Read My Mind!

Ford adds RFID to F-150

Ford has added built-in, RFID tool tracking as an option on the F-150. Working with DEWALT and ThingMagic, Ford has added RFID readers to the bed of the F-150 which will be able to keep a running inventory of tools provided those tags are marked with RFID tags. Some of the comments so far sound like UHF tags, but I haven't heard anything definitive yet. This is a great use of the technology.

EPC Slow but overall RFID on the Rise

In a recent issue of Industy week, Paul Faber of Thompkins Associates confirms what we've all been seeing anecdotaly.

What I've found substantiates recent news reports of a slowing of the EPC Gen 2 retail market. However, this contrasts sharply with the expansion of other, proprietary forms of RFID technology..

So less EPC, more proprietary systems for now. He attributes this to the Network Effect, basically saying that unless your network is using the technology, you may want to hold off on big investments even in an open technology.

Due to the incomplete infrastructure of EPC RFID tools, the retail RFID market is currently not big enough to drive significant value-add to all participants in the supply chain.

He has a point for most business concerns, but it's also this phase of the development of a new technology where the early adopters may just spot that "killer app." My bet is still on micropayments and credit card replacements. I just don't have room in my life for carrying change anymore, and I would like to be able to pay for a meal without handing anyone my human readable account information. I doubt I'm the only one.

So the technical corollary for what Mr. Faber is saying is the same thing we were saying earlier in the year, the trick is not just to adopt open RFID standards, but keep you architecture open overall. Don't build an "RFID Architecture." Build an architecture that supports more knowledge and descision making at the edge, tie it together with loosely coupled connections, and whatever form identification takes, you'll be ready.

RFID Kit in Make Magazine

Make Magazine has a neat article by Joe Grand on building your own RFID Reader. Reading the article takes a subscription, but you can see the Basic Stamp powered reader at his site, Grand Studios. The Make blog also has an entry about a student project which the students actually used to replace their electronic door lock. You can read more about that project at the project website of the Cornell students who built it.

Computer Outlook Interview Tonight

Himanshu and I will be interviewed tonight on Computer Outlook by the host, John Iasiuolo, an Internet radio show about new technology. The show will stream live tonight at 5:00pm Pacific time and should be available as a podcast and mp3 download by Sunday. Tune in and see if I get stage fright or if my inner ham will save me.

Book Signing February 27th at RFID World

Himanshu and I will be speaking and signing books at the RFID World V.I.P. event February 27th in Dallas (for reasonably fuzzy values of Dallas), Texas. We will also be attending the rest of RFID World over the following three days, and may be speaking or standing on a stage watching someone else flip sides or doing other things similarly embarassing and necessary. Please walk up and ask us real questions, so we won't feel like total fools. If you bring a book, we will be happy to sign them there as well, but probably won't setup a table.

RFID Essentials Printed and Shipped

The book is finally out there. We've setup a separate website for the book at rfidessentials.com. That site also points to the official catalog site for the book at O'Reilly. Please send in any typos or errata you may find to the address in the front of the book and we will post them right away. Also, if you read the book and enjoyed it (or hated it) please post a review at Amazon and other places.

RFID Essentials up for preorder on Amazon

Amazon.com: Books: Rfid Essentials

It's also up at Barnes and Noble, without the cover image.

NASA May Put an RFID Tag on an Asteroid

An asteroid shaped very much unlike a snake has recently been passing itself off as the Ancient Egyptian Serpent of Darkness, Apophis, at the sorts of parties where second rate celestial bodies tend to congregate. The United States space agency NASA famous for several cameo appearances on the hit 60's series I Dream of Jeannie has threatened to place a tracking device on the asteroid so that its whereabouts can be tracked by Homeland Security. In retaliation, Apophis (more comonly known as Melvin Hinkerdale of Leeds), has threatened to destroy the Earth in the year 2036 or "when I get around to it." Earth has no comment at this time.

...So NASA researchers have begun considering whether the US needs to tag the asteroid, known as 99942 Apophis, with a radio beacon before 2013.

I think this falls under "Liability Tracking."

(more)

Here's the Cover For RFID Essentials

Here's a low-res shot of the cover art for the book. Mary told us that this is based on a photo of a train yard, and that is the train's headlight in the bottom right corner. While it's not really meant to be symbolic of anything the reference to shipping and something big approaching seems appropriate. The signal lights reminds me of modem lights (router lights for you youngsters).

(click for larger image)

RFID Essentials has an ISBN and cover

The cover art is in for the book, and it has an understated, retro sort of look. At first I was a little dissapointed that we don't get an animal, but this is a new line for O'Reilly called "Theory/In/Practice" which has a different sort of look from the traditional O'Reilly animal books. The cover is distinctive, so maybe people will call this the "modem lights" book. I'll post an image once I clear it with our editor, Mary O'Brien.

Bookpool has a listing for RFID Essentials and I see we now have an ISBN number: 0596009445.

I feel like Steve Martin in the phone book scene in the "The Jerk."

(a phone book delivery truck drives up)
Navin Oh, my God! (Navin takes the book.) Thank you.
(he rips through the book, looking for something)
Navin The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!
Harry Well I wish I could get so excited about nothing.
Navin Nothing? Are you kidding?! Page 73, Johnson, Navin, R.! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, you're name in print, that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

So, there I am Bill Glover & Himanshu Bhatt, ISBN 0596009445.

Bookpool: RFID Essentials

The Book is Done!

..or at least it's out of my hands for a bit. Himanshu and I sent in the final draft Sunday night, and now, the folks over in Technical Illustration are scratching their heads over our pathetic sketches. The typesetting team is wondering how in the world we so completely misunderstood the template and styles requirements, and the copy editors are sobbing into their seventh espressos while marking through yet another, painfully obvious grammatical error. All I can say is that I am truly thankful that these people are there to make me look competent.

And now for a glimpse into the creative process. This is an example of one of the many things which made collaborating with Himanshu such a smart move. At some point, late into the night, we needed a diagram for how the components of an RFID system work together. I came up with the diagram above. Himanshu was wise enough to point out that this looked more like and ancient Egyptian mural than a diagram for RFID middleware. I agreed once he pointed this out, so we barely missed eternal infamy as "that eyeball book."

RFID Hysteria

BBC NEWS | Technology | Implant chip to identify the dead

There are real privacy and security considerations in the use of of RFID, but consider the following:

"It's a very scary technology," said Katherine Albrecht, a consumer rights analyst and founder of Caspian, a pressure group which opposes RFID.
"I would no longer be known as a living, breathing, spiritual person but become known as a single number that would be emanating from a chip in my flesh... essentially becoming a form of human inventory, rather than a human being."
...
"A criminal could scan you surreptitiously, then use that information to access other information about you, and potentially do some identity theft," she said.
"The other thing they could do is that, by scanning that number, it's actually quite a simple matter to capture the number and create your own chip with the same number in it.
"You could simply programme a different chip, put it inside an encapsulated device, and put it in your own arm - and at that point you could pose as the individual whose identity you have chosen to steal."

So to sum up Ms. Albrecht's objections:

• RFID is Scary and will somehow effect her spirtually
• RFID will associate her with a number
• People can read her number
• People can use her number

I wonder if Ms. Albrecht uses a credit card? It's much easier to do all of the things she describes with your credit card number. When was the last time she handed that credit card to a waiter who then walked off with it?

As for how the spiritual consequences of having an RFID tag differ from those of having a credit card, I can't comment except to answer some of the charges that this form of identification somehow matches biblical prophesies. One of the actual scriptures this argument refers to reads:

so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. Rev 13:17 (NIV)

But what about the following scripture?

A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, Rev 14:9 (NIV)

This seems to describe a visible mark (otherwise why is it on the forehead or hand?) not an invisble chip inserted into the back of the arm or shoulder.

With that said, I should probably point out that I'm not exactly running out to have an RFID tag implanted in my arm. I do think there is merit in the argument that I should be able to turn the tag on and off or shield it in some way to disable it for privacy. Also, with such a fast changing technology I would be worried that any tag in the near future might become obsolete and need to be replaced. Also, Ms. Albrecht failed to mention the most obvious way of stealing the tag, either removing it (which might be thwarted by some sort of heat sensor in the tag itself), or kidnapping me and standing me close to the reader. In much the same way that more advanced alarm systems may have led to carjacking, an implanted ID could lead to "bodyjacking." The application described in the article, identifying victims of catastrophes, does seem like a suitable application for an embedded chip, but statistically only a tiny percentage of us are likely to die in that manner, and by definition we can't know which of us will be effected ahead of time. For now, I'll stick with an tag on a keychain.

Former Us Official "Chipped"

Former Bush official to get RFID tag | CNET News.com

Tommy Thompson, the Health and Human Services Secretary in President Bush's first term and a former Governor of Wisconsin, is going to get tagged.

Thompson has joined the board of Applied Digital, which owns VeriChip, the company that specializes in subcutaneous RFID tags for humans and pets.

To help promote the concepts behind the technology, Thompson himself will get an RFID tag implanted under his skin.

VeriChip is pushing the term "chipped" for implantation of an RFID tag in a human. I've still only heard the term used in articles about VeriChip so far though.

Grocery Chain Adds Biometric Payment Systems

Piggly Wiggly Finds the Right Touch

Piggly Wiggly, the inventors of the modern supermarket are deploying a new thumbprint payment system in their stores nationwide. While not strictly RFID news, this is still one of the key supporting technologies for the "checker-less" supermarket we've all been talking about.

Under Farrell's recommendation, Piggly Wiggly launched a pilot program to test Pay By Touch in a small group of stores last fall. The test run went so well it was quickly expanded to a companywide rollout.

Shoppers who signed up for the new payment system were able to open accounts that linked either to credit card accounts or to checking accounts. They could link all Pay By Touch transactions to their store loyalty cards as well, so they could get credit for shopping at Piggly Wiggly without having to carry the loyalty card.

Symbol Sues Intermec

Patent Fight Pits Former Wireless, RFID Partners

Intermec which has recently been criticized for threatenting to require royalties for IP included as part of the EPC Gen 2 standard, has, in turn, been sued by former partner Symbol technology for using Symbol's IP.

"Symbol believes that Intermec's imposition of its RFID IP on the industry is potentially harmful to the industry and customers," Symbol senior vice president and general counsel Peter Lieb said in a statement.

Analysts say they don't think the two companies will risk stalling the entire RFID industry while they sort things out. If they don't wise-up soon, my money's on China.

RFID World

The message at RFID World in Dallas is that things seem to be coming together in RFID. According to Bryan Tracey, Chief Architect of Globe Ranger, the Application Level Event (ALE) specification is due for ratification in "about two weeks." ALE provides a nice way of separating the application from any sensor hardware or deployment considerations. More on ALE later, but this is probably the most important spec to read for anyone who will actually be writing an RFID application.

Also interesting was a presentation by Michael Denning, Sr. Product Manager for Verisign's EPC Services. He described a federated discovery service to back the Object Naming Service (ONS) which would overcome ONS limitations.

ONS is a way of tying the number on an RFID tag to the EPC Information Service which has all of the information about that tag. Think of the EPC number like a hostname and ONS like DNS. When you give a hostname to DNS it gives you an IP address. When you give an EPC to ONS it gives you the address of an EPCIS server. The problem is that ONS can only return a local EPCIS or the original EPCIS (often the manufacturer of the item). If a wholesaler or a trucking company had the item in between, ONS has no way of giving you their EPCIS addresses. That's a big problem for track and trace applications.

The new Federated Discovery service which Verisign, as a member of EPC, is pushing to add to a future ONS standard would provide a much more flexible naming service, capable of returning any number of intermediary EPCIS servers.

An anonymous source also hinted that Verisign will be revealing an XML certificates compatible with WS 1.0 including the Liberty Alliance. This will mean being able to sign XML documents using appropriate certificates issued by Verisign and also being able to sign portions of XML documents. That could make non-repudiation and digital signatures much easier to manage, and allow for more secure transmission of information between trading partners including RFID information.

The exhibition floor is full of integrators at this conference with fewer physics demos and more about tying together complete solutions. Tag and ship stations were all the rage this year with packages from SIS Technologies and Sun and probably more that I missed on display. SIS especially had a slick demo with voice prompts and industrial enclosures. Their Mustang unit is a Linux box in a flat enclosure which can concentrate reads from up to 32 readers and can do arbitrarily complex processing.

Disclaimer: I work for Sun, and SIS Technologies is a partner of Sun (but then, who isn't?)

Now that's a use of RFID I hadn't thought of!

Slashdot | RFID Dart gun = DartMail!

breon.halling writes "Snail mail? Too slow. Email? Too much spam. So what's left? DartMail! Tony Tang and Eric Pattison from the University of Calgary introduce a new (well, new as of January 2003) method of transferring files and possibly shooting your eye out. Using RFID and a toy dart gun, 'DartMail lets people physically shoot electronic information at others.' Be sure to check out the movie, too!"

Another Casino RFID Story

Vegas casino bets on RFID | CNET News.com

Looks like RFID is drawing more and more interest from casinos.

The fancy new chips look just like regular ones, only they contain radio devices that signal secret serial numbers. Special equipment linked to the casino's computer systems and placed throughout the property will identify legitimate chips and detect fakes, said Rick Doptis, vice president of table games for the Wynn.

The article mentiones the Gaming Partners International, Safechip which uses a custom 256-bit (IC) chip from Phillips called the "Vegas S" chip, according to the product sheets. This sounds like and adaptation of the Hitag S passive chip with anti-collision. Interestingly, these are LF tags (100-150kHz in this case). As you may know from other stories, the Wal*Mart and DOD requirements are pushing other industries in the direction of UHF, 900 Mhz chips.

Tracking Lab Samples

the information quoted in this entry and the link to the original source have been removed due to a take-down notice.

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An interesting press release on new technology for tracking lab samples.

Content removed at request of Using RFID Legal Counsel

Imagine what a system like this could do for reducing human errors in lab tests by automating sample tracking.

RFID may face more, serious legal challenges

Supply & Demand Chain Executive > Research > Archived Articles > Purveyors of RFID Face Regulatory, Privacy Concerns

Ronald Quirk, Jr. and Stacia Borrello have written a white paper, "RFID: Rapid Deployment and Regulatory Challenges," identifying serious regulatory issues that, if ignored, could impede implementation of even the most carefully designed RFID systems.

Just more proof that where technology leads, regulators will follow... bearing torches.

RFID tags for students in the US

Boston.com / Business / Technology / Parents protest student computer ID tags

SUTTER, Calif. -- The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children's privacy.
The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. Similar devices have recently been used to monitor youngsters in some parts of Japan.

I blogged the story from Japan here earlier.

I'll be at RFID World, Dallas

I'll be at RFID World March 1st through 5th. I'm not speaking this time, but I'm looking forward to the exhibitiion floor. If you take one of the tours to the Sun test center, I may see you out there as well.

Second Day of the EPCglobal Conference

I've noticed that the latest printed material from EPCglobal spells the name with a small "g." I will do the same. Today was dense, so there's plenty to report. I've just summarised my notes here with no real attempt at commentary (and limited proofreading).

My interest picked up especially in the "Industry Perspectives and Commitments" session. When the discussion turned to what it will take to make RFID adoption more widespread, David B. Meany, Cisco, talked about the "Tornado of Obsolescence" which surrounds this technology until standards mature. He pointed to the EPCglobal UHF Gen 2 as an important milestone in the former and current development projects for middleware as eventually resolving this. Also on the topic of standards the question of competing standards from ISO and China, with David Kirkpatrick, senior editor FORTUNE magazine, making the observation that "Global companies are more influential than governments." To which Kenneth D. Porad, Boeing, replied, "Standards are built by concensus and imposed by trading partners." Alan Estevez, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, added that he thought Wal*Mart will drive suppliers in China to compliance with EPC, and these suppliers will in turn pressure the Chinese government to support the same standards. The next topic was the increase in data volume driven by so much new acquisition of tracking, tracing and pedigree information for so many items. Meany pointed to the value of filtering software but noted the lack of middleware with smart, predictive algorithms for managing data flow and supporting decisions in the field. Estevez announced that the data volume issues were "overblown." Paul Rudolph, FDA, countered this by describing some of the new regulatory data retention requirements around drug and food product pedigrees and anti-counterfeiting measures for pharmaceuticals. Lastly, the discussion turned to privacy and security issues where John Raudabaugh, VP Albertsons, observed that people already give up privacy for RFID where it benefits them, as in the case of toll tags, and cell phones. He acknowledged concerns around privacy, especially among drug consumers but pointed to improved safety as a result customers value. Estevez announced that the public fears concerning privacy and security were "overblown" and that in his area (Defense Logistics) privacy wasn't a concern.

In the next session "EPCglobal Network: Demonstrating the Future," Simon Langford of Wal*Mart and Jack Grasso of EPCglobal acted out a multimedia skit with the help of others telling the story of a misplaced carton of Gillette Venus razors, as Dick Catwell of Gillette, and Linda Dillman (videotaped) added details along with supporting commentary on video tape from IBM, Sun, Tibco and Verisign. Steve David of Proctor and Gamble then walked through an impressive live demo of a new product launch where stocking levels were not optimal on the sales floor and software allowed the supplier to spot the problem and gently remind the retailer of gaps in stock levels via email.

"The Analysts Roundtable: The Play and the Players" brought together Phillip Alling of Bear, Sterns & Co. Inc., Sarah Friar of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Reik Read of Robert W. Baird Co. with Andrew Ratner of The Baltimore Sun as the moderator. Each of the analysts gave their overview of the current position of RFID and then answered questions. The overviews agreed that the technology was warming up among private investors, though there was little public investment opportunity yet. They predicted continued slow adoption and minimal expenditure until standards mature. Friar mentioned that mentioning that RFID was "the easiest way to get on a CIO's agenda." Friar also said that RFID would have to live within the technology spending cycle, which is still subdued. Read warned that suppliers would likely meet mandated requirements but would do so with minimal expenditure, with "slap and ship" solutions. Alling pointed to encouragingly rapid innovation in Antenna designs and software which could overcome some of the existing technology hurdles such as tagging metals a containers of liquid. Friar warned that companies will have to overcome "slap and ship compliance" and find their own ROI. Fiar also said that drivers in the near term would be compliance but in the long term, ROI, security and safety would be powerful drivers.

The "Pilot Findings Unveiled: The Validation & The Happy Accidents" presentation provided a tour through pilot results for Traxus, Campbell Soup Company and IP Smart Packaging (a division of International Paper). Louis Sirico of Traxus reminded suppliers that their distribution center was different from the retailer's store, but the tags selected for supply chain management had to work in both places. Equipment, environment and especially processes differ enough to require careful testing in both locations. Especially important is that the retailer use the same or compatible antennas and readers. Issues such as antenna polarity can go unnoticed unless they are addressed specifically in testing. He also emphasized, as did all of the other presenters in this session, the importance of carefully targetted pilots with clear goals.

Mark Engle of Cambell Soup Company described their pilot for a product which he characterized as the worst possible RFID candidate, "a low margin, high value, liquid in a metal container." They wanted to know if such a product could work at all, they also wanted to test end-to-end with as little impact to the production systems as possible. In order to address consumer privacy concerns, the pilot cases selected were not cases which would be taken home by the consumer. Their results indicated that there was no current positive ROI for RFID in their case, but they saw great improvements in the technology over the time of the pilot and will be implementing RFID for compliance.

Jack DeAlmo of CVS talked about their pilot as part of Jumpstart, a cooperative set of pilots and information sharing among healthcare companies. Their goal was not to prove the technology but to validate process surrounding RFID for individual items. Again privacy was a serious concern so tagging was done on packages which would not be used by end consumers with the exception of one SKU which might possibly go home with a pharmacy customer. This bottle was tagged with a very visible tag which the customer could easily remove manually. The tag was deactivated at purchase as well. The pilot proved that individual item tracking was possible, that pedigree tracing and tracking requirements could be met, but again a positive ROI was not indicated by the pilot. Some potential benefit in improved efficiencies, especially in recalls and expiration management would not have appeared in the pilot and might lead to substantial ROI over time. The pilot used HF rather than UHF since UHF read ranges are too large for individual item tracking and HF is less suceptible to packaging issues.

Michael H. Anderson of IP Smart Packaging described three pilots, the first tracked paper rolls in conditions where barcodes had previously proven unacceptable. The second pallet proved out a system for intelligent order fullfillment using a reader on a smart pallet jack. The third pilot tested tagging on a Folder and Gluer machine in a very rugged environment. In each case problems arose and mistakes were made. Anderson encouraged attendees to see mistakes in pilots as inevitable and valuable as sources of information and improvement. He described work with vendors for tag printers/encoders and readers which led to improved products more suited to their needs. He pointed out an intersting scenario with cartons on mixed pallets where because of label printing requirements scanning with a barcode was actually faster and preferable to RFID. Only an actual pilot could have turned up such a non-intuitive discovery.

For my second session of the day I skipped out of "Track Two - Pilot to Implementation" and attended a "Track Three - Implementation & Beyond" session. This session was "The Global Perspective." EPCglobal representatives from Canada, Brasil, Singapore and the UK described pilots and educational initiatives in their countries and region with some interesting highlights. Each ECPglobal national organization tries to avoid duplicating research efforts already undertaken by other EPCglobal organizations, so Art Smith of ECCC explained that in Canada the focus of pilots have been on produce and fresh foods tracking with an emphasis on traceability and tracking for pedigree compliance.

In Brasil, Mexico and Columbia which represent 85% of the GDP of Latin America, Sergio Ribinik, the CEO of EAN Brasil, explained how the EPC organization is working to drive adoption and to educate and support early adoptors with training classes, conferences and a support call center which accepts almost 20,000 phone calls per month. Recently, the largest supermarket chain in Brasil announced a plan to require RFID from it's 8,000 suppliers.

For the UK, John Clarke of Tesco Stores Ltd. has focused pilots around secure supply chains and supplier case level tagging. Tesco's approach in contrast to Wal*Mart has been an offer to find common value with suppliers rather than a mandate for RFID. Clarke believes that solving the issues around European adoption of EPC could potential solve all of the same issues in adoption which will arise globally. Interestingly, Tesco does not use the term "RFID." The prefered term is "radio barcode."

Tan Jin Soon of SANC/ECR Singapore described RFID animal tracking using EPC in the valuable and nearly extinct Arowan fish, and reminded the audiance that Singapore was the first nation to have an RFID based traffic volume management system and to completely EPC enable the public library system. If the current project to add EPCglobal network support on top of this existing system is live by 2005 it will be the first production EPCglobal network in the world.

There's more detail, but it's late and I'm tired. :)
more later.

First Day of EPCGlobalUS 2004

Today kicked off the EPCGlobal U.S. conference at the convention center in Baltimore, with EPC Essentials Day. Most of the afternoon devoted to the history and basics of RFID. After the first couple of sessions, there was a quick hands-on demo where we looked at some different types of tags, and we were given cute notepads made to look like pallets, each adorned with a decal of a Pringle's can and an Alien Class 1 EPC tag. We moved from booth to booth scanning the "pallet" at a mock manufacturer, distributor and retailer.

The last session was the most interesting for me when Milan Turk of P&G, Ian Robertson of HP and Jamshed Dubash of Gillette each shared lessons learned from their pilot efforts. The general consensus was that tag yields (tags that work after being written once) and tag longevity were still too poor for production systems but that they had improved greatly in the last year, with improvements as large as 20% failure dropping to 1%.

The best insight from Turk was that pilots should be focused on answering specific questions and all pilots should be "Run in the conference room first." He even suggested video taping the environment where the deployment will take place to spot unexpected things like personnel movement or potential reflective surfaces.

Some of the best insights from Roberts were that every implementation is different, even if the buildings seem to be identical, and that an RFID implementation had to be open to making mistakes and learning from them because the variables are so complex. He also made a point that association (recognizing a whole wrapped pallet by reading any carton on it) was an effective and desirable approach rather than trying for full-pallet reads and emphasized finding reader vendors who have on-site support everywhere the technology will be deployed.

Dubash made a point of saying that, in his opinion, read rates of 100% were possible in production conditions for individual cases on a conveyor, but reliable full-pallet reads of products were beyond the current technology and probably would be for some time due to factors like reflective packaging and mixed pallets. He argued that business processes should focus on 100% data verification as opposed to 100% read rates.

All of these presentations and the ones from the sessions over the week are supposed to be posted at the link below Friday, October 8.
(More Tomorrow)
Conference Presentations

I'll Be Blogging the EPCGlobal US Conference

I'll be attending the EPCGlobal US Conference next week. EPCGlobal inc. is a not-for-profit organization that is developing standards for the Electronic Product Code (EPC). This is the code that will be used along with Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) to track individual items in stores and warehouses and possibly even in our homes.
The organizers bill it as:

The EPCglobal US Conference 2004, being held September 28 - 30, 2004 in Baltimore, MD, is the Real Source for information on EPC and RFID technologies.

EPCglobal US: Summary

Electronic Child Management in Japan

According to the "Undernews" who in turn link to a CNET article Japanese schools are beginning to use Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags to track children. Ironically, I'm one of the people who helped in a small way to develop systems to track cattle in the same way. The cattle wear the tags in their ear usually, maybe the kids will come to enjoy new RFID earrings? Maybe noserings? But according to CNET Asia the current practice is a little less intrusive.

"The chips will be put onto kids' schoolbags, name tags or clothing in one Wakayama prefecture school. Denmark's Legoland introduced a similar scheme last month to stop young children going astray.

UNDERNEWS: JAPANESE SCHOOL CHILDREN TO BE TAGGED LIKE CATTLE