Blog on RFID Technology and Application

Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), a consumer privacy group founded by Katherine Albrecht, has been quiet for the past few years.

As part of my ongoing efforts to highlight positive news coverage of radio frequency identification in the mainstream media, I would like to alert you to a piece recently run by ABC News.

Paul Prince, RFID Journal's executive editor, sent me a link to an interesting column by Leslie Hand, a retail analyst for IDC Community Insights. Hand was in retail before becoming an analyst, so she knows of what she speaks.

The popular Science Channel TV series How Do They Do It?, which explains such topics as how bridges are built and how items are manufactured, recently aired a segment regarding RFID. Perhaps this is another sign that the technology is finally starting to become mainstream.

For years, everyone in the radio frequency identification industry has been searching for the killer application for this exciting new technology. And there it was, all along, right under our noses... or perhaps I should say, knees: sorting socks!

As I sat at the Hilton Hotel bar on the opening night of last week's RFID Journal LIVE! 2014 conference, an exhibitor came up to me and said, "I can go home now. I got enough leads tonight to justify what we invested in the event. Great show. 

In a little less than two months, Reveal Labs, the start-up behind the Tile—a small Bluetooth tag about the size of a matchbox—raised more than $2. 6 million in pre-orders. At $18. 95 apiece, that means at least 141, 493 tags have been spoken for so far. One could argue that's pretty impressive.

The mainstream business press hasn't quite caught up with the reality that radio frequency identification technology has matured and is delivering benefits to companies in every industry and in every corner of the world.

There was an interesting article in The New York Times recently about how Microsoft's new CEO, Satya Nadella, decided to support a product in development called the HoloLens. Worn over a person's eyes, the HoloLens projects 3D images to augment reality.

In my opinion column this week, A Question of Life or Death for RFID Companies, I wrote that I often ask RFID providers, "Would you rather be in a room with 10 people who have expressed an interest in your product, or with 1, 000 people who have not? "

A British company developing a Near Field Communication ring and software has raised £65,000—more than double its original goal—on Kickstarter.

A new study conducted by the Centre for Retail Research, an independent research group in the United Kingdom, reports that retailers in the United States are expected to lose $8.9 billion during the 2012 holiday season (mid-November through Christmas) due to shoplifting, employee theft, and vendor or distribution losses. That figure is up 4 percent from last year.