RFID - Being aware

I know evil doesn't exist, except for in people(like me)'s imagination, but here's a real excuse to believe everyone has good intentions.

It's called RFID or Radio Frequency ID.
First employed during the second world war in allied bombing campaigns, the industry has seen some growth and is now worth $2 billion.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.

RFID opens all sorts of opportunities for companies to monitor our movements real time.
For example, you may not be aware of it, but if you are the owner of a bottle of Viagra, Pfizer may be monitoring you right now.
Think I'm joking.
I'm not.

They're not the only ones, American Express have new card issues fitted with RFID chip. Procter and Gamble have filed patents and NCR are amongst other big names looking to muscle in on the act.

What's it all about?

RFID Tag

RFID Monitor using a semi-ductile, lightweight tag with a low cost.
When fitted to a product they relay information back to a receiver.
You may have seen them on new items of clothing or taped to new CD's.

Any product fitted with RFID within range of a receiver would provide information; a geo-fix and product beacon. Leading to data on; when those products were bought, how long you've owned them, how much they cost, where you bought them from.
If you kept them on your person, when you returned to refresh your product. Where else you went in between.

Some RFID have more important information.
The AMEX RFID contains personal banking information on the card holder.

The worrying thing is, RFID information is gathered without regulation.
Information can be sold on without regulation.
No Data Protection act here.

FMCG Future
With reduction of tag implementation below 1p in the near future, support from heavyweight FMCG companies, Banking and technology institutions, multiple patents filed and industry screaming out for large quantities of qualitative marketing information.
The future looks set.

Expect these snazzy labels to be appearing near you soon, whether you believe it or not.

Copied and pasted from: BBC News Website.

Peter & Paul

Thursay:- 95 billion euro
FridaY:- 61 billion euro

156 billion euro's
in sweet wrappers?

let's pray that this strategy works.

Lloyds Bank Charges

Recently received a £60 fine for going overdrawn with my bank, who have refused to repay the money.

This should be an interesting case as its receiving a lot of publicity at the moment.
I'll be using the blog to document my progress.

Links:
Lloyds Bank
Moneysaving expert

Its not much in my case, but it costs £30 to go to county court plus it doesn't take £60 to write me a letter telling me I'm overdrawn.

We'll see how it goes.

google maps polyline creator

I spent about 20 searches today trying to re-locate, the Google Maps polyline creator tool.

As well as letting you create a polyline realtime and on the fly, it is the only resource on the net which is able to give the polyco-ords interracticveley, in a hh.mm.ss.mm format, Geo RSS format.
> googlemaps polyline creator.

This facility will allow you to grab www compliant co-ordinates from anywhere world-wide.

Effect of Google Map on Site Metrics

Just out of interest, I've taken a comparison of the key indicators from before and after Googlemap's addition into the header of my blog for the New Zealand blog.

The effects highlighted on the scan.


The main indicators are Time and length of session, also, depth of session, all of which are showing good increases.

The main entry point for the site is the Netherlands blog. From Amsterdam, mostly, it's popularity stemming from the drugs and sex references in blogs and pictures such as the sex museum and the Hash museum etc.

Also another popular entry point was the Nessie blog complete with picture of Nessie which used to come up 1 or two on googleimages.

Considering the header is only present on the main blog, and I have these blogs, and another 3 blog main pages on this site for which it is not included, these stats have further to go..