Evan Schuman

Two key e-commerce leaders—Wal-Mart and Macy’s—found themselves shut out of the online portion of the holiday sales rush for much of Friday, as their sites slowed to a crawl starting at about 4 .m. EST. This was especially troubling as it happened on the so-called Black Friday, where major retailers hope to see their financial […]

Recent RFID trials are showing mixed results for RFID, with London-based retail leader Marks & Spencer declaring its 42-store test a success and preparing to add 80 more test stores in 2007 while Cardinal Health said RFID has “real promise” but a “great deal of additional work needs to be undertaken” before it’s practical. The […]

Accusations that RFID-based contactless credit cards can be easily read by thieves are nothing new, but this time a group of scientists at the University of Massachusetts has gone quite far to try to prove it. The group—calling itself the RFID Consortium for Security and Privacy—is a group of computer scientists from the University of […]

As retailers and consumer goods manufacturers struggle with achieving the supply-chain nirvana of complete item-level tagging, $60 billion aerospace giant Boeing has gotten item-level RFID to soar, with 2,000 high-memory passive tags in every plane of an upcoming line. Boeing’s item-level RFID efforts are intriguing because of their scope, but also because of the extreme […]

When Amazon.com has server problems, it shares them with other key retail players, including Target.com and Borders.com. At least that’s the e-commerce lesson those three retailers—and perhaps others—are learning this week. All three retailers began seeing a sharp drop in server response times starting Sept. 20, at about 9 a.m. Eastern, according to sources familiar […]

Networked closed-circuit television cameras are doing a lot more in retail than catching shoplifters. The latest cameras can track how consumers react to specials and even digitally find abducted children. With a system being piloted today by CVS and other large retail chains, a lost or abducted child has a lot more protection than from […]

Federal regulators the week of Aug. 14 clamped down on bank-issued gift cards, forcing the banks to much more prominently disclose expiration dates and any inactivity fees. Industry observers expect federal authorities to soon extend such rules to retailer-issued gift cards. “The gift card market is growing rapidly, and the terms and conditions of various […]

Visa on July 21 changed its retail security requirement structure, which will—because of a change in definition of what a qualifying transaction is—force more retailers to use its more stringent security procedures. The core change includes all transactions when determining what level a retailer should be; Visa uses four levels to group retailers based on […]

A new report from industry analyst firm Aberdeen Group does not bring a lot of optimistic news for RFID proponents. The report predicts that companies will have trouble in areas such as finding sufficiently experienced RFID (radio-frequency identification) personnel, migrating to the use of biometrics and other new data-collection methods, and scaling RFID to the […]

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 […]

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

The IEEE has started work on a new protocol—a standard called IEEE 1902.1 also known as RuBee—that is expected to give retailers and manufacturers an attractive alternative to RFID for many applications, especially item-level efforts. Officials say they expect products based on the protocol to be available within 12 to 18 months. The initial backers […]