17/7/2012
The Kilbourn Public Library in Wisconsin is planning to tags its entire media collection - books, DVDs and CDs - with RFID technology to streamline facility operations, according to the a local news report.
Special gates equipped with RFID readers will be placed at each entrance and exit to monitor items leaving the building. The system can also alert staff is someone tries to take an item without having checked it out.
Additionally, the RFID system will help the library carry out its weekly inventory, as numerous items can be scanned at once. Tagging items would also save staff the time they spend serving people checking out the items.
The system could be up and running in the library as early as 2013 if funds are allocated for it in the library’s fiscal year.
From: http://www.rfidnews.org/2012/07/17/library-plans-rfid-system-to-track-media
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16/7/2012
QR Codes have been used in an interesting way by Gulf News the highest circulation English newspaper in and around the United Arab Emirates. Coffee cup sleeves at 5 local Tim Hortons cafe and bake shops were printed on demand with a QR Code and a headline of the hour pulled from the newspaper’s Twitter stream. The QR Code resolved to the full story of the headline (video below).
Early results were encouraging, after 840,000 sleeves and 1,440 headline tweets, traffic to the Gulf News website grew 41% and there was a 2.8% increase in subscriptions. Successful enough for agency Y&R Dubai to extended the project to all Tim Hortons outlets across the UAE including 14 new outlets soon to be opened.
From: http://2d-code.co.uk/coffee-cup-sleeve-qr-code/
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17/7/2012
Empathica’s latest Consumer Insights Panel survey of more than 6,500 U.S. consumers (weighted to reflect the latest census distributions including age, income, region and gender) shows that price comparisons are the most frequent in-store mobile action. 55% of smartphone owners reported using their devices to check prices while shopping, 34% scanned a QR code and 27% looked at a review. The survey contained other interesting data so I have reproduced the complete infographic below.
From: http://2d-code.co.uk/in-store-qr-code-scanning/
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18/7/2012
Ofcom’s extremely comprehensive annual Communications Market report (PDF) was published this morning with the usual headline statistics, 39% of UK adults now own a smartphone (this compares with 46% of American adults according to the Pew Research Center) and people in the UK are now more likely to text than to make a phone call. Buried away inside is a chart of activities conducted on a smartphone while out shopping (image below), and acquiring product information by scanning barcodes comes in at 21%. Only yesterday I posted on the Consumer Insights Panel survey of U.S. consumers where the almost comparable figure was 34%. It looks like in-store QR Codes will be increasingly common.
From: http://2d-code.co.uk/in-store-qr-code-scanning-uk/
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19/7/2012
The latest RFID market research from IDTechEx finds that in 2012 the value of the entire RFID market will be $7.46 billion. This includes tags, readers and software/services for RFID cards, labels, fobs and all other form factors.
Up from $6.37 billion in 2011, the increase is attributed primarily due to growth of passive ultra-high frequency systems for tagging apparel. In retail, RFID is seeing rapid growth for apparel tagging demanding 1 billion RFID labels in 2012, with 1.35 billion tags forecasted for 2013.
It is also driven by governments doing two things. Increasingly, they make it a legal requirement to fit RFID (i.e. animal tagging in New Zealand and Europe). This also includes local governments committing to non-stop road tolling and library tagging to national governments increasingly buying national ID cards, passports and other forms of RFID.
Additionally, RFID in the form of tickets used for transit will demand 500 million tags in 2012. IDTechEx find that the RFID market will grow steadily over the next decade, rising four-fold in that period to $26.19 billion in 2022.
The recently updated “RFID Forecasts, Players and Opportunities 2012-2022” includes over 200 companies profiled. A detailed ten year forecast of the volumes of tags required, their value and the total market value for over 30 market segments are shared.
From: http://www.rfidnews.org/2012/07/19/idtechex-forecasts-rfid-market-to-reach-7-67-billion-in-2012
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25/7/2012
US Med-Equip launched its RFID-enabled asset management system, Star Trax, to improve equipment utilization at the Memorial Medical Center in Lufkin, Texas.
Star Trax provides hospital management the ability to see real-time visibility and utilization status reports for each piece of equipment being processed through the system, such as infusion pumps, DVT pumps and portable oxygen.
Additionally, Star Trax offers the ability to produce reports using SMARTS, US Med-Equip’s proprietary technology system that can generate invoices, create usage and expense reports, track equipment, compile safety and Joint Commission data and prompt management when medical equipment is due for preventive maintenance.
Since equipping the RFID-enabled management system, Memorial Medical Center has increased its equipment utilization rate to 78 percent, well above the industry average rate of 40-45 percent.
From: http://www.rfidnews.org/2012/07/16/us-med-equip-improves-inventory-at-the-memorial-medical-center-texas
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