CNet: The watershed moment for RFID

In about 15 months, companies selling goods to Wal-Mart will have to use Radio Frequency ID (RFID) at the pallet and case level. While Wal-Mart (for now) stops short of using the technology on individual items, if you look further down the road, it's probable that products will become smarter about themselves. They will, essentially, carry their metadata with them in a fashion similar to many online products.

This will provide opportunities as well as privacy challenges to marketers. We'll probably want to integrate that product and purchase-related data with online applications such as customer relationship management. As a customer, I almost never fill in those postcards to get product support from vendors, but maybe a RDIF scanner will make it to consumer homes eventually. Just because the Cuecat was a failure doesn't mean some of the underlying ideas don't have merits.