Mark provides an in-depth introduction to Radio Frequency ID tags--the hottest, new, but 50 year-old technology. Why has it taken so long? Mark says it's been the high cost and lack of standards. (Passive tags cost as little as US$0.06, but only if you buy 500,000,000 of them. More typically, expect to pay US$0.40-US$0.50, or US$10.00 or more for active tags.)

Wal-Mart's RFID experiments have been in the news lately (mostly in reports of privacy concerns), but Mark says the press mangled the story and sets the record straight. More recently the U.S. Department of Defense announced it expects its 26,000 suppliers to use RFID tags beginning as early as January 2005.

In this interview we dig into the privacy concerns that have been raised regarding RFID usage, and look at some of the more unusual successful RFID deployments such as how the Scottish Courage brewery tagged its kegs and thereby saved US$14 million--enough to fund the acquisition of another brewery.

Mark wraps up with his analysis of the obstacles that remain for the widespread deployment of RFID, the timeframe over which it will occur, and his recommendations for how to track the evolution of this technology.

[Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. Previously he was a senior writer at the Industry Standard and served as managing editor of Information Week. Mark has reported on business and technology for major publications worldwide since 1985. His work has appeared in Business 2.0, Fortune, The Asian Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, and the New York Times.]