By Mark Roberti

Feb. 1, 2009— A year ago, we wrote that 2007 was devoid of technology breakthroughs, tagging mandates and other major news in the world of radio frequency identification. This past year, despite the economic woes that battered the global economy in the second half of 2008, we saw some significant innovations in RFID technologies, as well as a number of important deployments and new tagging mandates. In fact, 2008 was filled with too many developments to limit the news to a top-10 list. To see what could lie ahead, let's look at 12 of the key stories from 2008 published on RFIDJournal.com and in RFID Journal magazine.

1. American Apparel Expands RFID to Additional Stores
Many apparel retailers have been reluctant to adopt RFID despite a clear return on investment because they are afraid that opponents of the technology would stir up bad publicity. That didn't happen when American Apparel announced it had adopted item-level tagging at its Columbia University store in New York City, or when it expanded the rollout to six more stores in the city and one in Santa Monica, Calif. That will encourage other apparel retailers to adopt the technology.



2. Financial Consortium Publishes RFID Standards for IT Assets
The Financial Services Technology Consortium—an organization comprising North American financial institutions, technology vendors, independent research organizations and government agencies—published a set of standards that would require technology companies to RFID-tag servers and other equipment being shipped to financial institutions. If implemented, the standards could foster the use of RFID in all data centers to track IT assets.