WIRELESS ACCESS

5. Coming to a Footpath Near You: Warchalking

by Janice Brand

Not many of us have had firsthand experience with the symbols that hobos used during the Depression to let each other know where a free bed or meal would be available. But Matt Jones, a British Internet product designer, resurrected those secret signs and used their basic idea to come up with a new iconography called warchalking - for use by wireless hobos. Like the hobo signs of yore, these symbols, drawn with chalk on footpaths or buildings, also alert passers-by. But this time the goal is not food or shelter - it's Wi-Fi broadband access. And although the genesis of warchalking arose from the Internet-inspired "free information for all" concept - with owners of short-range 802.11b or Wi-Fi standards alerting those in need of access points - the idea could take on very sinister forms if your company is warchalked and nonregistered users use your network to get on the Internet. Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia has termed warchalking theft. And it's not in good stead with the FBI either, which warns that unscrupulous piggybackers cannot only slow your systems down, they could use your network to issue spam.

Despite its detractors, warchalking, which Jones first posted to the Web last June, looks likely to mature in the coming months. So far, most sightings have been in Britain (warchalking's birthplace), New York and Seattle. Don't be surprised if the symbols soon find their way to a patch of pavement near you.

RFID

6. Barcodes on Steroids

by Ben Wrothen

Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are like barcodes on steroids; they're to traditional SKUs what Robocop was to your ordinary cop on the beat.

RFID tags are already here but ubiquitous RFID is still a work in progress. Here's how RFID works. Labels, or RFID tags, containing microchips are attached to products, or more likely to cases of products. The chips are then read by a device that identifies the product inside the case. There are two types of tags: passive tags that are identified by an RFID reader; and battery-powered active tags that emit a constant signal. RFID readers do not require line-of-sight access to the tags; that feature promises to revolutionise the way warehouses will be run.

Furthermore, a company could (and someday will) track a product from creation through the sale process, all the way to the point of consumption. That, in turn, will bring us those smart refrigerators ("You need milk") and medicine cabinets ("Time to renew your Paxil prescription") you've heard about. Of course, that's all decades in the future. (The barcode, by way of comparison, was patented in 1952 and took nearly 40 years to arrive at your local supermarket.) The immediate problem is cost. Even the cheapest RFID tags today run about 75 cents a pop - more than many of the products to which they could be attached.

The price will eventually come down, but Forrester Research analyst Christine Overby says that right now it's a chicken-and-egg scenario: Companies can't afford to buy RFID tags in bulk, and manufacturers can't make them cheaper until they do.

Today's RFID ROI comes from warehouse management efficiencies, but there will be a huge first-mover advantage for the company that figures out how to incorporate RFID and all the information it can contribute to its data systems into its business, says Gartner senior analyst Jeff Woods. CIOs should start thinking about that today. But what does 2003 really hold for RFID? "More talk," says Woods.