I recently had the pleasure of interviewing David Brock for an "Out in Front" story. Brock is the mad scientist who, back in 1996, came up with the ridiculously implausible idea of embedding a radio frequency identification tag in every item manufactured on Earth. A decade later, Brock's idea not only doesn't seem so farfetched, it's actually starting to happen.
With interest in item-level tagging on the rise, end users are trying to figure out whether to use high-frequency or ultrahigh frequency tags on individual products. Millions of dollars ride on the outcome.
Metro, the Germany retailer, had a massive display at the CeBIT fair in Hanover Germany. Here are some photographs of the various RFID concepts it showed off.