Happy Christmas for those of you who survived Christmas turkey, ham, stuffing and all the rest of the food and drink that gets thrown at us this time of year ;)

New Year is just around the corner and we are getting ready for welcoming 2009 in and waving goodbye to 2008 as it heads for the history books.

This last year has seen a range of developments in technology which have massively broadened the application of tagging and carrying information – this is after all what the point of a tag is – to carry information.

I expect to see greater application of RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology with labeling and not just in security functions to protect goods from shop lifters but also in delivering information to consumers.  Already, there are several test programs for carrying RFID tags on food products so the customer can use a scanner provided by the store not only to automatically add the item to the bill but give the buyer a history of where the food is from, who grew or produced it, when it was made and what went into it and a host of other good stuff.  This is not so far fetched as you may think and they are already introducing this technology in the UK with leading grocery store, Sainsbury’s.

I’m also going to predict a dramatic increase in the application of biometric tagging in both identification and security functions.  Biometrics have still to achieve their full potential and there is the money in the market for it – the government is throwing huge sums not just at biometric development but in furthering the application of reliable technology.  There is just too much money being invested for this to fall flat on its face.

What else takes my fancy?

I think that there will be some of the first integrated scanning technology delivered for use in cell phones – in fact, I’ll confess, I know this is going to happen as a friend of mine writes cell phone reviews and Visa has been teaming up with several handset manufacturers so a cell phone will also be able to scan intelligent tags and act as a money payment device.  Still in its infancy but the Europeans are stepping up the momentum here and I expect we’ll catch up with them on this sooner rather than later.

That’s all from me for 2009, drive safe if you are going out to party and enjoy the holidays and we’ll see you all next year ;)

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