This article was originally published by RFID Update.
August 20, 2009—If you’re going to a soccer match in Italy you won’t need a paper ticket, but think twice before taking a towel from the hotel during your trip. New systems will put RFID on the job in both situations, which are among the highlights of this week’s industry news.
- Lega Pro, Italy’s top professional soccer league, will begin using RFID-enabled ID cards this season for automated ticketing and cashless payment transactions at stadiums. Telecom Italia announced it received a contract to provide the Fan ID Card to all 90 clubs affiliated with Lega Pro.
- Recall North America, a document management services company, announced it opened a new facility in Van Buren, Michigan, that uses RFID to track and manage cartons containing customer documents. Recall North America will apply RFID tags to all incoming cartons to support log-in and auditing operations.
- To help hotels manage their sheets and towels, Los Angeles-based Linen Technology Tracking has introduced linentracker, which uses RFID to track linens throughout the facility. The system features Gen2 tags on linens, portal readers and software to monitor material movement and report on linen locations and available inventory.
- Two service providers to the automotive dealer industry, MyDealerLot and AutoAlert, jointly announced an RFID-based customer recognition system. Several Mercedes-Benz dealerships are piloting the new Service Drive Concierge (SDC) system, which uses RFID to alert dealer sales staff when customers pull into the dealership. The alert function can be used to create services, and system software performs sales analytics.
- Impinj announced that its Monza RFID tag chips and Indy RFID reader chips will be part of Coca-Cola’s new Freestyle soft drink dispensing system. RFID is a key enabler of the widely-publicized Freestyle, which will offer consumers over 100 flavor choices, all dispensed from a single spout. It will also allow Coca-Cola to collect analytics about the consumption and popularity of different drinks. Learn more about Freestyle here, here, and here.
- FileTrail of San Jose, California introduced an RFID-enabled evidence management solution that tracks evidence from the time it is collected.
- Infiniti Research, a market research company in Cologne (Kšln), Germany, released RFID in Healthcare Industry 2008-2012, a 17-page report that forecasts the worldwide market. Infiniti also said RFID sales in all markets last year were $5.3 billion and will grow to $9.2 billion in 2012.
- Korean RFID developer RF Camp introduced Titan INCH, which it promotes as the smallest passive UHF tag designed for use on metal. The product measures 1 by 0.4 by 0.1 inches, includes the Higgs-3 chip from Alien Technology and has an IP 68 rating for environmental resistance.
- AiRISTA, a developer of turnkey RFID, RTLS and GPS solutions headquartered in Sparks, Maryland, announced a new three-tier partner program. AiRISTA systems are used for mobile asset and personnel management. The program was designed for small and mid-size integration firms.
- AXCESS International, a wireless identification and monitoring system provider headquartered in Dallas, reported revenues of $3.2 million and net income of $1.1 million for the second quarter. The company is projecting record revenues for the year.
- Israel-headquartered RFID and mobile technology developer B.O.S. Better Online Solutions released its second-quarter results. The company posted a quarterly loss of $578,000 on revenues of $8 million.
- Sentry Technology, a New York company whose products include RFID-based library management systems, announced second-quarter revenues of $1.9 million and a $643,000 loss.
- Previously this week RFID Update covered IBM’s latest middleware release, which can apply business intelligence to input from RFID tags, wireless temperature, pressure and other sensors, bar codes and other technologies (see IBM Releases New Version of RFID Software).
