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 »
I love this idea. The New York Times reports that James Patten, a graduate student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, has come up with a digital tool that can scan the bar code printed on nearly any product, and indicate whether its corporate pedigree is blemished. The Corporate Fallout Detector “combines a… 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 »
It’s interesting to see how RFID — the technology behind product tagging that I’ve banged on about here before — enflames passions. News on ZDNET that chipmaker Texas Instruments has announced a wireless identity chip for clothing which can survive the dry cleaning process has unleashed dozens of comments, most of them about the potential… Read More »