There are three kinds of RFID tags: passive, active and hybrid. Passive RFID tags are the least expensive, because they are less complex. They have to be asked to disclose their information by taking power from an RFID reader. When the reader’s radio waves hit them, they echo back their information. This is the sort of tag used in goods in a retail outlet or on crates in a warehouse.

On the other hand, active RFID tags have a battery, a transmitter and an aerial so that they are always transmitting. These units are clearly a lot more expensive and so are used only on more expensive items like a container, a battle tank, an aircraft, on criminals ankle bands or on an animal of an endangered species.

The hybrid RFID tag is capable of transmitting, but it has to be told to transmit; it has to be turned on by a signal. This signal could be a satellite flying over head. These hybrid RFID tags are also costly, but the battery lasts longer because they are not ‘always on’. These tags have the same uses as the active tags, but are suitable for use where it is not vital to know where something is every minute of the day: for instance cows in a field or goats on a mountain.

Passive tags can be attached permanently by sewing them into hems or putting them under skin because they do not have their own electricity source and do not wear out. This is a cause of anxiety to some people who worry about an invasion of their privacy or the erosion of their human rights.

Active and hybrid tags are most often clearly visible so that the batteries can be replaced as and when necessary. If this is going to unlikely to happen, as in the case of wild animals, the tag can have a biodegradable clasp which will break sometime after the probable life of the battery.

Some uses for RFID tags are on season tickets so that the owner can pass through the style more quickly than a customer paying by cash. It has applications in security; most of the ID badges you see pinned to shirts have RFID built into them so that security guards do not have to stop and query everybody.

They can be put into wagons that repeatedly cross frontiers so that they do not have to stop for identification. They can be put on windscreens so that, as you pass through a motorway toll post, either your credit card is billed or the charge is added to your company’s monthly statement.

Hospitals utilize them on patients so that they do not misplace anyone or misidentify them. RFID tags are useful in our daily lives but people are concerned about criminals being able to read all this information too easily as well.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is currently concerned with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

However, RFID tags are a great deal more adaptable than a piece of paper with a few black stripes on it. RFID tags can be and are being sewn into clothing and inserted under the skins of animals and humans for ease of tracking. Many of the items you buy in supermarkets these days have RFID tags concealed in them, but do not try looking for them because they can be tiny. They could also be under the labels of those tins of beans on your shelf.

An RFID tag is used to be able to follow an item from manufacturer to consumer, but especially when it is in the warehouse or supermarket waiting to be sold. A tag reader will be able to transmit the tag’s information back to a computer to warn management that something is near its sell-by-date, for instance.

Tags in livestock permit the slaughterhouse to be able to track the animal back to a farm and hand this information on to the butcher. An RFID tag under your dog’s skin or your car’s bonnet will permit it to be found if lost or stolen.

There are basically two types of RFID tags: the passive sort and the active kind and there is a hybrid as well. The passive tag is similar to a bar code. It carries the same information and then more besides. Like a bar code, it can do nothing on its own, but when it is read it will disclose its data. These tag readers give the tag sufficient power to be able to reflect the information back to it.

The active tags have a battery and a transmitter built into them, so that they can actively transmit the data all the time and the hybrids will only broadcast when ’switched on’ by a tag reader.

There is still some disagreement about how far away a tag reader can read a tag. In the case of a passive tag, it centres on the power that the reader can supply over a long distance. Most are designed to work over only a few inches or feet, but more high-capacity ones could be built. Active and hybrid tags actively broadcast, so they can be read from 100 metres (300 feet) or more.

These tags have been around for a very long time in one form or another, but certainly since the Second World War, when they were used to identify home-coming British planes to save them from the RADAR-directed anti-aircraft guns.

The concern as far as many organizations are concerned, is that technology has progressed so much that the tags can be practically invisible and the readers could be anywhere, which invokes concerns for personal privacy.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

For instance, RFID tags are in the majority of office identity tags and in a few passports, enabling the holder to pass through security quickly while keeping the building or the country secure.

They are a modern version of the bar code. Remember before bar codes and bar code readers? When a shop assistant had to key prices into the cash register, correct errors and look up prices that they could not remember? People do not have any time for that anymore.

It is OK at the newsagents, but imagine a teenager keying in your two trolleys of weekly shopping at the supermarket every Saturday. You would still be there on Sunday! Superstores have thousands of articles and dozens of special offers – no-one could remember that lot.

No-one could, but bar codes make it straightforward and so do RFID tags. Bar codes work well, but they have to be seen to be read. RFID tags send out their information on a unique frequency which can be read out of line of sight. In other words, an RFID scanner does not need to be able to see the tag to read it.

The scanner can see what is in your trolley without you having to empty it and as you pass by that scanner and pay for your things, they are deducted from stock immediately so that the warehouse manger can see what people are buying and what nobody wants to buy. So, if one brand of cat food sells better than another, the manager will see that on the computer print-out and buy more of that make, thereby keeping more people happy.

This use of RFID in inventory control or asset management to give it its more official title, can translate itself into other uses too. An RFID tag can be placed under your cat’s fur or in its collar so that you can find him if he gets lost. The police and the wardens scan stray animals for a tag as part of their routine these days. Zoologists have been doing this with wild elephants, big cats and other endangered species for years. Now you can have it done with your pets also.

Company vehicles, as assets of the business, often carry RFID tags and you can have one placed in your car to aid recovery if it is stolen. Baggage handlers at airports or bus terminals can (and do) use them to avoid lost luggage.

The US government requires RFID tags be placed on all vehicles carrying explosives or hazardous substances and have done for almost ten years. The US military is in fact the biggest user of these tags in the world. RFID tags are used to track military assets such as armaments, battle tanks, fuel, containers, artillery, you name it.

Some people worry about RFID technology. Where is the line between their convenience and their personal information? For example, they do not like getting junk emails from people that have been able to track the purchases they made with their credit cards.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on several topics, but is now involved with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

So what is RFID? Well, you can think of it as the update of the bar code although in fact, it is older than the bar code by 50 or 60 years. Bar codes were developed in order to integrate stock control with point of sales processing.

Everyone has witnessed this and is used to it: the sales clerk at the cash register takes the goods from your trolley one at a time, looks for the bar code, flashes a light or a bar code reader over it and the cost of the item is added to your receipt.

What you do not see is that the computerized stock records for that item are reduced by one and the sales price is noted along side it. That system worked well for 40 years, but now there is a need for more information to be recorded than a bar code can accommodate and there is need for greater stock control and even more speed at the check out. Nobody has any time any longer.

Enter RFID, an old technology brought back to life. RFID is the technology that they used to put in Second World War aircraft in order to identify friendly aircraft to the RADAR-controlled anti-aircraft guns. The same equipment, basically, that they still use in aircraft today to identify it to air traffic control. The difference is that until pretty recently, these radio signal emitters or transponders were as big as a suitcase and cost a lot of money.

These days they are the size of the tiniest coin in your change and cost about five cents. They win over the bar code because they can hold masses of data, such as where and when and by whom an item was made; how much it cost and how much it should be sold for; its colour, weight and description; which shelf and in which shop it should be kept on …. ad infinitum. The shop owner can write anything on that chip using an RFID printer.

And when it comes to the cash register… No more reading each individual item by hand, because each RFID chip or tag, as they are called in the industry, emits its own data on its own unique radio frequency, so as long as the RFID scanner is within three or four feet of the trolley, it knows what is in there instantaneously. No more emptying, scanning and refilling the trolley.

In fact, no more check out clerk. Most people pay by credit or debit card these days anyway, so as you walk past the scanner with your trolley, you are scanned; you swipe your credit card through another scanner; if you are satisfied with it, you approve the payment and the barrier lifts for you to proceed to your car. You only have to have a check out clerk for the shoppers who want to pay in cash. Cheques are being abolished soon anyway.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is now concerned with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

The start of it all was in 1915, say some, when the British come up with a system called IFF, which is short for ‘Identification: Friend or Foe’. Whoever invented it, the first known installation of the IFF transponder was into the FuG German aircraft in 1940 in the course of the Second World War.

However, IFF does not identify enemy aircraft, it can only distinguish friendly aircraft. All others have to be treated with suspicion. The same type of technology is still in use in military and civilian aircraft today. The British managed to decode the FuG’s signals and reply properly, giving them a false positive, which gave them the drop in a dog fight.

At the end of the war and the commencement of the Cold War, Leon Theremin invented a device for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves and other audio details. It is not true RFID, but it is accredited with being a predecessor of RFID, because it was a passive device which was activated by an outside source.

In 1948, Harry Stockman wrote a paper called: “Communication by Means of Reflected Power”, in which he stated: “… considerable research and development work has to be done before the remaining basic problems in reflected-power communication are solved, and before the field of useful applications is explored”.

This was true. The problems were basically threefold: the devices needed a lot of power to work effectively; they were too big for use in anything but big items like aircraft and they were extremely expensive. However, people could already envisage uses for the technology when these three issues had been overcome.

(In 2009, researchers at Bristol University stuck RFID devices to live ants to track their movements).

The first modern predecessor of the RFID device was something that Mario Cardullo demonstrated to the New York Port Authority in 1971. It was a passive transponder which relayed information using power supplied by an external source. It’s intended use was to identify ships to the Port Authority for the purpose of collecting toll charges.

Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle, and Robert Freyman demonstrated a set-up in 1974 which employed RFID tags. This has become the basis of the system which is now extensively used all around the world to collect toll fees on autobahns and in car parks.

Charles Walton was granted the first patent to include the acronym RFID in 1983.

The principal user of RFID tags is the US Department of Defense and after that the civil aviation industry, although the manufacturing industry is catching up quickly with RFID tags being used to track goods from manufacture to point-of-sale.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is currently involved with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

For example, RFID tags are in most office identity tags and in a few passports, allowing the holder to pass through security quickly while keeping the building or the country safe.

They are a modern version of the bar code. Remember before bar codes and bar code readers? When a shop keeper had to type prices into the cash register, correct mistakes and look up prices that they could not remember? People do not have any time for that anymore.

It is OK at the newsagents, but picture a teenager typing in your two trolleys of weekly shopping at the superstore every Saturday. You would still be there on Sunday! Supermarkets have thousands of articles and dozens of special offers – no-one could remember that lot.

No-one could, but bar codes make it easy and so do RFID tags. Bar codes work well, but they have to be seen to be read. RFID tags send out their information on a unique frequency which can be read out of line of sight. In other words, an RFID scanner does not have to be able to see the tag to read it.

The scanner can see what is in your trolley without you having to unload it and as you pass by that scanner and pay for your things, they are deducted from stock straight away so that the warehouse manger can see what people are buying and what nobody wants to buy. So, if one brand of cat food is selling better than another, the manager will see that on the computer print-out and buy more of that make, thus keeping more people happy.

This use of RFID in stock control or asset management to give it its more formal title, can translate itself into other uses as well. An RFID tag can be put under your cat’s fur or in its collar so that you can find him if he gets lost. The police and the wardens scan stray animals for a tag as part of their routine these days. Zoologists have been doing this with wild elephants, tigers and other endangered species for years. Now you can have it done with your pets as well.

Company vehicles, as assets of the business, often carry RFID tags and you can have one placed in your car to aid recovery if it is stolen. Baggage handlers at airports or bus terminals can (and do) use them to avoid lost luggage.

The US government insists that RFID tags be used on all vehicles carrying ammunition or dangerous substances and have done for almost ten years. The US military is in fact the principal user of these tags in the world. RFID tags are used to track military assets such as weapons, battle tanks, fuel, containers, artillery, you name it.

Some people worry about RFID technology. Where is the line between their convenience and their personal information? For example, they do not like getting junk emails from people that have been able to track the purchases they made with their credit cards.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is currently involved with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

Wal-Mart plans to start using removable tags. This is important, because these tags broadcast their data to any machine that asks for it and there are literally thousands of RFID readers in every city.

For instance, the tag in your Wal-Mart shirt might be saying: ‘I am a sleeveless shirt, colour yellow, size 18. I cost 9.99. I was bought at Wal-Mart Superstore number 00067 in New York, USA. I am number 500 of 20,000 bought on June 15, 2010 I was made by Neem’s in Pakistan in June 2010′.

This and more information, encoded on the RFID tag is very useful for stock control. RFID tags are an advanced form of bar code. Bar codes are OK, but the scanner has to see them to read them, whereas RFID tags reflect back their data when they get the power to do so from an RFID reader.

These readers can be hand-held or stationary and can usually read the tags from about a metre away without needing to see it. Therefore, the reader could be under, over or along side the shopping trolley and as you walk by it will read all the contents of your trolley without you having to unload them.

This saves time, which can mean fewer human errors and even fewer staff. If the reader is connected to a central computer, stock levels are modified automatically, and the fastest moving items and the most and least profitable items in the store can be read off a list that is accurate up to the second.

Link the stores to head office and the CEO knows what is going on everywhere in his empire live. Connect the computer to the central distribution warehouse and goods can be ordered automatically when stock drops to a predetermined level.

However, there are some privacy concerns. Wal-Mart intends to use removable tags, but consumer societies say that criminals could scan rubbish bins to see what a person has purchased recently. More of a problem would be if the tags were sewn into hems or linings, because they are ‘always on’.

RFID is used in a great deal of credit cards and security passes, so it is theoretically possible that the readers will scan those as well. If the details concealed on passes, credit cards, driving licenses and passports is linked together, then the store will know a whole lot about you, as well as your shopping predilections as soon as you walk through the door.

It could be a very smart move for Wal-Mart to start using smart tags. An experiment at American Apparel Inc. in 2007 showed that stores using smart RFID tags made 14.3% more sales that stores that did not use them. It is also easier to uncover employee theft of items from the stock room if RFID tags are used.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is currently concerned with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

If you have a very young cat or dog, there is perhaps no need to tag it yet, but as the animal gets older, ID tags can become critical. If your pet gets lost, anyone finding it can then return it. If you have a cat or a dog, then a straightforward collar might be sufficient.

Some collars have a metal tag affixed to them so that you can have your contact details or phone number engraved on it, others have a ring, so that you can affix a small canister with your particulars inside it. Some just write their address on the underside of the collar with a felt tipped pen or a marker pen. This is more unsafe though because you might not notice if it rubs off.

It is essential to think about water damage if you are ID tagging a dog. Cats try to keep out of water, rain and snow, but most dogs like playing in it. If your dog’s tag is not waterproof, it will soon become illegible. On the other hand, cats often lose their collars.

If your pet is a horse, then it is simpler to have it branded and the brand indexed, so that anyone finding your lost horse can reference the brand and discover your contact details. If your pet is a tortoise, then you can write your phone number around the edge of its shell in a non-toxic fluid like nail varnish, but keep it small or you could poison the creature. Birds can have leg bands fitted. These leg rings have a unique number which can be looked up like a brand.

These are the conventional ways of ID tagging your pets, but the most modern way is to RFID tags them. These RFID tags can be affixed in several different ways. The simplest way is to have a plastic passive RFID tag made up and hang it from your pet’s collar. This works well, until your pet loses its collar or unless someone removes it in order to take your pet.

Another way of attaching an RFID tag, is to have your details imprinted on a chip and have the chip inserted under your pet’s skin by a vet. Some people are disgusted by this idea others do not mind. However, it does not hurt, is not uncomfortable and cannot be lost.

When the police or the pound officials are passed a stray, they scan it for a chip as part of their routine these days. Even people have them installed so that they can move across international borders more rapidly.

The RFID tag is read by a scanner and can be read from distances of several feet to several hundred yards, which makes finding a lost pet a much easier task if it has an RFID tag installed.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the RFID blocking wallet. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

Cost has always been a damping factor, but a Korean company has declared that it will have passive RFID tags for sale for about three US cents each by the end of 2011

Historically, the biggest user of RFID tags was and still is the US Department of Defense. The armed forces use smart tags to trace the containers of their hardware and sometimes individual articles of hardware too. The aviation industry has also been using them worldwide for a long time.

The latest industries to find a use for the passive tags are financial services for IT asset tracking and health care, where more than 60% of the top medical apparatus companies are using passive UHF RFID in 2010.

Businesses that have not developed a reliable system to track their stock and know exactly what they have of everything that they sell are apt to hold excess levels of stock to make certain they can supply their customers’ requirements.

If you can reduce excess stock by using improved information, you can: trim down investment, storage space, labour costs; and increase asset utilization, increase stock turnover, facilitate faster billing cycles, all of which will significantly contribute to cash flow.

In short, the usage of RFID:

1] Eases stock control and item location in real time, which cuts product search time, reduces inventory levels and improves control of the manufacturing process. 2] Enhances compliance, enhances work-in-progress (WIP) productivity and cuts the cost of the finished goods. 3] Enables the real-time monitoring of production, order fulfillment, and distribution procedures and their level of effectiveness. 4] Enhances profitably and ability to meet demand rapidly and reduces inventory costs. 5] Reduces labour costs by getting rid of manual steps. 6] Improves order and shipping accuracy by helping to ensure that orders are shipped complete, error-free, and on time, which thereby raises customer satisfaction and the likelihood of return orders. 7] Promotes extremely accurate real-time data capture by means of warehouse management systems (WMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

The way forward is to begin with the goods-in bay. Goods arrive with shipping labels, but they are often inadequate in quality and information. It would be best to create a new ‘identity badge’ for all goods received at this point. All the pertinent information that you have on the items delivered can be put of an RFID tag and attached to the pallet, the crate or even the goods themselves.

Now these articles can be added to stock and the computer will always be able to divulge what the items are in the box, how many of them there are and where they are located in the warehouse.

The simple procedure of creating an RFID tag at the unloading bay and attaching it to the goods received can save hours of time wasted checking up on stock levels and thousands of dollars wasted in overstocking.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is now involved with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

What does the Halo 3 trial download have to do with another video game? Well, it has a great deal to do with the distribution and promotional effort for a game that was originally meant for playing on the Xbox system. Microsoft had become worried that Crackdown would not sell a lot.

And so they employed a marketing gimmick, the one of bundling Crackdown with an access code to the Halo 3 trial download. And it worked a treat because Crackdown sold 1.5 million copies within the first half year of its release. Those aren’t Halo 3 figures, which sold 8.1 million units in slightly over a year, but for a lesser well-known game that’s absolutely fantastic.

Microsoft had resorted to the Halo 3 trial download tactic because of poor opinions about the game from the game testers. They found the nonlinear nature of the game off-putting, often leaving them asking themselves what they were supposed to be doing next.

As a result of this, the powers that be knew that something had to be done or the game would be a dud. It may appear shady practice at first to try to push sales of a game that’s expected to be unpopular, but in retrospect people like the game and it was a good thing that they were able to get the chance to play it.

In Crackdown, and that includes the one bundled with the Halo 3 free download, people play as an agent who is assigned to beat the kingpins, or leaders, of different gangs. To do this they make use of various superhuman powers such as super strength and super agility. In order to obtain these powers, players have to build up experience by beating enemies who then release experience orbs. The clever part of the system was that the kind of orbs released depended on the manner in which the agent killed the enemy. For instance, a firearms orb appears if the enemy was killed with a gun.

So, while at first sight this game bundled with the Halo 3 trail download appears to be nothing but a veiled marketing gimmick, in reality it exposed gamers to an exciting gameplay world.

If you like Halo 3 and are interested in reading more about it, why not go over to Halo 3 Info on our website called Halo 3 Insider Secrets