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May 12, 2008
Pangea Day: Nokia, TED
By Laurie Sullivan

I had the opportunity Saturday to attend Pangea Day 2008, a one-day global event celebrating film and humanity. Nokia sponsored the event. It was organized by Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED)--a New York-based non-profit aimed at sharing knowledge. The idea of the event was to take

Sony Pictures turned Sound Stage 15 in Los Angeles into the hub, connecting to similar events in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro. The event aired live on several global networks and Internet television stations, subtitled in seven languages: Arabic, English, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, and Spanish.

In March, Nokia announced a mobile filmmaker contest that ran through April. The contest generated about 600 independent short movie entries from around the world. A panel of judges picked five finalists who attended the Los Angeles event, which premiered the short movies. Eduardo Cachucho, who shot the winning mobile short film "The Game" in South Africa where he lives, won the Nokia Mobile Filmmaker Award announced Saturday. The prize: a mobile filmmaking trip to the Rwandan Gorilla Reserve with a full crew to capture the experience.

I had a chance to sit down with Afdhel Aziz, a senior marketing manager for sponsorships at Nokia. We talked about the movies, the Nokia N95 cellular phone and camera, which by the way is an amazing device. We talked about connecting online through a mobile phone, and spent a few minutes talking about radio frequency identification and near field communications. Some of the things we talked about revolved around consumer privacy.

He agreed that rather than RFID, consumers should look toward their cellular phones, which can now track their every move, rather than RFID, and weigh the benefits against what they consider issues. Technology manufacturers need to become the educators. I'm the observer who disseminates the information.

Technologists are just scratching the service on what the mobile Internet can do, according to Aziz. "Today you just see a version of the regular internet on your phone," he says. "Once you add content so your phone and people know where you are it becomes Internet cubed because you can access information whenever and wherever you want it. Some people might find that a bit scary, a bit big brotherish."

At what point are consumers willing to swap personal information for a discount on coffee or clothes, for example. Aziz says "I may be happy to let Ticketmaster know I'm in Los Angeles because they'll offer me discounts on a concert for my favorite band at the local venue this Saturday."

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May 02, 2008
Intermec Profits
By Laurie Sullivan

Intermec reported first-quarter results, end March 30, on Thursday. Net income rose to $7.7 million, or 13 cents per share, compared with a loss of $4.4 million, or 7 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 21% to $217 million. The Everett-based maker of bar code and radio frequency identification hardware says earnings in the second quarter should reach 18- to 21-cents per share, on revenue between $227 million and $232 million.

Good (and unexpected) news, always welcome.
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April 23, 2008
Security and Privacy
By Laurie Sullivan

Not a surprise that Jennifer King from U.C. Berkeley School of Law, and Andrew McDiarmid from U.C. Berkeley School of Information wrote a white paper on security and privacy concerns for end users. It's because RFID implementations fail to adequately protect personal or identifiable stored information.

Call me crazy, but I believe RFID is completely misunderstood by the general public and companies that embed RF or NFC in products must help consumers understand the technology.

Mitigating the risk requires understanding RFID and how RF transmissions work. In the research, King and McDiarmid attempt to elicit user mental models of RFID technology by interviewing users of three existing implementations of consumer-focused RFID technology: RF-enabled credit cards, transit passes, and the U.S. e-Passport.

The two explore user comprehension of RFID technology generally and these implementations specifically to gain an understanding of how end users conceptualize RFID and its risks. We found in this initial inquiry that our subjects generally lacked a mental model of how RFID functions, and in turn did not understand risks posed by RFID implementations or how to mitigate them.

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April 17, 2008
Sam's Club Speaks Out
By Laurie Sullivan

Suppliers have been notified that Sam's Club has begun to expand on the number of stores and suppliers tagging goods with EPC RFID tags, Gregory Johnston, executive vice president, club operations for the retailer, told attendees at the RFID Journal Live conference Wednesday in Las Vegas.

In January, suppliers were notified and provided a timeline for deployment, Johnston says. "We're moving from our current implementation with 70 suppliers to all 700 suppliers, so wall to wall, door to door, all our products will be tagged," he says. "We pallet tag today, but will begin case tagging this year, as well."

Case tagging begins this year through 2010, followed by item-level tagging in 2009 through 2010.

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