Issue #145 | May. 9, 2008 | by Andy Kowl
Do you have any RFID tags you’ve from purchased from DAG, the French, HF equipment manufacturer and “sports specialist?” Then now is your chance to do something, that DAG says, is:
- Good for the environment
- Good for you
- Good for children
All you need to do is recycle those used DAG tags, by sending them to the company, and not only do you get 1 euro for each you turn in, and UNICEF gets 1 euro, too!
I’m not sure if there is a deadline on that; but when I just looked at DAG’s website to see what kind of tags they sold, they sure go my attention. “Funny tags.” If my friend Nicolas Jaubert is reading this, you must send me a note and tell me about these tags. For now all I shall say is, “Wow.” Take a look.
This has always been one of the best things about being an editor. You never know what you get in your mail box. I’m going to run though some I found interesting.
It is always good to get an international perspective. We heard from Victor Pinza Casto, the sales manager for STECH, an Ecuadorian VAR working in logistics, banks, security, exports and other sectors, who reports, “The market for the implementation of RFID in our country has grown in large quantities.”
We received word from Catherine Burke that our friend Victor Vega, director of tag product marketing at Alien Technology, was awarded the Ted Williams Award by AIM Global. This is presented annually in recognition of an educator's and entrepreneur's innovative and exceptional contributions that further the growth of the industry.
Questions from the marketplace
Among the many questions we receive from current and future RFID end-users, a CPG company which has consumer products in major chains like CVS and Walgreens wondered, “We have a much expanded line of national brand equivalents and would like to re-approach Wal-Mart but feel we should also set up for their present RFID requirements. Who can help us, or should we approach Wal-Mart directly? We will need to end up with an equipment supplier eventually so which suppliers should we contact?”
In another, a California “bikeshare” program is “thinking about installing RFID in the bikes, and having some sort of system that recognizes when they leave the station and when they arrive.” Good idea.
Privacy and tracking children
On one side of the privacy issue, a woman writes, “I have a seven year old daughter. I have always been interested in and wanting to purchase some type of GPS tracking device for her . . . I have been doing research on RFID and I have been reading some rather controversial and negative comments, though it has not detoured (sic) me at all.
“I still believe it is a great idea to tag our children rather than have them missing or worse yet, molested and murdered. Can you give me any information you might deem important or link me to a site where I can the pros and cons of implanting the RFID or devices of that nature?”
The answer from this writer is, no, we do not keep track of such services and in fact I am personally against anyone tracking our children except maybe the parents themselves. That is a darn slippery slope that includes ubiquitously camera’d cities – famously including London and currently here in Washington, DC, where they are first tying together all public people-watching cameras into one control room.
From a commercial point of view, any move to tag children or people of any age, instituted by anyone other than that person her/himself, is a huge detriment to the growth of our industry, stoking well-founded public resentments.
Nonetheless, I was able to reach into my mailbag and send this mom a promotional email I received last week, too, for a Trackstick Personal GPS tracker which might allow her to conduct her own kiddie surveillance.
From the land of Count Dracula
Last for now, from this deep pile of email, I suppose I am showing my American provincialism in being titillated by an implementation Hi-G-Tek installed in both Romania and Bulgaria to provide automated visibility for an approximately 2,000-mile supply chain from depot to pump. Unattended, remote freestanding facilities in isolated areas of with above-ground tanks are secured with their electronic seals for client Rompetrol Group.
Benefits include an estimated 20% reduction of excess inventory; an expected 80% decline in fraud and a 25% decrease in rolling stock. Our erstwhile RFID Street columnist Erik Wood, Hi-G-Tek’s business development chief, tells me the seals are used on in-ground tanks at the gas stations, while the readers prevent product crossover and grade mixing by sounding an alarm to alert technicians of potential grade contamination. Hi-G-Locks work to secure container doors and provide automatic warnings of unauthorized tanker access.
“Keep those cards and letters coming in!”
