Residents of Bogota, Colombia now get home from work to their families 75% faster -- all because the buses use RFID tags.

Bogota had a big traffic problem. Its 23,000 private transit buses frequently left the less populated streets and all converged on major thoroughfares to compete for the bulk of riders. The average daily commute time used to be an incredible four hours.

Then Bogota passed a law requiring buses to stick with assigned routes, which are monitored by RFID tags provided by Identec Solutions, a Canadian company. WM Wireless & Mobile, a Colombian company, provided the systems integration work.

The daily commute has now dropped to one hour.

Transit police use PDAs equipped with RFID readers. The bus need only pass within 10 feet (3 meters) of the officer, who can verify the bus is on its assigned route. If it is not, the officer issues a citation.

Four hour commute? Whew!

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By 2007 the market for RFID integration and consulting services will surpass the market for RFID hardware. That's according to a report by ABI, a research firm.

ABI forecasts an integration services market of over $1 Billion (USD) by 2006.

So far integration services have taken a back seat in RFID planning. Most of the emphasis has been on compliance-level solutions to meet short-term RFID mandates by companies such as Walmart and Tesco.

But that will all change. As companies discover the benefits of RFID throughout their enterprises, demand will rapidly grow for full-scale RFID implementations. RFID solutions will need to adapt to and interoperate with legacy IT and logistics applications. To do that, integration consulting services are a must:

"Any changes to existing enterprise systems require architectural mapping, systems programming and testing, and company-wide change management implementations. Companies with deep experience in this space, including Accenture, BearingPoint, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, IBM, and Unisys, are increasing their focus on RFID, but have a long way to go to meet staffing needs...."

Sounds like a promising business opportunity for some of the large integration consulting firms -- and a promising employment opportunity for qualified individuals.

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Target, the fourth largest U.S. retailer, joins the growing list of companies mandating that their suppliers use RFID.

Target's top suppliers will have to comply by the spring of 2005. All suppliers must have RFID at the pallet and case level by 2007.

Target is extremely popular in the U.S. with women looking for upscale, yet inexpensively priced, housewares. Target joins discount retailer Walmart in requiring suppliers to tag goods.

Source is the RFID Journal, with a hat tip to Anders at RFIDbuzz.com who rightly observes:

"Such massive retailers have a large market muscle and are likely to be the main drivers for RFID adaptation "everywhere" in Retail / Supply chain over the next years."

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PeopleSoft yesterday jumped into RFID when it introduced technology to support the use of RFID tags within manufacturers' supply chains.

The technology is designed to be used with PeopleSoft's Enterprise and EnterpriseOne product families.

The announcement is no surprise. PeopleSoft is the world's second largest provider of enterprise application software, and a major player in manufacturing applications ever since its acquisition of JD Edwards last year. The company was sure to get involved in RFID.

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RSA Security has demonstrated a prototype of a new privacy technology which will block RFID readers from accessing data on RFID tags. The new technology, called the RSA Blocker Tag, jams radio frequency signals:

"A fully developed RSA Blocker Tag will work by "spamming" any RFID reader that attempts to scan tags without the right authorization, thereby creating a hostile environment for the reader. When ordinary RFID tags are in proximity to an RSA Blocker Tag, they benefit from its shielding behavior; when the RSA Blocker Tag is removed, the ordinary RFID tags may be used normally. Thanks to its selective nature, the RSA Blocker Tag helps prevent unwanted scanning of purchased items, but does not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems."

The company's press release makes it clear this is still a prototype and not yet for sale. A U.S. patent application is pending.

Sounds a little like the old Romulan cloaking device in the original Star Trek, doesn't it?

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Imagine a world in which:

"...billions of radio-frequency identification chips will be attached to shipping pallets, boxes, and even individual items, each generating a silent "here I am" signal at least three times per second. Those signals will be picked up by 300 million RFID readers located in warehouses, distribution centers, and other facilities worldwide. ***

Are we ready for this? And what are we going to do with all of the data RFID chips generate?"

That's the question posed in a recent article in Information Week.

It is beginning to dawn on some IT managers how unready they are to deal with the avalanche of data from those systems.

In fact, one analyst in the story predicts that many of the early RFID systems implemented by Wal-Mart suppliers will be trashed within a year. Their architectures will just be too limited to handle future RFID needs.

One of the biggest issues to be faced: what data do you keep and what do you ignore? Another issue: who gets to see what data and how do you stratify it so that only the authorized persons have access to the data?

Middleware will play an important role to direct data to the correct places and uses.

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Sun Microsystems' Boardroom Minutes feature outlines some ways that the United States government is considering using RFID.

It covers possibilities ranging from embedding tiny RFID tags in postage stamps in order to track mail, to placing RFID in currency bills to fight counterfeiting.

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Via Mike at Starhill comes this report of an intriguing study about sensor net research.

It presents a gee-whiz view of the future in which RFID plays a central role.

It points out that IT is on the verge of another revolution, where sensors will be embedded in the physical world. From them mankind can monitor the environment (e.g., plankton colonies and endangered species), manmade structures (e.g., bridges and buildings), and other aspects of our physical world, enabling us to "see" things previously unobservable.

The effort is being led by Professor Deborah Estrin, Director of CENS, the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing.

Intriguing stuff.

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The MIT Technology Review has a neat visual presentation of how RFID is used. It tracks a product RFID (in the example, a shirt) through the supply chain and the retail chain, starting from the point of manufacture all the way to the product's arrival in the consumer's home.

The presentation is done in Flash (sigh, I know I know) but this is actually an excellent use of Flash. Check it out -- it's quick and easy to follow.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is backing RFID as a way to stamp out prescription drug counterfeiting. RFID tracking technology would create an electronic pedigree that follows the drug from its manufacture to the point of dispensing.

Accenture has been tapped to be the RFID program manager for a group of drug manufacturers, distributors and retailers in this effort.

The FDA issued a report on combating counterfeit drugs that identifies the RFID strategy. The report also mentions that Wal-Mart (surprise!) will be requiring RFID tracking on all narcotics in its pharmacies this year.

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This morning we woke up, went out to pick up the morning newspapers, and found the garage door open.

We knew we hadn't left the door open. We'd like to think one of the neighbors has a similar radio frequency code punched into their own garage door openers. (Yes, garage door openers run on radio frequency technology.). In opening or closing their own garage door, it had probably triggered ours.

A more sinister possibility is that someone deliberately scanned the codes in order to open the door.

That got me to thinking about RFID privacy again. Here someone driving down the street had opened a door that we had thought was closed, without our permission. It felt like an invasion of privacy, even if no one actually entered the garage.

Which brings me to this post by Anders about RFID hacks, linking to a post by Ross Mayfield. What if someone driving down the street had a $150 RFID reader and could just drive around and read information from product tags in your home? Is it that much different from having your garage door opened without your permission? It seems to be only a matter of degree....

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