Evan Schuman

With high turnover being as much a part of an industrial kitchen as cracked pepper, the chief financial officer (and acting CIO) of the Fuddrucker chain of restaurants often looks for ways to get control of his training budget. CFO Matt Pannek thinks he may have found a tasty answer in a couple of hundred […]

When Wal-Mart corporate wants to change a policy or procedure, its fond of trying it in a small way in an out-of-the-way place to see if it works. After all, even a small pilot for the $312 billion retail empire can be fairly massive by mere mortal standards. So it was with interest that I […]

On a busy Saturday night, a good bartender makes a lot of money for the bars owner, but an overly generous bartender—or one fond of pouring free drinks for friends—can cost the owner even more. A Miami-based 7-year-old beverage-monitoring software company is drinking from the keg of RFID and is selling a tilt switch that […]

Despite the traditional mantra that item-level tagging makes sense when the price drops below 5 cents, and preferably below 1 cent, a major global consulting firm, IDTechEx, has found that the average price is 40 cents, compared with an average 18-cent price for pallet and case tags. The fact that the initial item-level tag prices […]

Gift cards are quickly becoming an extremely popular retail payment option, but the traditional analog cards suffer from a lack of security when used for e-commerce. The card itself becomes virtually irrelevant, with the number—which can be guessed or hacked into—the only means of identifying the card. Customers who purchase cards that have already been […]

A Washington-based IP development company is talking up a patented method it says will allow low-cost passive RFID tags to monitor temperatures just as active tags do, but for less than one-twentieth the cost. A statement from Gentag describes the patented offering as “an ultra-linear, low-power, single-calibration temperature-sensor circuit that can be directly integrated on […]

A French court of appeals on June 28 sided with leather goods manufacturer Louis Vuitton and ruled that Google had violated trademark, unfair competition and advertising laws by showing ads for Vuitton rivals when people searched for Vuitton. The closely watched case—which involves Google having to pay a fine of about $250,000—has huge implications for […]

American consumers—especially frequent fliers—are becoming quite comfortable with self-checkout systems, to the tune of a projected $475 billion in self-checkout purchases this year, according to a new study from IHL Consulting Group. Thats a 47 percent increase over what IHL recorded last year, and the consulting company is predicting the sharp increases will continue, with […]

Even CIOs at billion-dollar retailers have to put their jeans on one upgrade at a time. But Guess CIO Michael Relich found himself in an especially difficult position when Web analytics told him that 60 percent of his e-commerce sites search results were delivering “not found” responses to prospects. Guess site search was a legacy […]

The commissioner for Information and Privacy in Ontario unveiled June 19 a series of tips and guidelines for using RFID within her part of Canada. First of all, the fact that a major Canadian province even has an information and privacy commissioner makes me look longingly to the North. But I believe bacon should be […]