Nowadays, you don't have to be a Wal-Mart or Johnson & Johnson to deploy RFID. A kind of "RFID starter kit" from Tego lets much smaller businesses exploit the latest generation of large-memory, programmable tags.

Charles Walton, inventor of the RFID technology now common everywhere from warehouses to retail stores to public libraries, has died at the age of 89 in California.

The new Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, Western Australia, will put communications and sustainability at the forefront of its IT agenda, thanks to an agreement with international services firm, Serco, for facilities management and support services. Serco will partner with BT for the project. Under the contract, BT will install and manage the hospital’s communications infrastructure and run a range of IT services.

Australian airline, Qantas (ASX:QAN) has penned a four-year deal with Unisys to provide a Baggage Reconciliation System (BRS) for its Australian domestic flights, to begin on 10 November.

RF Code today announced a new system that uses a combination of radio frequency identification (RFID) and infrared technology to keep tabs on the location of individual IT assets, right down to the rack level.

For the retailing industry, the adoption of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology this decade has been one long, strange journey: Periods of irrational exuberance followed by times of great frustration and confusion; expensive pilot projects riddled with technical, standards-based and cost complexities; and a widespread belief among those retailers or CPG manufacturers that were forced into the RFID universe that it is a technology solution in search of a problem.

The runners took center stage during the Boston Marathon Monday, but behind the scenes of the prestigious road race was an enterprise-class data center capable of accurately tracking more than 26,000 runners and relaying that information to a number of outlets.

For the past 10 years, radio-frequency identification (RFID) has followed the classic buzzword trajectory that is typically a blessing and a curse for new technologies: Next-generation appeal, bursting hype, rampant confusion and fragmented success.

A famous superhero once noted, with trepidation: "With great power comes great responsibility." Retail juggernaut Wal-Mart, with US$401 billion in worldwide sales, has always wielded the "great power" part with its suppliers.

The European Commission has set a code of conduct for companies using RFID (radio frequency identification) tags that it hopes will safeguard citizens' privacy and allow the quick rollout of the new technology.