A story from Reuters that says one of the biggest hurdles facing RFID tags — the widgets that store information about products — is that they still aren’t very good. “The tags fall far below the 99 percent reliability rate of UPC tags because of the difficulty of transmitting clean radio signals,” the piece says.… Read More »
Here’s an example of RFID — the intelligent radio tag technology — used without people’s permission to do something a tad scary. The Singapore Straits Times reports (no link available as yet) today that a local start up, Tunity Technologies, installed a tracking system using RFID that would pinpoint every delegate’s physical position at the… Read More »
A longish piece from Slate on our old friends RFIDs — Radio Frequency Identification Devices — which are feared and admired for their ability to hold all sorts of data about what you’re doing, buying, washing or eating. Earlier this month Hitachi announced the release of a tiny wireless ID chip that can be “easily… Read More »
In case you haven’t had enough of RFID tags — tiny devices to track everything from car tires to clothing — here’s a long, positive piece from CNET. RFID, they say, “is changing how retail businesses work and could generate billions of dollars in revenue for software makers.” RFID tags could also create “huge… Read More »
From the This Sounds Like A Good Thing, Or Are We Being Luddites? Dept comes news that privacy protests against the trial of RFID tags by Gillette at a Tesco store in Cambridge have prodded Gillette to abandon their trial, according to Indynews. RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags are small tags containing a microchip which… Read More »