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RFID-manufacturer Alien Technology announced this week it has created new software for its tag readers. The software provides information on the velocity and position of tags, and can thereby distinguish between adjacent tagged objects such as luggage.

Not being able to distinguish between two tagged objects has been a big headache for the airline business. On one hand, RFID readers save labor because the tags don't need to be aligned with the reader. On the other hand, a device might read several tags at the same time, without knowing which specific piece of luggage the tags are tied to.

"Today people use shielding materials. Sometimes they even have to separate the distance between the bags," said Scot Stelter, director of product marketing at Alien. "By these measures, the capital cost of the whole system goes up."

The new software will be able to discriminate between different bags, and provide such information as where the bag is going and whether a certain piece of luggage is supposed to be searched by Customs.

Alien's new software, a free update available for the models ALR-9900, ALR-9800, and ALR-8800, also has a flexible reader distance, ranging from just millimeters to 100 feet.

"You can also use it in the military," Stelter said. Helicopters picking up cargo can use a reader to locate the load, an often arduous task when visibility is poor. The reader distances have increased fivefold during the last five years, according to the company.

The spread of RFID technology has raised concerns about privacy. But Alien Technology says such fears are baseless. "The information on an RFID tag is tied to a database associated to an inventory," said Ronny Haraldsvik, vice president of marketing. He draws the parallel to license plates on cars.

"As you drive on the road every day, you see a license plate on every car. But you can't know the info tied to that plate unless you call up a register," he said. The register in the case of RFID technology is a database often tied to a business, such as a retailer for example, and not publicly available. All the information a random reader can tell you is whether there are RFID tags in the vicinity. The information stored in the tags, however, is concealed, according to the company.

Alien will demonstrate its new software, along with its novel Alien Technology H3 integrated circuit for tags, at the RFID Journal Live conference in Las Vegas next week.

Know how many bags get lost at airports? Last year, the number hit a staggering 34 million globally, according to numbers from international transport association IATA.

This cost the aviation industry $3.6 billion. One way to reduce the amount of mishandled luggage could be to switch from today's widespread bar-code tagging system to more sensitive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. The IATA estimates that $200 million could be saved each year by such a swap at the world's top 80 airports.

That is exactly what RFID manufacturers like Alien Technology are dreaming about. With updated chip technology announced Monday, the Morgan Hill, Calif.-based company is targeting the aviation and pharmaceutical industries. But it will take a while before we see the tags in chewing gum packages and soda cans.

(Credit: Alien Technology)

Alien says its new H3 integrated circuit (a more advanced version of the H2) boasts heightened reader sensitivity and improved security features, making it possible for third parties to read the tag's data, but not to change it. This could prove a blow to the counterfeit drug industry if the technology gets widely adopted. Currently, counterfeit drugs trade to the tune of $75 billion per year, according to the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition, a nonprofit based in Washington D.C.

Alien, of course, hopes its tags can prevent other types of counterfeit trade, as well. According to IACC estimates, 5 percent to 7 percent of the world trade is counterfeit, accounting to $600 billion.

The reader sensitivity of the H3 chip is up 25 percent from the H2, which is already 25 percent above other tags on the market, according to Alien. The H3 is expected to hit the market by July.

RFID tags are read using radio waves. Some can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader. They are used in passports, and can also help, for instance, to track runners during a race.

Last year the number of ultra-high-frequency RFID tags sold doubled to 370 million, and the total market for RFID products is expected to reach $4.5 billion by 2010.

Wal-Mart, a customer of Alien's, says it aims to switch from bar codes to RFID technology in its Sam's Club stores. One third of Wal-Mart stores in the U.S have already adapted to the technology to various degrees, as have the retail giant's 600 top suppliers.

These RFID numbers are still small though, compared with the bar-code market. Last year, 10 trillion bar-code products were sold, according to Alien.

Wal-Mart doesn't view RFID technology as a competitor to bar codes, but as a successor. "The capability of the RFID technology far exceeds what a bar code can do," said Wal-Mart's John Simley, vice president of communication.

RFID tags can store more information than bar codes, and are less labor-intensive, since they don't require the reader to be aligned with the tag. But so far, the tags have been too costly for a wider adoption. Since 2005, however, the prices have fallen by 70 percent, Alien says. Today, a reader typically costs $500 to $3,500, and the tags are 10 cents to 15 cents.

"Our tags are no longer about the supply chain," said Ronny Haraldsvik, vice president of marketing at Alien. "Last year, RFID shifted to being used for tracking computers, printers, and wine."

Among other applications, Alien says the H3 could be well-suited for the ePedigree, an electronic document with information on a product and its order that's used for drug authentication. It goes with the drug and tracks the change of custody as the medicine passes through the supply chain.

"The RFID technology ensures that you have products on the shelf when and where the customers want them," said Simley of Wal-Mart. "It enables us to lower cost. And then there's the whole sustainability benefit: the technology eliminates wasted energy, such as when trucks and ships are not fully loaded. It is reducing waste, cost, and prices."

Radio frequency identification, a technology that allows identification of objects using radio waves, hasn't exactly been a failure. The Wikipedia article on RFID lists all manner of examples of RFID use, ranging from the whimsical to the more substantive. And early proponents of RFID, such as Wal-Mart and the U.S. Department of Defense, have moved ahead with large-scale RFID deployments affecting both themselves and their suppliers--albeit at a slower pace and in a more limited way than originally envisioned.

Still, if you contrast the selective use of RFID to the ubiquity of barcodes, the contrast is striking. It's arguably just a normal technology adoption curve--"valley of despair" and all that--but that doesn't make it any less disappointing for its proponents. In general, at least from the supply chain angle, RFID is so far mostly focused on goods that are either high-value individually (such as parts for Boeing's 787 Dreamliner) or in aggregate (such as full pallets of less expensive items).

Thus it was with both interest and some amusement that I discovered Alta in Utah (where I'm skiing this week) now using RFID for its lift tickets, replacing the familiar sticky paper and metal "wicket" that are still the most familiar form of ticket to most skiers. You put this plastic RFID card in a jacket pocket (preferably away from credit cards and electronics) and a little gate swings open at the lift if you have a valid, paid ticket.

It's a nifty system. It's "hands-off," so there's no need to stick a card with a magnetic strip into a reader--a fairly common system at a variety of ski areas. They've also developed a system with a swing-out gate rather than an annoying turnstile. Furthermore, the card can be refilled online and can easily accommodate pricing schemes such as multi-day discounts within a given time period and the like. (Although the current scheme is fairly bare-bones.)

So why amusement? Well, this is perhaps one of the unlikeliest of ski areas to implement such a relatively cutting-edge technology. (Its use at a variety of ski areas mostly in France and Ski Dubai notwithstanding, it's still uncommon.) Because Alta is...Alta.

This is, after all, one of three ski areas in the U.S. that still doesn't allow snowboarding. The lodge where I'm staying was originally constructed by the WPA. The wife of a Dartmouth friend of mine describes an Alta ski vacation as something akin to "boot camp." It doesn't require quite as much traversing (aka climbing) to get from lift to lift as it did in past years, and the Alta Ski Lifts Company has upgraded some lifts here and there. Still, it's perhaps seen less change than any other American ski resort of comparable stature in the past decades.

On the one hand, this sort of change reflects just how accessible computer technology has become. It almost goes without saying (although a couple of longtime lodge guests were a little bit surprised) that I'm sitting here typing this via a Wi-Fi connection. However, it's also a reminder that change--even when generally positive--can have its downsides as well, even if they're small. As this article about the new Alta Cards notes: (See the article for a picture of the old ticket.)

While much will be gained in the way of comforts and convenience, with the phasing out of the conventional passes, Altaholics will unfortunately have to say goodbye to one of the mountain's richer traditions: the personalized messages printed below that classic Alta-red banner on the tickets, denoting various "special days" celebrated at Alta.

"We're going to feel a sense of loss and change, not only those within the company, but our guests, too," (Connie Marshall, Alta's director of sales and public relations) says. "A vestige of personalization at Alta, people would even call ahead to request this service."

A team of respected security researchers known for their work hacking RFID radio chips have turned their attention to pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators.

The researchers will present their paper, "Pacemakers and Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators: Software Radio Attacks and Zero-Power Defenses," during the "Attacks" session of the 2008 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, one of the most prestigious conferences for the computer security field.

The authors of the paper are listed as: Shane S. Clark, Benessa Defend, Daniel Halperin, Thomas S. Heydt-Benjamin, Will Morgan, Benjamin Ransford, Kevin Fu, Tadayoshi Kohno, William H. Maisel.

Kevin Fu, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, along with two graduate students who worked on the project all gained significant attention for their past work in attacking RFID-based credit cards and RFID (radio frequency identification) transit payment tokens.

Kohno, a professor at the University of Washington, was the subject of worldwide media coverage for his work in exposing flaws in Diebold voting machines back in 2003, and then later for finding major privacy flaws in the RFID-based Nike+iPod Sport Kit.

Shocking stuff

When contacted by e-mail, Kohno told me that he and his colleagues could not currently comment on their latest project. Without the help of the authors, it is difficult to predict the contents of their research paper. However, it is possible to piece together other bits of information to try to learn more about the project.

A previous research paper published by the same team noted that over 250,000 implantable cardiac defibrillators are installed in patients each year. An increasingly large percentage of these can be remotely controlled and monitored by specialized wireless devices in the patient's home. The devices can be accessed at ranges of up to 5 meters.

By reading between the lines (millions of remotely implanted medical devices, able to administer electrical shocks to the heart, can be controlled remotely from distances up to 5 feet, designed by people who know nothing about security), it is easy to predict the gigantic media storm that this paper will cause when the full details (and a YouTube video of a demo, no doubt) are made public.

Just remember where you saw it first.

Behind the scenes, Wal-Mart and Target use radio-frequency identification tracking systems to help them keep their shelves stocked, but that method could face new complications if an ongoing patent lawsuit doesn't go their way.

The suit, filed back in August 2006, accuses the megaretailers and Gillette of infringing on a U.S. patent covering an "inventory control system" that employs radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to track the presence or absence of items and keep them from colliding. The patent belongs to a Houston man named Ronald Bormaster, who assigned it to Houston-based RFID World, which does not appear to be using the system commercially, just before the suit was filed in 2006, according to court papers.

Many months later, the case is still wending its way through a U.S. court in a Texas district with a reputation for sympathy to patent holders. A preliminary court order issued last week appears to bode well for RFID World, but the final outcome of the case isn't so clear. The targets of the lawsuit have asked for the case to be thrown out, arguing they didn't violate the patent and that the patent isn't valid in the first place.

A legal setback for the retailers could be significant. Embedding RFID tags in palettes of merchandise or on individual products has become an increasingly popular way for large retailers to keep track of their wares more efficiently. If that method is interrupted by patent warring, customers may experience visible inconveniences in their big-box shopping runs. A 2005 University of Arkansas study found, for instance, that Wal-Mart stores replenished out-of-stock items bearing RFID labels three times more quickly than those with standard bar codes.

It wouldn't be the first time that a flap over RFID patents has potentially snarled widespread use of the technology. Back in 2004, some adopters of the technology feared a newly approved RFID standard would incorporate patented techniques from RFID equipment maker Intermac, which would have required companies that used such wireless tracking systems to pay new royalty fees. Much to the relief of big RFID users like Texas Instruments and Philips Semiconductor, the new standard ultimately didn't produce that result.

The latest court order in the RFID World suit relates to a key part of any patent lawsuit: the "claim construction" stage, in which the judge mediating the dispute hears each side's interpretations of certain terms used in the language of the patent and then reconciles those often-competing definitions. The judge's conclusions are then used to guide a jury in deciding the all-important question of whether the patent was infringed.

In a February 11 order, U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis sided with RFID World's definitions of many of the key terms in the patent claims and declined to refine other term definitions as the retailers had requested. That could be a bad sign for Wal-Mart, Target, and Gillette going forward.

On the other hand, the minutiae of the patent claim wording could ultimately matter little. After all, some portions of RFID World's complaint have already been resolved outside of court. The complaint originally targeted Michelin North America, Home Depot, and Pfizer as well, but those companies and RFID World resolved their disputes and requested that the claims be dropped, although few details are available on why.

Wal-Mart, Target, and Gillette continue to deny the infringement accusations and argue that RFID World's patent should be declared invalid because it is obvious, not novel, and obtained through improper procedures. They're currently awaiting a ruling on a request earlier this year to dismiss the entire case. Barring all else, a final pretrial conference has tentatively been set for August.

Robby is the happier one of the two.

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)

MORGAN HILL, Calif.--What do you do if your company has raised $291 million in venture funds and you're still waiting for your market to take off?

You buy replica robots that starred in movies from the 1950s.

At least that's what Alien Technology, based here, did. The company's previous CEO bought these two gems, which sit in the headquarters lobby. (The company is currently headed up by Fujitsu and Apple alum George Everhart.)

Ringo was underrated, says Gort.

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)

The roundish one, that looks like Bib the Michelin Man wearing a hat that pipes beer from two cans into your mouth, is Robby the Robot. He had a supporting role in Forbidden Planet, loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Later, he became a cult figure, landed a few more acting gigs, and settled down into the autograph circuit before being replicated. You can turn him on and he goes through a light show of sorts.

The smooth one, meanwhile, is Gort. In The Day the Earth Stood Still, he came down to our planet to incinerate people because we couldn't live in peace. In the '70s, he appeared on an album cover with Ringo Starr. The 1970s-- it was a turbulent time in America.

Remember a few years ago how Wal-Mart and other companies slapped mandates on their suppliers and told them that they'd have to begin to put standardized RFID (radio frequency identification) tags on stuff coming into the warehouse or else?

Still life with Alien RFID tag and finger.

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)

The idea was that the tags would let retailers and distributors track all of the products coming from various suppliers through a single, large database. Warehouse managers loved the idea because it simplified their jobs, but privacy advocates warned of Minority Report scenarios where corporations tracked your spending habits. Tagging would start with pallets, they noted, but move to individual products. (How come privacy advocates never make analogies to other Spielberg movies like The Color Purple or Hook? That's a story for another time.)

Well, the plans for an RFID planet are taking longer than expected, according to Scot Stelter, director of product marketing at Alien Technology, one of the old-guard companies in RFID. Instead, companies are mostly installing self-contained "closed loop" RFID deployments.

Some pharmaceutical companies, for instance, are putting tags into their products to guard against counterfeiting. Hospitals use tags to make it easier for orderlies and nurses to find equipment. Retail stores that mostly specialize in selling their own brands (Banana Republic) like it for checking inventory.

The mandates aren't completely dead. Wal-Mart is going to start charging fees to companies that ship non-tagged pallets of products to its Sam's Club stores, but it hasn't really cracked down on those not complying at the company's main Wal-Mart chain.

Why the switch? It's easier. Both the tagger and the ultimate party that needs to read information off of the tag are the same person. In turn, this makes the investment in RFID easier to justify. Procter & Gamble, after all, wouldn't have benefitted from the Wal-Mart mandates as much as Wal-Mart. Open systems also create technical complexity.

"The mandates accelerated the investment phase and tag development, but some of the early assumptions were off," Stelter said. "The mandates were more of a U.S. issue. Europe was looking at more closed-loop applications."

RFID tags, he added, tend to work best, from an operation standpoint, when you have high-value products, a lot of different models, and a high inventory turnover rate. Jeans are ideal. They can cost a lot. There are lots of different sizes and models, and inventory moves quick. If they are out of 32 x 32 in boot cut, a sales clerk with an RFID reader can find it in the stockroom.

What if Target is out of Crest Natural Mint with Tartar control? The customer just buys Colgate with a whiff of lemon.

WASHINGTON--We already know that some aging politicians and bureaucrats are prone to less-than-coherent ramblings about the technological topics that fall within their job descriptions (See: Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, former chairman of the panel overseeing Internet regulation, "The Internet is a series of tubes," July 2006).

You can imagine what goes through their minds: I really need to show the public that I get it. The only problem is that it doesn't always work.

Take an event held Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a storied pro-business lobbying group. It was called "RFID Solutions: Securing the Commerce of Tomorrow." Representatives from government agencies, foreign embassies and RFID (that's radio frequency identification) vendors--some of whom were sponsors--came to listen to panels that lauded the benefits of using the track-and-trace chips in everything from pharmaceutical shipments to international relief.

W. Ralph Basham, CBP Commissioner

(Credit: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

Fast-forward to lunch and the chicken cordon bleu. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham took the podium. Basham, a former Secret Service chief, launched into a speech about how his agency is the only one he's aware of to use RFID chips "operationally"--that is, they're not just used for building security or employee identification cards, as several other federal agencies do.

Basham boasted that they're currently embedded in "trusted traveler" cards carried by some 325,000 commercial truck drivers and frequent border-crossing commuters.

But before he even began his speech, he treated the audience to this witticism: "I probably couldn't tell you the difference between an RFID chip and a potato chip."

I wondered at first whether I had misheard him. After all, this was the same guy who went on to boast about how tech-enabled his agency is. But after his speech, he did it again. After agreeing to take a few questions from the audience, he reminded the packed ballroom not to ask him anything about chips--oh, "unless it's potato chips," of course.

During his talk, he described each of the RFID-chipped identification programs and sought to dismiss the need for privacy worries about the tactic. That's because the chips don't store any "personal information," Basham said--just a unique identifying number that's read from a distance by a border patrol agent's reader and transmitted through the air. He said such "vicinity"-read ID cards were a proven means of vetting people at the borders and had been used in trusted traveler cards since 1995.

"We are tagging a number, not a human being," he said. Referring to the Canadian and Mexican border-crossing cards, as well as the program for commercial truck drivers, he added: "SENTRI, NEXUS and FAST members do not have to worry about their personal ID or identity being stolen."

The only thing missing, I guess, was Basham proudly sharing with the audience that he couldn't figure out how to get rid of the blinking "12:00" on his VCR.

WASHINGTON--Embedding electronic tags in containers of food and supplies--and even in workers' identification documents--will "revolutionize" the way the United Nations doles out relief in the aftermath of the next tsunami, civil war or disease outbreak, a senior organization official said Wednesday.

David Nabarro, U.N.'s bird flu coordinator

(Credit: United Nations)

When U.N. workers descend on distressed locales, they often encounter logjams at airport tarmacs and confusion over what exactly is in this or that box, said David Nabarro, who's chiefly in charge of coordinating responses to bird and human influenza for the U.N. Development Group.

Nabarro said he envisions his organization one day going the way of the military and companies like Wal-Mart, using radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to track and trace those critical goods.

And ideally, even smarter chips could be used to send out signals that indicate what's happening inside a container--for instance, whether a box has been tampered with, knocked around in transit or subjected to high temperatures that could make food go sour.

"Effective RFI tracking and good inventory management software would make a huge difference in our ability to deal with relief (operations)," Nabarro told a group of U.S. bureaucrats and company representatives at an RFID event hosted here by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (A number of companies, including SAP America, that sell RFID-related products, sponsored the event, so not surprisingly, it emitted a decidedly pro-RFID aura.)

The advent of RFID-laced passports and other travel documents could also provide U.N. managers with a way to track staffers and other key non-U.N. personnel helping out on the scene, "particularly if they are sick and incapacitated," Nabarro added. (It wasn't exactly clear how this would work in practice, however, since RFID chips tend to have a finite zone in which they can be read remotely.)

Still, there are a number of obstacles to carrying out such a plan, Nabarro said. Because relief operations often occur in "worse than unspeakable" conditions (read: poor communications networks, nowhere to sleep or get food and nowhere to keep items cold or dry), it's risky to rely on anything that requires electricity, computers, dry conditions or clean air, he said. And in the case of a flu outbreak or other incident that puts lots of personnel out of commission, the systems must not be burdensome to use.

That means whatever RFID chips and readers are selected must be "incredibly robust" and simply designed. Oh, and inexpensive, of course.

"What I'm looking for," Nabarro told the audience, perhaps only half-joking, "is someone who can come and offer to us at exceedingly low cost...10,000 RFID tags and 100 scanners."