Next month I’m off on a whirlwind tour… From September 2nd to the 5th I’ll be in Barcelona. Then from the 7th to the 12th I’ll be in Amsterdam, after which I return to the States to attend the VMWorld conference in Vegas from the 15th to the 18th.
If anyone in Spain or the Netherlands wants to meet up to chat about RFID or whatever, drop me a comment!
So many people have been asking me on the RFID Toys forum for a way to use RFID to locate things. I’ve always told them two things: 1) RFID is an identifying technology, not a tracking technology… and 2) Check out the Loc8tor, a simple RFID based direction and range finding solution… but I’d never got my hands on one to try it out for myself, until now.
I won’t bother with a basic review, that has already been done quite well by the people over at GPS Magazine (which I find funny because it’s typical for a layman to think of RFID as some kind of GPS satellite tracking hocus pocus magic). Read their great review here: http://www.gpsmagazine.com/2008/03/loc8tor_plus_review.php?page=1 (PDF)
This is the all important “Conclusion” section of their review, which I think hit the nail right on the head:
Using the Loc8tor is like playing an electronic game of Marco Polo. Audible beeping sounds let you know whether you’re getting hotter or colder, as you move about trying to zero in on the missing Tag. There’s no direction indicator on the handheld, so you’ll have to go through a process of elimination, turning in circles and moving in various directions until the signal strength increases and the beeping noise speeds up.
The Loc8tor handheld unit feels cheaply made — one good drop and the lightweight plastic will almost certainly shatter. Worse, there’s no labels on any of the buttons to let you know what function each button performs. I did appreciate the ultra-small size of Loc8tor’s homing tags, as well as the longer-than-average battery life (2-9 months, depending on usage).
It can be somewhat frustrating (and time consuming) hunting down a tag, but it does work eventually for stationary objects such as keys, wallets, etc. However, the Loc8tor Plus system isn’t accurate enough for use on people or pets, as it takes too much time to hone in on a missing tag while you search room to room and listen for the faster/slower beeping tone.
Tracking down a stationary object is difficult, but possible with Loc8tor. Tracking down a moving target is mission impossible — especially without the benefit of an arrow or some other idicator pointing you in the right direction.
You definitely wouldn’t want to use Loc8tor to find a missing child at a supermarket or shopping mall. But if you’re always misplacing your keys or wallet (or anything else that will remain stationary while you look for it) at home, and don’t mind a slow, sonar-like room to room search, Loc8tor will help you track it down. For tracking pets and people, you’re better off looking elsewhere.
One interesting thing I noticed is the tags themselves have feedback, with a blinking light and a noisy speaker that chirps when you are trying to locate the tag. This is great when used for it’s intended purpose… locating lost keys or something. But I wanted to use this system for another purpose, one which wouldn’t necessarily benefit from a flashing, beeping tag… finding my stuff if/when it gets stolen.
Permanent tagging
Because the tags have such a limited lifespan, you don’t want to tag like 20 things and then keep a rigorous battery replacement schedule. Chances are pretty high you’ll forget once and the battery will die, then immediately thereafter the tagged item will be stolen. I don’t know about you, but most things I own that I want to track down are electronic by nature… or at least have some sort of battery power built into them that is vital for the device’s operation. Things like cell phones, laptops, motorcycles, and cars come to mind.
One great thing about the tag is once you get rid of the plastic housing, the speaker, and the batteries, the tag board is very thin. Something this small and thin would be easy to integrate into just about anything.
Cracking open a tag
With the batteries removed and the tag board exhumed from it’s plastic coffin, you can see how easy it will be to insert this small board into items like laptops and such. You can also see the integrated antenna starting on the right side of the board and wrapping around the board perimeter.
The tag and receiver use a proprietary air interface (data protocol), and operate on the 2.45GHz band. For those of you who feel daring, you could cut/gouge the antenna leads on the tag board and try coming up with a straight full wave dipole antenna to see if you could enhance the range of the system. Unless my math is wrong (which it very well could be), the full wavelength of 2.45GHz is about 12.245 centimeters. Minus 5% for velocity factor, makes each leg of a 2.45GHz full wave dipole antenna about 2.9 centimeters long, which is close to the size of the antennas on the tag board. The only thing that might be impeding performance is the fact that the integrated antenna on the tag board is wrapped around the board’s perimeter. A straight dipole antenna, like the one in the receiver, might perform better. However, I wouldn’t suggest altering the antenna… usually these things are designed to perform at their best ability and rolling your own usually results in decreased performance. I especially wouldn’t mess with the receiver antenna… it has some passive elements on the underside of the plastic slide-up lid that assist with direction finding, and messing with that messes with the entire point of the receiver.
The first thing you want to do is remove the speaker from the tag board. The tag beeps and flashes a red surface mount LED when being located, which is great for the intended purpose of finding your keys… but you don’t want the stolen merchandise giving away the fact that you’re tracking down the rats who stole it with a bunch of high pitched beeping. With the speaker and housing removed, the tag still works like a charm.
A few details not covered in the review
Just like I always say in the RFID Toys forum, tag orientation is very important. After doing some basic testing, I found that the best orientation for the tag is horizontal. A vertical tag will greatly reduce the range that the receiver will be able to pick up the tag. But, I guess the important thing really is to have the tag and the receiver on the same plane, so if you are using this system to track down something at the bottom of a giant well (a rare time when your receiver orientation would be perpendicular to the earth) then your tag should be placed vertically. This makes me wonder about just how well this tag system will work with pets if the tag will be hanging down (vertically) from the pet’s collar. I’m sure it will still work, but not at the full range advertised on the box (600 feet). Truthfully, even with a tag placed horizontally on my all wood front porch, I get about 1/3 that range (200 feet).
Because we’re dealing with a very weak signal in the 2.45GHz band, metal plays a big role in interfering with the tag’s signal. Putting anything metallic close to or even anywhere between the tag and the receiver will interfere with read range. A simple bench test showed this… I placed the receiver at one end of my 8 foot wooden workbench, and a tag at the other. With the bench cleared, I got a great signal from the tag, but as I started adding metallic objects to the bench, the signal got noticeably worse. The worst interference I could induce came from placing a metallic object directly next to or under the tag, so affixing a tag to a metal object will greatly reduce the range of the tag.
In the review, they describe the 2-8 month (depending on usage) expected battery life for a tag as “excellent”, which I is horrible compared to most active RFID tags which have a tag life of anywhere between 1 to 5 years. On the bright side though, these tags are smaller than many active RFID tags and they have user replaceable batteries.
Another thing noted in the review is that the tags are very small. Sure they are as small as the batteries inside will let them be, but they will still look and feel pretty bulky when affixed to most items, and I really don’t see how you’re supposed to stuff one of these things into your wallet.
In fact, with orientation issues, metallic interference, and tag battery life being what they are, I can see issues with all the advertised uses displayed on the front of the Loc8tor box. For my purposes though, I can plan around or completely sidestep these issues.
Permanently embedding the tag
The tag uses a PIC 16F636 (the smaller IC) which has a specific operational voltage range depending on the frequency of the clock being used. Even though I tested a tag running at 5v from a regulated power supply for 48 hours with no apparent loss in signal quality, I figured I would do well to get my hands on a 3v voltage regulator so I ordered a few samples.
The first thing I wanted to tag was my tablet PC. The industry is trying to move away from that term, but it still describes a certain class of notebooks with a pivoting screen and ultra-thin design. My HP 2710p is no exception. Stuffing a tag into this thing should prove to be interesting, but if it can be done on this thin of a notebook, it should be a snap to embed one of these tags into any standard laptop or notebook.
To be able to get a tag into the notebook, I need to protect the tag circuitry and 3v regulator. My first idea was to piggyback the 3v regulator onto the tag itself, however that proved to introduce too much interference and the range of this modified tag was drastically reduced. So I opted to put the 3v regulator in-line with the power supply leads.
To protect and insulate the tag itself, I turned to my old friend PlastiDip. It comes it two forms, spray and dip. Both application methods have their uses, but for this type of application nothing beats the dip.
After one coat it looks pretty cool, but the rubber is thin. I always double dip for added protection.
Different tag board revisions yield different results
After opening up all the tags I received with the Loc8tor Plus receiver, I started playing with the two tags that come in the Loc8tor mini homing tag 2-pack and immediately noticed something strange. The 2-pack tags were different than the ones that came with the receiver. It turns out the tags that came in the 2-pack “look” older, but the opposite may actually be true. After opening and testing several tags of both types, the tags that came in the 2-pack seem to be a better board revision because there are less parts on the board and the tag’s range is noticeably better. In the picture below, the tag on top is from the 2-pack and the tag below it came with the receiver.
After discovering this, I ordered 2 more packs so I’d have a total of 6 “good” tags. I wanted to put one of these longer range tags in my tablet PC so I fitted one with 3v in-line regulator and rubberized it in preparation for installation.
The installation
Unfortunately I got too excited and forgot to take pictures of the disassembly process. I basically took apart the tablet and searched for a void I could squish the tag into. Luckily I found a spot that was just about perfect. The tablet’s CMOS battery is located just under the palm of your left palm when typing on the tablet’s keyboard, and I figured I could jam the tag right next to it. That location is also very close to the Li-ion battery terminals. After sizing up the tag’s location, I soldered the power supply leads to the battery terminals of the laptop. Even if the laptop battery is dead as a doornail, as long as it’s in the laptop it should still have enough current available to power the Loca8tor tag, which perfectly illustrates the beauty of embedding the tag into a battery powered device.
Before I closed it up, I did some testing. I was able to stand in the parking lot and track down my tablet PC sitting at my desk in my office at work.
I then placed the tablet PC in my car and tested range. Being in the car reduced the range a bit, but I could still get a signal and track it down from a reasonable distance.
- update -
After closing up the 2710p I did more testing. Having the notebook powered up and connected via 802.11g wifi doesn’t seem to affect performance of the tag, which is good. I was worried that the 2.45GHz Loc8tor tag would get a lot of interference from the built in wifi, but that doesn’t appear to be the case at all.
I was thinking a bit about RFID and personal privacy today and a simple yet powerful truth slowly dawned on me. The root of the RFID privacy issue in this country is, quite simply: You have no right to privacy, not when it comes to personal or private enterprise.
The constitutional right to privacy that I (and pretty much everyone else I know) seem to think exists as an inalienable right, actually doesn’t exist verbatim. The supposed “Right to Privacy” I took for granted is actually collection of amendments in the Bill of Rights that, when culminated and interpreted in the right way, amount to protection of personal privacy. However, nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights is the word “privacy” actually found. What’s more, and this is the important bit, the implied protection of privacy found in the Bill of Rights only applies to government. It does not apply to citizens or private companies.
If you just paused for a moment of realization, join the club. When that fact slowly dawned on me, I was actually taken aback by my own blatantly ignorant assumptions. What this means, in no uncertain terms is, massive data collection companies like CheckPoint, Equifax, and Experian (etc.) are not breaking any constitutional law by amassing obscene amounts of personal information about you they can glean from every piece of paper you’ve ever signed your name to from your library card to your supermarket loyalty card to your mortgage papers. In many ways, these companies are not unlike stalkers… only they masquerade as legitimate authorities when it comes to your personal and financial “viability”.
An even scarier prospect is that these companies are branching out into the “private CIA” space, capturing and recording personal information much more intrusive than only every single financial decision you’ve ever made. Now these companies are actively trading information with local law enforcement, offering free “credit check terminals” on every single desk in entire police districts, in exchange for police data. They want every piece of information the police have, whether it’s accurate or not. They want to know if someone was brought in, even if no charges are actually filed. They want to know if someone gives a statement, if they get a parking ticket, if they sneeze and a police officer hears it. They want it all, and they are getting it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get data feeds from the license plate and face-recognition cameras monitoring city streets so they can even get your last physical location if a client was willing to pay for it (the full meal deal). Many states are now using these companies to verify people’s addresses (pdf) when they get a drivers license. Doesn’t it concern anyone that private companies now have so much power that an egregiously flawed credit reporting system can not only deny you getting a mortgage, but now it can even deny you getting a drivers license?
Back when I was going hot and heavy with platform development for txtGroups (my endeavor into the mobile space) I started looking into location based services and found it frighteningly easy to get set up with access to LBS information. I could query a database and find out the approximate latitude and longitude of pretty much any cell phone I wanted. If I can get access to that data for only a buck a query, you can bet your ass these companies have got to be involved with LBS in some capacity. How is that not an illegal privacy violation of some kind?
The Bill of Rights implies a right to privacy, and with several Supreme Court cases to back that up, it’s clear that at least the government must keep it’s nose out of your private business. But how exactly is access to this privately collected data regulated when various US Federal government departments like the Department of Homeland Security are these companies’ biggest clients? All this local and federal government use and sharing of personal data with these companies doesn’t just blur the privacy line, it obliterates it.
I really wanted to bring this around to RFID and the privacy issues surrounding it, so I’ll get back on track here. A couple years ago an interesting paper was submitted to the DHS for review called “The Use of RFID for Human Identification” (pdf), which basically states that the benefits of using RFID for human identification are outweighed by the privacy issues/risks. This paper obviously caused some hubbub, the best of which I found here at the RFID Law Journal blog (pdf).
But putting all that government RFID privacy invasion hubbub aside for a moment, the fact that private companies can ruthlessly collect and share/sell any and all information about you it can find/buy/trade/coerce, with no regulations as to the accuracy of, who they sell it to, or for what purpose that data is used for… that really is the heart of the RFID privacy argument for me. It would be, and probably already is, just another tool these companies (and the government by proxy) use to collect more and more data about you, your whereabouts, and your existence itself.
I try to be careful with my own personal information, but even vigilant privacy advocates get sloppy with their info from time to time. It simply can’t be helped in a society that, since the 50s, has been built from the ground up on marketing to desires over needs and improving the information gathering techniques used to further that process. But now information itself has become the most profitable product a company may have, and with our own government becoming a partner in the data aggregation business, you can bet a symbiotic machine as cold, efficient, and profitable as this will be impossible to stop.
I really have no reason to post this, other than I thought it was funny for a customer service person to have even an inkling of a sense of humor, and to play along… that was a priceless moment in an otherwise hectic day.
==================================================
Agent: Hello, I’m a Sprint products and services online specialist. May I help you pick the plan that is best for you?
Me: Hello Jessica, are you a real person or are you a robotic android sent from a far away galaxy to trick me into buying mobile services from the evil empire of Zop?
Agent: I fled from Zop a long time ago.
Me: Excellent. In that case, I’m wondering about mobile broadband as a backup to our DSL line.
Me: I’ve been looking at this page.
Agent: I can help you with that. First; may I move this chat to the top of the window? It will be out of the way and I can stay with you in case you run into any problems or if you have any questions. Is that okay?
Me: movement of the window would be fine with me.
Agent: Great!
Agent: Can you see the page below?
Me: Hmm, my Firefox browser didn’t seem to like that. Try again?
Me: Perfect. I can see the window.
Agent: Are you currently a Sprint customer?
Me: I’m a Sprint customer personally, but this is a business inquiry for a client of mine.
Agent: Have you had or used a broadband wireless device before?
Me: I was wondering; this client has Qwest DSL at two locations, and they want to get two mobile broadband cards (one for each location). I have two questions: 1) Is there a price discount if they have two mobile broadband cards and data service plans on their account, and 2) Is there a different, lower data usage plan they could sign up for since they would not be using these data cards as their primary Internet connection?
Agent: We’re running a great new promotion, when you purchase with me online today you’ll get an extra $50 off every device you purchase.
Agent: That’s in addition to any rebates that may be available for the device you choose. Plus, we’ll waive the $36 activation fee and the shipping fees for each device.
Agent: The boradband card would be on a different plan than the phones, but we do not have any specials on the prices of plans, currently we have the 5GB plan for 59.99 a month.
Me: Hmm, that sounds good but they are not ready to purchase just yet. I’m just doing the footwork at this point.
Me: Ok, thanks for your help Jessica. I pray you never have to return to Zop.
Agent: It’s a bad place.
Man, I love nothing more than to come across effed up signs. Some make me angry as I spout off about how tolerant of mediocrity this country is becoming… but some make me just straight up laugh, like this one:
Other signs down right scare me. I cross the Canadian border occasionally and the total lack of intelligence there when it comes to signage really does scare me. Most of the signs don’t really matter, like this one:
This sign clearly states that the port is open from 8AM to Noon… but what they really mean is that it’s open until Midnight (12AM). If you read that sign and took it at face value, then you might be miffed if you drove to another port because you thought this one was closed at 1pm. Another sign though really has me confused and what’s worse is, I’ve not been able to get a clear answer about it yet either. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of this sign yet. It’s a sign that states:
Ok, this sign has all kinds of problems with it… does this mean US currency? What if I had Australian or Canadian dollars and the exchange rate was really bad? Also, the sign clearly states that I don’t have to declare anything if I am carrying exactly $10,000. However, the penalty for not declaring is possible confiscation of the entire amount, and possibly being detained and/or not let into the country (and getting flagged). These are serious punishments, and it brings into question what actually represents the law.
Can this government issued and posted sign be considered “the law”, or is a passage in some law book in the Library of Congress really the one and only true law. Any lawyers in the crowd?
For just over $100, you can go down to your local computer/consumer electronics store and pick up a nifty little Linksys IP webcam that does a fair job as an indoor security/monitoring solution. However, I ended up using one outside, mounted under the eve of my garage.
The only problems I’ve seen with using the camera outside are: 1) the motion detection system is way too sensative to things like ambient light changes (clouds moving overhead, cars driving by shining reflections or shadows, etc.) and if I turn on the motion system on I’m always getting alerts… and 2) the camera is not sealed for outdoor use so if you don’t mount it in a well protected area, expect your IP webcam to be converted into a nicely mounted piece of black plastic artwork in no time.
The thing runs off 5v and just about 1A and has both wired Ethernet and WiFi connectivity options. Because I have my main network switch mounted in my garage attic, I opted to go with the wired option, but I didn’t want to run network and power, so I improvised my own non-standard PoE system.
I’ve had problems getting decent monitoring software to work with this camera, but that’s ok because the camera comes with some alright software of it’s own. Aside from the motion detection and alerting capabilities built right into the device, there is also some basic monitoring/recording/playback software that comes with the camera that will support up to 9 IP cameras. Even though it’s not documented (or maybe it’s just hidden well), you can also directly pull images and video feeds via special URLs (no audio though).
Image snapshot
http://camera/img/snapshot.cgi
Options: ?size=S&quality=Q
Size:
1 = 160×128
2 = 320×240
3 = 640×480
Quality:
1 = very high
2 = high
3 = normal
4 = low
5 = very lowMotion JPEG
http://camera/img/mjpeg.htm
http://camera/img/video.mjpeg
http://camera/img/mjpeg.cgiVideo feed
http://camera/img/video.asf
rtsp://camera/img/video.sav
With all this great cheap technology at my disposal, I put it to work right away. I wanted to find out which pet of ours was leaving little presents for us on the stairs. Literally minutes after setting up the poo cam and going out for a walk, I had my answer.
I got the image stream on my phone via email alert. He was quite surprised when I came straight in from my walk and kicked his little ass. It was like “How did you know!?”. On that day I truly became doggy god to him, but that hasn’t stopped him from slipping up occasionally. I can’t wait to rip out the carpets and replace it all with hardwood. Pets and carpet just doesn’t mix no matter how well trained your pets are.
For just about as long as I can remember, I’ve worked for myself doing my own thing. Things really started out with a company called The Guild Inc., a dial-up access company back when dial-up was cool and 28.8k modems ruled the day. I dropped out of college (don’t worry, it was only community college) to start a company with a friend of mine named Jester. Yep. Jester. There we were, Amal and Jester. Two kids barely 17 and 19 with totally effed up names and no experience, trying to run a serious business. We had the technical knowledge, personal drive, and overall commitment to make it succeed… but in the end our infighting, teenage management skills, poor direction from the board (”adults”), and ultimately the entry of Verizon and other telcos into the space basically killed us on the spot. After a failed attempt at a sale of the company, we just gave up our users and domain name (tgi.net) to a rival company, who seem to still doing well to this day.
I went from there to Boeing, where I worked as a temp for probably way too long. While I was there I met a guy interested in starting a web hosting and development company. We called it Morpheus Inc.. The name Morpheus was chosen not after the guy in The Matrix (we thought it up well before The Matrix came out), and not because we made file sharing software, but after the Greek God of Dreams. To this day I still get calls from people upset because they can’t figure out how to download music. It was a very rocky start, but we did alright for a bit there… and then the company started nosediving. As cheaper and cheaper hosting services started cropping up, and with a partner who basically jumped ship to go work at Microsoft, it wasn’t looking good. As a final act of kindness, I took the last chunk of change in the bank account and bought out that partner for, well, not very much money. So, with basically $0 in the bank, I shutdown our website and powered off the web server it was running on. I still had some support type work I was doing for clients, but it was not sustainable… it was too feast or famine, and it involved a lot of driving around, which you can only do so much of in a day and still make money.
Things looked grim… until I took a road trip to the Northwest Renewable Energy Festival in Walla Walla Washington. There I heard a speech from Amory Lovins of the Rockey Mountain Institute. During the speech, he talked about the concept of “products as a service”. The example he gave that I remember so well was carpet. Nobody wants to own carpet. Nobody wants the burden of ownership when it comes to cleaning it or replacing it when it goes bad. They just want something to walk on that is soft on the feet and looks nice. Then he went on to talk about a company that was providing modular carpet as a service, where you would pay a small monthly fee and they would come out and check your carpet every once in a while, replacing stained or worn carpet for free as part of the service by simply removing the carpet module and replacing it. This business model then allowed for the easy recycling of carpet modules and reuse of those recycled modules once they had been reconditioned/recycled, which was all good for the planet.
As I sat there listening, this whole service approach got me thinking about computer support and the reasons companies need it. Right there in the auditorium seat I came up with a plan to supply managed computing services to the medical industry that would remove the cost and burden of ownership of owning and operating a PC based network. I gathered a few clients and worked out the details and overcame various hurdles and was doing alright… and then, disaster… divorce. If you’ve ever seen a train hit a brick wall, that’s pretty much what happened to my business. Being a one-man show has it’s weaknesses, and the biggest one is the guy holding everything up. It was a hard hit, and after I picked up what was left I managed to keep existing clients up and running (many still are today), but I had to move on to something different.
While building Morpheus back up with this managed service approach, I had been doing side work for a wireless/mobile messaging company called WireCutter. They were involved creating mobile marketing campaigns for various radio stations, sending SMS text messages to mobile phones. I had an idea for a more public use group messaging application, but they were focused on their market… so I started my own company called txtGroups. I poured my life savings into keeping myself alive (you know, eating, lights, heat, etc.) while I worked non-stop on building the business and messaging platform. I made one mistake though, I hedged my bets on a premium mobile service based on non-impulse buys. It turns out people are happy to pay $1.25 one time to get a horoscope or stupid mobile joke sent to their phone, rather than pay $1.00 to get a joke each week at $0.25 per joke. I guess there’s something about seeing all those $0.25 cent charges on the bill that just eats at a person’s soul. Even though the overall cost is less, and they get more for it, seeing a flat $1.25 or in some cases $3.50 or more for a single stupid impulse buy is somehow better than seeing a single dollar’s worth of individual $0.25 charges. Honestly though, we had some pretty good content from some great companies… it was just a matter of getting those companies to market their own mobile services (provided via txtGroups’ messaging platform). A couple of them did a great job and they accumulated the most mobile subscribers, but it just wasn’t fast enough to break even before the cash ran out. My bank account was again down to zero, the investment I was able to gather together from outside sources had come and gone, and I was utterly burnt out. I had worked non-stop for years on everything from being CEO to DBA to floor sweeper… it was time to hang it up for a bit and focus on finding a buyer for the company and the sweet mobile messaging platform I built… So once again I found myself in the familiar position of having to shut down the server that maintained connections to the mobile carriers’ SMSCs and figure out what to do next.
But a guy’s gotta eat, so I started poking around my home turf for a day job. While sitting in a local sushi place, I spied an old client sitting across the way. This particular client had her own business troubles a few years back and eventually ended up going bankrupt on me. It wasn’t the first client that had gone bankrupt and left me holding an AR balance to try and write off, but it was definitely the largest amount I’d ever been stiffed for. As I finished my meal, I found myself in one of those classic “remain cranky and walk out, or just go over and say hi” moments. I decided to just let it go and make my presence known. She was surprised to see me, and was probably just as surprised I made a point to come say hi. We chatted nicely for a bit and she told me to call her up so we could talk some more. She gave me her phone number on a chunk of paper, which I stuffed in my wallet and thought “yeaaahhhh, we’ll see”.
When clearing out my wallet a couple weeks later, again I had one of those “call her, or toss it” moments. I ended up just calling her and eventually she invited me over to chat and meet her fancy new boyfriend, who I heard was possibly in the market for a consultant to help some people at his company out with some kind of database problem. We chatted for a bit… all the usual “what are you doing now, etc.” type talk, where I mentioned that I was job hunting. Then they invited and Jennifer (my fancy new wife 2.0) and I over for a upcoming get-together with a guest list that would include company members involved with the aforementioned database problem.
One thing led to another and suddenly, at the insistence of my past client’s fancy new boyfriend and another co-owner, I found myself sitting as Director of IT for OutBack Power Systems. I’ve been working overtime there for just about 9 months now trying to sort out the IT department, fight typical support fires, and keep up with a company growing so fast they are just about bursting at the seams. I’ve been so busy I’ve barely had time to do anything else… but things are slowly coming together, and I’ve never enjoyed working a corporate gig as much as I do here. The people are awesome, and the company does something I actually believe in.
When I finally came to the realization that I was too fried to survive off my own business merits and I’d have to get a day job somewhere, my sparkling new wife asked me what kind of industry I wanted to work in. I told her I wanted to work with something involving alternative energy… fuel cells, electric cars, solar panels… that kind of thing. Electricity fascinates me because it is something that can do just about anything with from powering satellites in space to moving us around in electric vehicles… and it’s possible to create in so many different ways, from solar panels to hamsters on generator wheels.
Now that things are more or less under control at OutBack, I need to reign in my personal life and take care of my other commitments. I need to decide whether to find some business partners to take over txtGroups and pursue a different business model with, or continue to try to sell it off. Anyone wanna buy a sweet mobile messaging platform?
Well, thanks to my own lack of research on the subject, I was spouting off in complete ignorance with my last post. Shortly after publishing my off-base semi-rant, Brad Oldenburg the CTO of ShopperTrak left me a comment (see below). I guess ShopperTrak uses cameras to count people, not RFID to track tagged items going in and out of the store… how embarrassing. I guess I should really check into these things before posting. I had no idea anyone was even reading this stuff 
——— Brad Oldenburg ———
ShopperTrak cameras do not use RFID to track individuals. They are used to count shoppers entering and exiting stores but do not do so through the use of RFID. Please follow the attached link for further information.
http://www.shoppertrak.com/products_orbit.php
——— /Brad Oldenburg ———
While this fact makes me look like a total ass (which I am from time to time), it doesn’t invalidate the entire contents of my previous post, so I left it up unaltered. Now it’s time to head to The Gap and mess with the people counting camera.
I happened to find myself in the local mall the other day and was pulled into The Gap by the horde I happened to be traveling with that day. As we were exiting, I noticed a little ShopperTrak box above the door and snapped a bad, grainy camera-phone photo of it.
Usually these types of things are kept hidden, with only an unmarked smooth circle of plastic flush with the ceiling tile to give away it’s presence. I was actually a little shocked that with all the hubbub going on about RFID and privacy that The Gap would actually place this device right out in the open, especially with a name like ShopperTrak stenciled right on the side in huge letters and oriented toward the exiting shoppers so it’s plainly readable by anyone who cared to glance up. After snapping the photo, I turned around to see if anyone noticed me pausing to point my phone up at the device and wait there to get a pic… and of course, everyone was oblivious. That’s when I remembered that your average Gap shopper is not of the mindset that would care about this kind of thing, let alone be able to gather all the obtuse concepts like wireless unique identification (RFID), shopper privacy invasion, cattle management, etc. in their head while gazing at that box with those nice big letters on it and possibly comprehend what it means.
Hell, just about everyone I run into knows about the little RFID tags sewn into their clothes with the words “remove before wearing”, and yet they still have these tags sitting in just about every piece of clothing they own. I guess that’s the loophole right there… why bother to hide it when nobody cares anyway. By keeping things obvious, privacy advocates don’t really have much ground to stand on when the tags in clothes are hard to miss and have the words “remove before wearing”, and the tracking devices are placed in plain sight and in such a way that any idiot who looked at it could read “ShopperTrak” and be able to figure out they are being tracked somehow.
One of my pet peeves is bad grammar. In particular, I hate the use of the term “irregardless”, and I hate even more that this word is now accepted by spell checking mechanisms as a real word. It’s not a fucking word. Regarded and regardless are words. Saying irregardless is a combination of irrespective and regardless, and it is a double negative. When people say the word irregardless, what they are really saying is regarded or regarding, and it’s about as stupid as saying “I ain’t no dummy”. When people say the word I literally want to punch them square in the mouth from whence it came.
My fear is that irregardless will culturally evolve much in the same way that inflammable has. The word inflammable actually means flammable or able to become inflamed, look it up. The sad thing is that many people believe it means non-flammable. At least the dictionary has it right on this word. The same can’t be said for irregardless in some dictionaries.
Anyway, this kind of thing really peeves me. Most people say it doesn’t matter because you can still understand the meaning behind the words due to general acceptance and the context of their statement. Some days ago I was walking through my local Safeway supermarket and my eyes caught sight of this sign:
The sign clearly states in plain English that the items in the cart are half off the marked price (50% off). However, I knew that the retard who wrote the sign meant to say that the items in the cart were already half off and the items were “priced as marked”. This sign has several grammatical errors which add up to a big difference in price at the register. I have no idea what the hell the second line is all about. Perhaps they mean to say that your club card is required only for books in the clearance cart.
It turns out I wanted a couple items from the cart, so I tossed them into my basket and headed toward the checkout line. As I rounded the corner I saw one line being worked by an older gentleman who happened to be a manager filling in for a checker. At that moment, I decided to make an ill-advised point. I ran back to the cart and took a picture of the sign with my camera phone. I ran back, got in line, and waited for my chance.
Finally I was watching as one by one my items made their way from belt to scanner to cart. Then it happened, the thermometer I picked out of the cheap bin hit the scanner. The price flashed up on the screen just as the price tag stated; $2.00. Luckily, this Safeway is a 24 hour place of business, and I like to shop late so there was nobody behind me. I called a halt to the procession of groceries over the scanner and commented that the thermometer was priced at $1.00 due to the fact it was in the clearance bin and the sign clearly stated it was 50% off the marked price. The manager looked at me blankly and said “this is priced as marked”, to which I responded by pulling out my blackberry with the image of the sign still sitting on the screen. Just as you might expect, this did nothing to persuade the manager from his stance that the item was priced as marked. After some minor protesting and further grumbling about the state of education in our country, I paid the $2.00 for the thermometer and was on my way.
I know we’re only dealing with paltry items in a supermarket clearance cart here, but the fact is the kids growing up today will be writing the business and real estate contracts of tomorrow. Canadian company Rogers Telecommunications found this out the hard way.
What’s more disturbing is the fact that two days later, I decided to test one of the younger Safeway clerks with a simple test concerning the stuff she dealt with every day… money. I held up a $10 bill, covering the name, and asked who that guy was. She looked for a moment and said “Benjamin Franklin”? I countered with “No, his name is Alex… Alex who?”… this got another blank stare and a shrug. Finally I just said it “Alexander Hamilton”. That wasn’t so bad, not a lot of people know who’s on the $10 bill anyway, even with a hint. So, I lowered the bar considerably and held up a penny and asked “Who’s this?”. Again, a blank stare, a pause, and again the answer of “Benjamin Franklin?” comes out of her mouth. This time I was actually stunned. For Christ’s sake there’s even a Wendy’s commercial on TV all about 99 Lincolns and $0.99 burgers. I figured she’d at least have a current reference. Alas, this time I was the one with the blank stare. All I could say was “Are you the one who wrote the sign on the clearance cart over there?”
