database is also categorized by industry.

Now assuming IDTechEx's information at least has city data, these points could be cross-referenced with the CIA's worldbook, which would include Latitude/ Longitude values for each city's geographic center. Grab a Google Maps API developer code, massage the IDTechEx data, and you have a great starting point for an auto-generated world map. Such a map would also provide a nice overview of where the most activity in RFID is.

The only drawback is that IDTechEx database is probably internal and the case studies themselves cost many hundreds of dollars each. Though who knows. Maybe IDTechEx will launch their own Google Map of studies.

RFID Roundup - Fri Dec 29, 2006

RFID In Our Car Tires
RFID has been in used in the automotive industry for quite some time, both in vehicles and for SCM (supply chain management). Tag have also been used in tires by NASCAR. Now they're being used in tire pressure gauges, which seems to worry Bruce Schneier (a writer for Wired) but not Techdirt or Engadget.

Why Not Use RFID?
Boing Boing points to a story about a new mounted scanning camera being used in San Francisco to help the Dept of Parking and Traffic catch cars with unpaid parking tickets. Given that the system costs 92,000 for each outfitted vehicle, it seems like an opportunity to consider an RFID-based parking solution for the future, like Hoboken, New Jersey.

New Villanova RFID Lab
Villanova University will be getting a state-of-the-art RFID lab courtesy of a partnership with Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania (BFTP/ SEP). They'll also be getting a three other high-tech labs in the new 12-year partnership.

RFID Roundup - Tues Dec 26, 2006

Hybrid RFID: GPS Receivers
Fujitsu Software Technologies has a hybrid tech device that combines an RFID tag with a GPS receiver. The receiver is accurate within 3-5 meters (10-16.5 ft) and the unit sends out a unique ID and geo info to an RFID reader up to 200 meters distant. The device is about US$170. [Nikkei via RFID in Japan]

Contactless Vending Machines
If you live in Dallas, New York or Chicago, that can of Dr. Pepper or Snapple that you're thirsting for can be paid for with your MasterCard contactless credit card. Cadbury Schweppes vending machines are going contactless and will also accept all major credit cards. [via Storefront Backtalk]

Worst RFID Uses?
Just catching up on my RFID reading and came across Gemma Simpson and Jo Best's Top 10: the best, worst... and craziest uses of RFID. I gotta say, pretty much all of these would have made it to my own similar list, with the exception being Dutch bookstore chain BGN, who have already proven the value of their conversion to radio frequency technology.

Green RFID Guy

Green RFID Guy is a new weblog with the tagline "sustainability through Radio Frequency." There aren't all that many posts yet, but there are a few "green" ones including Why Should Environmentalists Care About RFID, Real Time Regulation, and What's the Recipe for Green Engineers?

Definitely an interesting approach, and one that hadn't crossed my mind, despite my own personal attempts to be as green as possible. This is probably a very timely blog, as even a few RFID manufacturers have been listening to their customers and changing the materials they use in their RFID inlays. And there's the use of RFID to detect potential brush fires. In fact, there are countless applications for RFID in Environment Management.

5 RFID Issues

RFID Update has a 3-part series on RFID trends for 2006. Number 10 was "RFID and the Citizen: Passports, Privacy, and Politics". I would have have put this as number 1 myself, in terms of public concern. Their number 1 was "The Industry itself". Each item has a number of links to related articles, and the series is definitely worth a read to get a perspective of what's happening. These types of articles are never easy to write - I know first hand. But here are my 5 issues in RFID (not quite the same type of list).

1. RFID and identification. Should citizens be concerned? Is it all fear-mongering or do we really need RFID citizen cards between Canada and the US?
   
2. The industry itself. How's the industry doing? Can it support RFID IPOs?
   
3. Item-level tagging. I'm referring to the retail industry and the intent of giants such as Wal-Mart to tag everything. A reduction in price for item-level tags should push this application forwards.
   
4. RFID in the pharmaceutical industry. The FDA D-Day, Dec 1st, has come and gone, but in fact, a US Federal Court judge apparently issued an injunction lifting the e-pedigree requirements on certain drugs. The pedigree requirement is a good idea, especially for fighting drug counterfeiting, by the industry has been self-admittedly behind the curve. Will they catch up in 2007? Well, it's been 10 years since an e-pedigree solution was mandated. What's taken so long? (Item-level tagging costs, technological hurdles, etc.)
   
5. RFID in payment systems. Do we need contactless credit cards? Are they secure? And should it be legal for merchants to refuse cash?

Of these, three concern me, but only because of my own personal feelings about them. I've written about them often enough, so I'm not going to repeat myself. You'll notice, though, that I'm talking less about the technology and more about issues.

RFID Roundup - Mon Dec 25/06

More RFID Training Options
A number of RFID courses will be offered in 2007 at Penn State Erie's RFID Center of Excellence. The dates are Jan 17-18, Feb 7, Mar 7-8. They are prep courses for the CompTIA RFID+ certification examination. PRWeb/ Biz Yahoo and RFID Solutions Online have more details. RFID training options are finally popping up all over the place.

McKesson RFID Real-Time Location System
The Spartanburg Regional Medical Center in South Carolina recently installed the Horizon RTLS (Real-Time Location System) from McKesson, a healthcare service provider and technology company. The system will be used to wirelessly monitor the location of over 500 IV (intraveneous) infusion pumps. [via Gen Eng News]

Fish Olympics?
Fish Olympics is a university project (USC Interactive Media) which lets people construct a virtual tropical fish and test it against other creations. There isn't much more info, and the main site is under construction.

Contactless Payment Fobs At Bank of America

Bank of America (BoA) is testing out contactless payment fobs provided by Oberthur Card Systems. This particular fob is actually a "sub-card" that would be included in a MasterCard PayPass, and can be popped out and then included in a keychain. This is said to be a first in the US. It's being predicted that alternate form factors will further the adoption of contactless payment.

BoA recently threw out a non-customer who wanted to cash a check drawn on a customer's account. Seems BoA forces non-customers to undergo fingerprinting. The man politely refused, stating that Federal laws mandated the bank to cash checks drawn on their bank. They said that their own rules indicated fingerprinting, but refused to show him proof when he asked. They then ignored him until he left, with a security guard tailing him. Talk about getting right into identification methods.

MasterCard Contactless PayPass On The Ohio Turnpike

The Ohio Turnpike is testing MasterCard's NFC-based contactless PayPass payment cards for toll plazas. According to a Telematics Journal report, this is the first toll road in the US to accept payment cards in self-service lanes. It should be noted that other toll roads have used pre-paid contactless cards for several years, though these are not credit card based. RFID in toll road systems have been in use in Toronto, Canada for nearly a decade and are also being tested in Argentina and other parts of South America. The same NFC technology in the PayPass started off in key fobs, which were introduced to consumers to pay for gas at some stations in North America (at least Esso in Canada and Exxon in the US).

Nokia RFID Phones To Monitor Security Guards

Here's watching the detectives. Well, security guards at any rate. (Anyone else remember that old British TV show, which pseudo-nebbish angry young intellectual punk Elvis Costello immortalized in his 1970s new-wave song Watching The Detectives?) It seems Nokia   feels the need to watch their secruity guards, so they're issuing them RFID phones to  keep track of assigned work within some of their US premises.

Each Nokia handset has an embedded 13.56 MHz RFID tag and a reader. As soon as a guard enters the work premises, s/he waves an RFID-enabled employee id in front of the provided Nokia handset. This enables guards to log their in-time/ out-time.

The phone is carried in the open position while guards patrol the Nokia premises. This allows the embedded reader to pick up information in RFID tags installed at various locations on the premises, which will stand as a record of the posts the guard has supervised on that day.

At the end of the work shift, the handset is closed and data on the phone's RFID tag is transferred via the cellular network to a web-based application termed the Service Manager. Supervisors can retrieve the records in the Service Manager to get information about any guard's assigned and actual work.

RFIDJournal  reports:

The RFID system has been in use for just four months at Nokia's U.S. facilities in Atlanta, Dallas, New York and Seattle. Thus far [...] ithas collected well over 5,000 reads on the guards' activities.

Nokia, who not long ago bought RFID manufacturer Symbol Technologies, is pushing the technology into other applications, including a collaboration with JCDecaux  Finland. The latter provides billboards and other marketing materials. Nokia RFID-enabled phones will be used to track the installation and removal of billboards and posters.

[UPDATE: It was Motorola, not Nokia, that bought Symbol. Apologies for the error.]

If These Walls Could Talk: RFID + Smart Concrete

And now they can. It sounds like something out of science fiction. Imagine if your walls could store infomation and then, with the help of a suitable scanner, speak its data. Pink Tentacle has an illustration of a room made of cyber-concrete. The concrete, developed by researchers at a cement company in Japan, is "smart" in that it has embedded RFID tags in it. Their chips are endowed with more memory than usual.

Applications being touted are for monitoring of structural integrity. Data that could be stored includes safety inspection dates, etc. Now, if these tags were combined with environmental sensors like some newer RFID chips have, they could also record information about heat or moisture, which could prove very valuable for structural integrity monitoring. They could also components of fire monitoring systems or for detecting chemicals.

RFID Cold Chain: Yes We Have No Bananas Today

How could I resist? Chiquita, well known for being a banana supplier, is now using refrigerated cargo containers for shipping their produce. That means the need for CCM (Cold Chain Managment) and RFID technology. So that's what they did, teaming up with the University of Arkansas' RFID Research Center to come up with a way to monitor temperature conditions and determine when produce might have been compromised. This would replace the current method, which produces false temperature readings at times, sometimes resulting in a full trailer of produce being rejected. Obviously, efficient CCM will reduce instances of lost revenue. [via RFID Journal]

Of course, if Chiquita's wholesaler partners also using RFID for SCM (Supply Chain Management), they'd know when they have no bananas.

RFID Training Centers Across Canada

Is this a great idea or what? Faced with the future shortage of skilled workers in the RFID industry, Academia and a group of skilled professionals are offering certification courses at newly-opened training centers in the larger cities in Canada. This includes Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa, Vancouver, Quebec City and a few others. Basically, if there's a professional sports team (hockey, basketball, baseball), there's a training center in that city.

Head office in Montreal has both a classroom and a state-of-the art lab. The courses are part of the CompTIA program, which includes certification. And it's not just technical courses but also RFID Project Management. Some RFID vendors are offering courses to their clients as a result of the program. This is a brilliant idea that I hope catches on elsewhere, especially in the USA, where the shortage of skilled workers could affect the supply chain.

[sources: RFID News]

RFID In Hollywood: Law and Order

Or New York, to be precise, where the TV show Law + Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU blog) is filmed. Tonight's episode, Choreographed, starred a bunch of well-known TV actors, including Bob Saget. Saget's character explained to Detectives Elliott Stabler and Olivia Benson (who is back from a special assignment with the FBI) about how he uses RFID, radio frequency identification to get access into the building the lives in.

If you've followed the L+O franchise for more than a year, you know that their scriptwriters usually do due diligence and at least seem to make an attempt to research the science and technology that gets mentioned in the series. They didn't go into it in great detail, but the fact that it got mentioned typically means it has some importance in the episode. It's the old smoking gun method of fiction writing: don't introduce any prop that does not have some significance.

Of course, you don't find out RFID's relevance until there's about 15 minutes left. It appears that someone has implanted an RFID chip into one of the characters without her knowing, as the lab finds out when the woman collapses. Guess who? It's Bob Saget's character who did it, and he says "in 15 years, everyone will be implanted with a chip," in response to the question about why he did it. But the gist of it is that he implanted his wife because she was cheating on him.

The problem is, Saget's character didn't sterilize the chip, and because his wife is septic, she had an allergic reaction. How did he do it? He drugged her tea. Now, I didn't see where the implant was made, but this is a bit of bunk. If she's that sensitive, she would likely have felt some discomfort after the implant. Even if it was implanted in the back of her neck, where she couldn't get at it, the average human being would have used to mirrors to detect some skin disturbance at the site of the implant.

Still, kudos to the writing team of Law + Order for at least trying to bring to light some of the negatives. As I mentioned before, Hollywood will be affected by RFID in that scriptwriters will need to educate themselves to plausible uses of radio frequency technology.

RFID Trailer Seals

A large UK grocery distributor, Nisa-Today's, is using RFID-enabled resuable electronic seals on their trailers as an increased security measure. The seals, whenever they're closed, record a random four-digit number as well as the date and time. The use of a random number ensures that, should a seal be opened and re-closed, there will be evidence of it. That is, if a trailer comes into the holding yard and the seal is closed, tampering will generate new random numbers, which obviously will not match the initial number stored. Yard operators can retrieve this information via an interrogator at the gatehouse or around the yard.

While there are other companies, such CN Railways, using RFID to manage shipping trailers (train or truck), only a few are likely using electronic seals. Though this is such an innovative use of raadio frequency technology, and the resulting ROI (return on investment) is high enough that we're likely to see more use of such systems.

How Will RFID Affect Jobs?

While RFID is expected to create many jobs and opportunities, this isn't the first time that people have predicted that the use of RFID in the enterprise may affect jobs, namely the loss of them. There are other concerns, such as employees will be affected by process. Amid concerns about how RFID and employees in the retail sector, the ILO (International Labour Organization) met in Geneva earlier this year to discuss the issues. Two reports resulted, one entitled Social and labour implications of the increased use of advanced retail technologies (PDF, 60 pgs). [via The RFID Weblog]

The latter report is split up into 7 main sections:

1. Retail trade: Characteristics, trends and prospects
2. Retail trade: Regional overview
3. Technology and supply chain management
4. Radio frequency identification
5. RFID and commerce
6. Social and labour implications
7. Social dialogue

   

Regions analyzed include the US and North America, the European Union and other parts of Europe, Japan and other Asian countries, and Africa and the Middle East. Included in the report is a discussion of the benefits of RFID, both in pallet-level and case-level tagging, as well as how RFID affects workflow processes.

While the report says that some jobs may be lost, employees could be trained for customer service work. I find this hard to accept, as not everyone is cut out for customer service. Since RFID will make business process workflow more efficient, it's likely that labor needs will be reduced. There will be a shortage of skilled workers in relation to RFID, so employers considering a switch to RFID should consider in advance where they may want to reposition to-be-affected employees, if at all. Retraining may have to be part of the process, which will potentially cut into any profits gained from the use of radio frequency technology - something to be considered.

RFID Roundup - Sun Nov 26/06

Ireland's 18M Euro Fingerprint System
The Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service are spending 18M euros for an electronic fingerprint system. Called AFIS, the system will take nearly 18 months to be developed. Biometrics techniques will be used on asylum seekers and non-EEA (European Economic Area) nationals to ensure that they are not lawbreakers elsewhere. [via Silicon Republic]

Online RFID E-learning Program
Abhisam Software offers an online RFID training program for a cost of US$99. This is a supplement to their US$399 CD-based program. The course outline contains discussions of basic concepts, the physics of RFID, RFID systems, middleware, applications, security, and privacy. More details about the course's contents here. [via Processing Talk]

Active RFID Summit
Lost or stolen product costs European distribution centers as much as US$24B annually. Active RFID has the potential to help reduce such undesirable operating costs. This was the focus of the Active RFID Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, recently - an event hosted by IDTechEx. Circuits Assembly has a synopsis of the event.

RFID To Fuel Internet of Things

SEDs, or Service-Enabled Devices, will form a network of ordinary objects. So says Steve Ranger in a Business Week article. The term SED doesn't appear in the article, but ordinary devices that can communicate with each other are often referred to as SEDs. Item-level RFID tagging is still relatively expensive, but when your common household objects eventually get tagged, they could potentially form a network with each other. [via Loftware]

RFID isn't the only technology necessary, as the communication of data requires any one of the several wireless protocols. Potential candidates include ZigBee and possibly the new Wibree wireless communication protocol from Nokia, which is a low-power alternative to the popular Bluetooth - something many mobile devices already have. Wibree is intended to be used with small wearable objects such as watches and intelligent jewelry, or even computer keyboards and mice. So it could likely be co-opted for SED use, in tandem with radio frequency tech.

Nottingham University Hospital Leverages RFID

An RFID pilot study at NHS (Nottingham University Hospital) Trust is being conducted to achieve three purposes: (1) track medical equipment and manage IT assets; (2) locate emergency staff in real-time; (3) monitor babies. In the latter case, RFID would be used to prevent unauthorized removal of babies from the maternity ward. [via Computing UK] VeriChip's Hugs Infant Protection System is used in a similar manner.

Before this, most of the hospital case studies I've seen only had one application. It appears that hospitals are starting to see enough return in radio frequency technology that they are using it for several applications simultaneously. Some other hospital applications include tracking blood, monitoring bed cleaning, tracking sponges during operations, and monitoring the cleaning of hospital garments. The hospital market for radio frequency technology is expected to reach nearly US$9B by 2010.

McMaster University Gets RFID Lab

McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, an institution known for several top-notch programs including medicine, recently announced the creation of the McMaster RFID Applications Lab (MRAL), to be situated in the McMaster Innovation Park in Hamilton. It's said to be the only one of its kind in Canada. An equipment management system for hospitals will be one of their first projects, to be jointly developed with Hamilton Health Sciences. MRAL itself is being supported by several companies and organizations including EPCglobal Canada, Hewlettt-Packard, Sun Microsystems, RF Code and others. [via EurekAlert]

There are so few academic RFID labs in North America, so this is excellent news for academic development of radio frequency technologies. Hopefully it will lead to an RFID study program at McMaster. As I've said many times previously, industry has to get involved and even approach universities and colleges to build more labs, offer degree courses. The predicted worldwide market for RFID for 2016 may be US$26B, but not if there are not enough qualified workers.

Cisco High Tech Ballpark

Baseball's Oakland A's are moving to Fremont, California and a new US$500M high-tech ballpark. Not only will fans be able to to watch instant replays, order food and drink, and communicate with friends over a wireless network, they'll be able to download online tickets to their cell phones, which will be validated with RFID readers at the stadium. [PC World via Loftware]

Since the Soccer World Cup earlier this year, a number of other sports including cricket, football, NASCAR racing, golf, and hockey are using RFID in numerous capacities. This includes game use (soccer: to settle goal decisions), asset management (NASCAR: track tires), ticketing and concession payments, seat management, etc. There have even been a few soccer teams suggesting that their star players be implanted with radio frequency chips.

RFID Roundup - Thur Nov 16/06

Railway Sees RFID Return
Canadian National Railway (CN) moved to [RFID Journal] an RFID-based chassis-rental system for their trailers last year and have already seen a return of Cdn$500,000 as a result. Traffic at their cargo-container storage area has also reduced as a result, by allowing the efficient transfer of cargo containers to the appropriate chassis.

Open Standard Pet Microchip Reader Project
MaxMicrochip.com has a detailed, step-by-step tutorial, complete with pictures and screenshots, on building a pet id microchip reader to read all types of these chips. The project consists of parts that can be purchased at Radio Shack/ The Source, and doesn't even require a soldering iron.

RFID Door Locks
Coolest Gadgets has some pictures of a very slick looking RFID door lock. The lock has the option of a numeric keypad for PIN-based access as well as contactless key fobs, cards, and tags. Of course, you could also have a chip implanted in your hand.

RFID Roundup - Wed Nov 08/06

Honey We Shrunk the Contactless Payment Key Fob
Texas Intruments is offering a new contactless payment chip inlay [PCB007] about the size of a postage stamp, as well as an oval-shaped inlay antenna. Both products are compatible with MasterCard PayPass contactless payment systems, and open up the possibility of very small form factor payment keyfobs and wristbands. PayPass compatible wristbands were given away by MasterCard Worldwide recently to fans at the New York Giants' Giants Stadium. Texas Instruments recently gave up buying RFID inlays to manuffacture their own.

China Approves Savi Technology
The SRRC (State Radio Regulation Committee) in China has approved Savi Technology's active RFID tags and readers , which operate at 433.92 Mhz (ISO 18000-7) for use in the country. [via FCW] Savi was acquired recently by Lockheed Martin.

Cricket Welcomes RFID
Cricket is the latest sport to use radio frequency technology, in this case for event ticketing for the Rajasthan Cricket Association. The RFID tags used are from NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductors), the readers from Gemini. [via The HIndu Business Line]

Combining RFID and Wireless Tech

Symbol Technologies, now part of Motorola, is working on making a RFID and a number of wireless technologies (Wi-Fi, mesh, VoWLAN, WiMax) play nice together, with the goal of converging "infrastructures beyond voice, video and data." Their new RFS7000 RF switch, available early 2007, can manage RFID readers, Wi-Fi access points and, with extra modules, FMC (fixed-mobile convergence) for dual-mode cellular/ Wi-Fi mobile handsets.

This means that a wide variety of wireless devices for human and machine communication can be managed centrally, potentially allowing for some very powerful applications. Not everyone thinks there is a market for it, though, as VoWLAN (Voice over Wireless LAN) and FMC are relatively new technologies that enterprise is still considering. However, Intel and a few select others are pushing WiMax in the United States.

[sources: Computing UK]

Promoting RFID

Don't know if these are still around, but when I was a kid in the 1970s, there was a "home electronics lab" kit that I had two of. I was into electronics from an early age, seeking out any motorized toy and tearing it apart to see how it worked. So these kits were also a great deal of fun, as were all the other electronic kits I had afterwards. It suddenly occurred to me that despite my desire to experiment with RFID, the cheapest kits I've seen start at about US$150 or so (I could be off by a bit) and generally consist of the ability to do one or two things.

What might spur interest in RFID would be mass-produced RFID kits with some goofy commercial showing kids saying "wow" or "cool" when shown what they could do with RF tech. But having just gone through my weekend quota of sarcastic comedy shows, I have this image dancing in my head of kids using these fictional kits to inject themselves with RFID chips, then annoying family and neighbors with their ability to open and close doors at will.

Maybe such a RFID DIY project kit, if anyone were to make it available for purchase, isn't exactly ready for prime time. On the other hand, some specialized kits might have a market, with the proper promotion. For example, anyone who has a cat or dog knows they like to wander in the yard. And you have to get up and let them out and in everytime, lest they scratch your door. An easy kit to rectify this might help. While the chips used to tag our household pets probably don't have the range to do this, it might be possible to rig a doorway that opens with an RFID-enabled collar. So they can come and go as they please, and there isn't as much concern that some burglar would try to squeeze their way in through some of the traditional pet doors.

Another kit that might be popular, at least among Trekkies, would be an RFID-enabled sliding door a la Star Trek Enterprise. You wouldn't need to have an implanted chip, but something on a watch or wristband. A kit with such a band, and the choice of specific experiments, might be an ideal way to promote awareness of RFID. Just some thoughts.Promoting RFID

RTLS Firm Gets Funding

Real-time location systems (RTLS) company Ekahau announced US$16M in financing earlier in the week. Only $12M is from Series B venture capital. The company's systems work over Wi-Fi networks. The funding would go towards the development of new products. [via RFID Update]

Earlier this year, Ekahau launched a 3G Wi-Fi tag for use in healthcare and other applications. The RTLS market is expected to grow past US$1.6B by 2010. RTLS systems fall into Wi-Fi-based and spectrum-based unlicensed categories. Common applications of RTLS systems are patient monitoring in hospitals and high-value asset tracking.

RFID For Fighting Brush Fires

Brush fires have been a serious, sometimes fatal, problem in the SouthWestern United States (and elsewhere) for the past few years because of environmental reasons, lightning strikes and arson. And once they get out of control, it's all that short-staffed firefighting crews can do to stop it. So any solution that that gives crews a leg up with an early warning is likely more than welcome. That's exactly what a new RFID-enabled fire mapping sensor will do.

The Telepathx Firesight sensor mesh network system notifies fire brigades in less than 2 minutes - compared to 1-24 hours for GPS-based systems. The system is set up by placing the wireless thermo sensors in a grid and monitoring them with an RTU (remote transmission unit). The RTUs send messages to cell phones, etc. The Telepathx FAQ says that each kilometer of roadway requires nine sensors and four RTUs to be effectively monitored. At about Aus$35 for each sensor and about Aus$200 for each RTU, that's about $315+800 = Aus$1115 per kilometer. But given the cost of fire damage, it's probably a small price to pay.

Other applications of RFID-based sensors including seaport security monitoring in container yards and aiding in some disaster recovery scenarios.

[additional sources: I Newswire]

More About Tracking People With RFID

In my post Can RFID track people?, I talked about "after the fact trail analysis", where companies can at least see where their employees have been - if not track them - using contactless employee pass cards. It isn't a real-time location system (RTLS). To do that with RFID, without using GPS technology. Or at least specialized hybrid RFID and Wi-Fi technology.

Now contactless cards generally have too short a read range, but I'm hypothesizing that you can track a society's inhabitants using RFID and Wi-Fi. Let's ignore the logistics of programming, the cost of technology, and the sheer computing power needed. Say we want to focus on a tracking a single person. Here's the hypothetical scenario. The fictional society in question has a tight-knit grid of RFID scanners, and everyone wears an RFID wristband/ watch with Wi-Fi communication as well. Each wristwatch is coded with a unique value that identifies the person wearing it. It could be government tax id, such as the SSN - Social Security Number - or what have you.

Think that there would be too many wristwatches to track simultaneously? Some of the new RFID tech being used to handle bins of drugs or other product can read thousands of tags per minute. But in this case, you are trying to track a single person, a single code. Anything else can be ignored. So, continuing with the scenario, you have a person passing a scanner every few feet. Somewhere in some control room, that information can be filtered for one person/ code.

What results is a near real-time "trail" of where that person has been. From this, relatively simply mathematics can be used to study the person's "trail vector(s)" and determine where they might be going. Then a force of "robo cops" outfitted with wireless technology, HUD (Heads-Up Display) goggles, wearable computers, Bluetooth earpieces, etc., could be notified and move to intercept the person.

Now of course, I took a lot of liberties assuming this and that above. And since the devil is in the details, it's those assumptions that have to be resolved for such a science fictional scenario. But I stand by my position that radio frequency technology CAN be used to track a single someone provided the technical and financial conditions are satisified. And it's the ability, not necesarily the actuality, that is frightening.

Can RFID Track People?

This is a debate that I cannot possibly settle, certainly not in a few paragraphs. But let me try. Some of my previous posts have "suggested" the possibility of tracking employees. They've drawn some heated comments as a result. I feel it's important to explain myself, not to save face but to explain exactly what I mean, and to prove, hypothetically, that is in fact possible to track people. However, I am talking of a very general form of tracking, which not only might not be in real-time, but would also be very rough.

To wit, consider this hypothetical scenario. Assume you have a closed environment, such as a large company that has RFID readers installed at doorway access points at regular intervals. Every employee is issued a contactless card that has an unique code. An employee leaves his cubicle to go somewhere, say lunch. The choices are the cafeteria at the far end of the giant complex, or out somewhere. In either case, the employee passes through two or three access points before his path diverges, depending on his destination. Each time through an access point, the time and the id of the card is logged. If the employee goes through more than one access point, which is likely, there is a log of his "trail". A very sparse log, but a log nonetheless. With that log, his boss can tell how long he took for lunch, whether he ate at the cafeteria, whether he stopped off at some lab along the way, etc., etc.

True, this isn't a real-time location system (RTLS), but it offers after-the-fact tracking of sorts, an employee trail, if you will. Guy J Kewney has a well-written post from March which says RFID is hard to get right, so don't worry about "imaginary Sci-Fi scenarios with Big Brother spies..." I respectfully say that while that may be true, it misses the point. RFID/ contactless technology does have the ability to give its controllers more information about you than maybe you want them to have. The question is, how will the information be used? Hopefully end users will be respectful with information they collect.

Radio-Tagging Badgers

Studying animal populations is usually the domain of statisticians and wildlife researchers, but a group of computer scientists have received funding for a three-year project to tag badgers, monitor them, and study their populations. All to test out a new technology called MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems). MEMS tech also incorporates RFID tags, which are then monitored by a sensor network. [via Science Daily]

Radio frequency technology has been used to tag and study "home ranges" of animal population since approximately the 1960s. (A home range, as drawn on a map, is essentially the boundaries of an area where a single animal or a group limits their movement to, over a period of time. Home range monitoring is also an early application of GIS - Geographical Information Systems.) This particular project uses advanced technology and a different methodology for data collection. In other animal applications, RFID has also helped cattle ranchers recover rustled cattle.

Hot RFID Career Opportunities

With a predicted shortage in skilled workers for the RFID industry, the number of study programs in colleges and universities are growing. There are also companies like OTA Training, who offer both in-person workshops and classes, as well as e-learning programs. Then there's RFID Recruiters, a company that finds and places business and technical professionals with RFID knowledge/ skills.

They list some of the hot areas for career opportunties on their getting started page: supply chain project management, sales management, RFID tag product management/ marketing, tag design management, middleware business development, channel managers, pharmaceutical smart label sales, print-and-apply technicians. In their actual opportunities listings page, there are over 50 (at the time of writing) executive, sales and technical positions listed.

RFID Recruiters also suggests there will be a growing need for scientists and technicians, since there will be a need to design and test all the new RFID tags with sensor abilities - temperature, humidity, shock and vibration, light. And since the tags of the future will be "very small computers that happen to have a built-in wireless networking capability", there's a need for people with computer networking architecture and management skills. (A geeky aside: Star Trek-like "sensor" mesh networks might even be built in the future, with such RFID tags as the core component. And it'll take some incredible neural network programming skills to have them function correctly.)

Essentially, the whole RFID industry is waiting to boom. All it needs are more skilled workers. To those interested, RFID Recruiters suggests studying the Wal-Mart and DoD mandates, their suppliers, and the equipment/ middleware/ software providers to those suppliers - since Wal-Mart and DoD are driving some of the largest RFID projects.

More Of What's Holding Back Adoption Of RFID

Aside from issues of privacy and security, one serious factor holding back a wider adoption of RFID is the lack of skilled professionals. While the general principles of radio frequency technology may be many decades old (varies depending on whom you ask), its current uses are mostly limited to the past 15 or so years. Those professionals who do have the skills are already employed. And those few that are learning are apparently not learning fast enough, with recruiters feeling that some grads are not skilled enough to handle more complex installations.

There are a lack of degree/ diploma programs, beyond a handful of workshops,  courses and programs (Middlesex College, Oakton Community College, Indiana University), at least in North America - some of which are government grant-supported. Self-learning is not always easy going. Even a person like myself, with extensive technical background, has difficulties understanding all of the aspects of RFID - and there is a lot to learn, with new facets being introduced into the industry on a weekly basis.

The industry could spur the learning by helping establish "trade" programs in community colleges, supply equipment, and even loan/hire out their own professionals to teach courses. Aside from promoting the opportunity of a career in RF technology, I don't see how the future-lack problem can be nipped in the bud. Look at India. They are currently short of qualified engineers and other professionals for all the outsourced work that is assigned to the country. They're now running fast-track study programs to graduate people faster, and actually inviting students from other countries. Something similar will probably have to happen for the RFID industry - maybe including short-term contracts for retired/ semi-retired programmers and database administrators, not to mention technicians.

If you have an interest in getting involved in the RFID industry, two sites you may want to visit are OTA Training and RFID Recruiters. OTA will be debuting their RFID on the Web e-learning program this Fall, for those want to learn independently. RFID Recruiters has an article explaining how to earn a career opportunity in RFID and how to get started (including a list of the hot areas of RFID opportunities).

RFID Reduces Data Inaccuracies To Zero

In the late 80s I worked at a company that published stock market data through a special electronic channel. Consider that this was long before the Internet was public, but there were networks that could be utilized. The data was typed in each weekday morning by a small army of data entry clerks reading directly from a small collection of business sections of print newspapers. Obviously, data entry errors were numerous. It was part of the business. Now there's probably nothing RFID can do for such an operation, but it can reduce human data collection errors in supply chain processes.

In fact, data collection errors become nearly nil, provided RFID tag read rates are favorable. And in the supply chain, no errors means greater efficiency in the entire operation. Inventory information gets updated instantly in the supply database, with no need for manual data entry, and thus resulting in no errors (with the exception of possible, infrequent reader problems). Knowing what is in your inventory at the click of a computer mouse also means there is no need for holding surplus stock of items "just in case". You know how much you have and how much you need to restock. Thus, incoming orders can be handled more quickly.

These supply chain benefits apply both to in-house stock and items being shipped outside the company. Overall, production planning is improved, and sales forecasts end up being more reliable. Ferret has more details on an actual case study.

Unusual RFID Use: Escargot Express

Seems that Boredom Research is so bored that they've decided to do some tests using their own version of snail mail. What they've done is send short messages by email, then downloaded each onto an RFID chip attached to an actual real live snail. When the snail passes by a reader, the message is is captured. Because of the speed (or lack of), there's no problems with read rate accuracy.

Mighty bloody hilarious. Next thing you know, someone will use RF-tagged tortoises for courier delivery. It should be noted that Boredom Research is a "performance art" group. Hmm. Maybe Australia Post's RFID project could gain something from this. Of course, the giant cybernetic honeybees (first chapter) in Kathleen Ann Goonan's science fiction novel Queen City Jazz might be more reliable messengers. Speaking of bees, here's more unusual uses of RFID.]

[Technovelgy via The RFID Weblog]

Through Rain Nor Snow: RFID Goes Postal

You've heard - or even experienced - those stories about mail taking years to be delivered. Well it appears that Australia Post has as well and they're testing the RFID-tagging of mail to help monitor mail and improve postal services. To do this, over 12,000 test letters tagged with RFID are mailed out each month and asset-tracked via a number of RFID-enabled facilities including mail and delivery centres, and mobile units.

The Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989 specifies a rate of 94% for "on-time delivery" of mail. Australia post has achieved 95.6% on domestic mail. The RFID trials are being conducted to

...enhance our ability to monitor our service performance and provide a better analysis of potential problems within our delivery network

according to Australia Post's just-released annual report.

[via ZD Net Australia]

TNT Logistics Temperature-Sensitive RFID Tags

Medical equipment and supplies often have to maintain a steady temperature. Any relatively significant changes could be fatal for a patient. TNT Logistics (not to be confused with TNT Express, a sister company) has come up with an RFID system to track the temperature of medical products. Said Steve Stine, TNT Asia life science medical industry director:

An increasing number of medical products must be handled and shipped without getting too hot or too cold. Ensuring the precise temperature management of these shipments is therefore crucial as it is a life and death matter for patients who are tested or treated with these high-value products.

Cold chain management and temperature monitoring is also used for pharmaceutical supplies, amongst other things.

[sources: CRM Buyer]

With RFID Your Phone Is Your Key

A number of European hotels are running an NFC (Near Field Communications) trial that allows guests to carry room number and key in an RFID chip in their cell phones. This allows them to open their room door by waving their phone close to the reader. Guests who do not have an RFID-enabled phone are issued a contactless key card. In France, Hertz Rent-a-Car is issuing contactless cards as a replacement to car door keys. The engine is started by a push-button.

RFID chips from NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductors) are used in both trials. Similar American trials are expected in the near future. It should be noted, however, that contactless RFID smart cards have been used by employees of large corporations in North America for nearly 20 years. While their use may not be widespread, many large corporations already use them for all employees.

Whitepaper: RFID Ticketing For Transit

Innovision Research & Technology Group has a free white paper, Smart ticketing for mass transit - the new global oportunity created by low-cost contactless ticketing (PDF, 14 pgs). The paper is about the financial benefits of contactless technology to mass transit, for fare payment. [via Security Park]

Contactless ticketing and fare payment smartcards are taking off as niche applications of radio frequency technology. In addition to various bus and subway fare payment trials in Europe (Poland) and Asia, China's Guangshen Railway company recently ordered 125 million contactless tickets. Innovision Research also offers mass transit ticketing solutions. A recent offering is their tiny Jewel RFID chip, which can be used for disposable contactless ticketing.

Tagging Books With RFID

Libraries are already tagging books and other inventory with RFID, so it's not surprising that some large bookstores, such as the Dutch BGN [via Silicon] ch