GPS Business News: A French start-up named Insiteo and specializing in indoor positioning has concluded the initial phase of a founding round valued at several million Euros. Investment has been secured from venture capital firm Emertec and a small group of private investors, including Anne-Sophie Pastel, former CEO and co-founder of auFeminin.com, with the support of ACTA Finance.

“The increase in capital will enable us to equip our first clients, including a major site in Paris attracted by the benefits of the Insiteo solution,” said Arnaud Masson, President of Insiteo. “Ours is indeed a disruptive technology able to deliver to most existing phones a perfect continuity of location services in environments where GPS is unavailable, including commercial centers, tradeshows, and industrial sites,” Mr. Masson continued.

Insiteo’s technology is an infrastructure-based solution that combines A-GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and, in some cases, FM radio to provide indoor, sub three meter positioning. “We’ve identified sites where our clients place a sufficiently high value on being able to deliver location-based information that they can justify a modest investment in site-specific infrastructure”, explained Stuart Strickland, vice president at Insiteo. “Unlike many RTLS systems – which, in some respects, this approach resembles – we do not rely upon any customized user equipment, so anyone with a phone can essentially walk in and participate”, he added.

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Integrated Solutions for Retailers: (Nicholasville, KY) Sargent and Greenleaf (S&G), a business of The Stanley Works, introduces a revolutionary new intelligent safe locking system, called Trak*iT, designed to help retailers and other cash intensive businesses reduce and prevent cash losses.

Sargent and Greenleaf’s Trak*iT solution combines expertise in safe locks with proven RFID technology and internet-based, real-time information to provide a powerful deterrent to internal theft. Using RFID, the Trak*iT system can track deposits from the POS register to deposit into the safe, to withdrawal and ultimately to the bank. All information about the deposit is captured by the Trak*iT system and pushed to the internet based Trak*iT Data Manager Service. Trak*iT™ Data Manager delivers 24/7 access to all deposit and withdrawal information and can generate predetermined exception alerts to help assure cash policies are followed.

“Cash losses in the form of missing deposits are a significant and costly problem for retailers,” states Bill Dempsey, President/COO, Sargent and Greenleaf. “Reported cash loss figures range from 0.5% to 2% of annual sales, and for large chains that operate hundreds or thousands of locations, these types of losses are a significant problem. When a deposit goes missing, either through internal theft or simply misplaced, it is usually not discovered until days later when the deposit is to be processed by the bank.”

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Reuters: HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--(Business Wire)-- Time Domain Corporation, the leader in ultra wideband (UWB) real-time location systems (RTLS), and Klever Marketing, Inc. (KLMK.OB), today announced the introduction and first installation of Klever`s Giving Cart System with Time Domain`s Precision Location Ultra Wideband System (PLUS). This enables retailers to dynamically communicate promotions and advertisements to customers as they shop, optimizing the shopping experience and driving sales.

Time Domain and Klever Marketing launched The Giving CartSystem in The Market, a privately owned Park City, Utah, supermarket this month. The system, which includes interactive, wireless display units that attach to shopping cart handles, enables The Market to target promotions to shoppers at the point-of-selection and build consumer loyalty. The units are tracked in real-time and automatically alert customers to promotions as they travel throughout the store. The Market will also use the technology to analyze consumer purchasing preferences to offer better targeted promotions and inform more strategic location of merchandise. "There has been a significant reduction in the installation cost of our updated Giving Cart," said Paul G. Begum, CEO, Klever Marketing. "The solution benefits consumers, retailers and package good manufacturers."

The Giving CartSystem is powered by Time Domain`s Precision Location Ultra Wideband System (PLUS) as each display unit contains a PLUS OEM tag. PLUS has the capability to provide 24 x 7 real-time (every second), highly precise (down to 12 inches) data on every asset in a retail store, including inventory, display units, fixtures, people and more. Attempts to field interactive shopping systems in the past have failed due to poor location accuracy, expense and lack of long lasting battery powered systems. Grocery stores have been particularly difficult retail settings to locate accurately. PLUS reaches beyond the limits of other systems, such as GPS, Zigbee and Wi-Fi, with accuracy and long battery life that is unmatched in the industry.

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Newswise: A new study on the use of radio-frequency identification tags on individual retail items shows that inventory accuracy decreases or diminishes over time with conventional systems that rely on barcodes and/or human counting to track inventory. The research, conducted by the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas, also demonstrated that the use of an RFID-enabled system could improve inventory accuracy by more than 27 percent over a 13-week period. “This project was part of a larger research effort to demonstrate and quantify the business value of RFID item-level tagging for day-to-day operations in a retail environment,” said Bill Hardgrave, director of the research center and professor of information systems in the Sam M. Walton College of Business. “The results can guide companies as they investigate whether, and to what extent, to implement RFID. The findings provide insight on how RFID can help retailers increase efficiency and thus significantly reduce expenses, which is always important but even more so in this tight economy.” The investigation included two Bloomingdale’s stores – a test store with an automated, RFID-enabled system and a control store with Bloomingdale’s inventory-management system – in a major northeastern metropolitan area. The 13-week project focused on two departments – men’s denim jeans and women’s denim jeans. To establish baseline information, physical inventory counts were taken three times per week for the first five weeks by workers using both RFID and barcode readers. For the remaining eight weeks, physical counts by workers using both types of readers were conducted two times per week.

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Security Park.NET: When IDTechEx first published the report “Apparel RFID 2009-2019”, it was able to profile 60 brand owners and retailers involved as well as detailing many uses throughout the apparel supply chain, including the widespread use of RFID in laundry. In 2009, however, adoption has accelerated, particularly for brands and retail. Avery Dennison has landed most of the tag orders in the past and it is involved in the trial at Harvey Nichols store in London which uses Motorola interrogators and in other UK retail trials.

However, many suppliers are seeing success in 2009 and the phenomenon is now truly global, with local system integrators usually involved. For example, US brand Ralph Lauren is trialling woven RFID tags in its merchandise in China as an anti-counterfeiting measure. Here are some other examples from the USA to Europe, Turkey, The Middle East, India and Japan and including shoes, jewellery, designer wristwatches and other accessories.

Krause outlet

Krause Outlet stores and sells off-season men's and women's brand-name fashions that it buys from retailers. In 2009, an RFID system now displays information regarding each garment in store windows, so shoppers can use mobile phones to reserve the clothes and then purchase them from a vending machine, instead of waiting two weeks as in the past.

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Measurement Devices: Guangzhou / Guangzhou, China -- DAILY RFID has recently upgraded its UHF Long range RFID reader, Model DL910, to enhance the user experience and durablility, with promotion price price at $780USD.
It offers a long read range of up to 15m basing on different RFID tags.
This globally-compliant, high performance UHF reader, compliant with ISO 18000-6C(EPC Gen 2) & ISO 18000-6B standards, is ideal for installation in outdoor and industrial environments.
It is an autonomous reader that can be triggered automatically to read the tags with high identification accuracy even in a multi-reader environment.
For ease of use, the UHF Long range reader is designed with a unique keyhole bracket design and mounting bracket at the back to simplify mounting on counters.
It also has multi port interfaces such as RS232, RS485, Wiegand, TIP/IP.
The Model DL910 has an impressive read range of 8m - 15m based on different RFID tags.
The Long range RFID Reader DL910 has a variety of configuration options and can cater for the demand of rapid flowing asset tracking with compliant rate up to 100 km/h.
As a result, it is suitable for use in vehicle access control, warehouse management, process automation where tags are to be read and written to at fast moving speeds.
Please visit www.rfid-in-china.com/products_702_1.html or contact DAILY RFID for more infomation about it, Their wide variety of RFID Tags and other accessories

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PR.COM: Guangzhou, China, August 15, 2009 --(PR.com)-- DAILY RFID has released mini 13.56MHz USB RFID reader in USB stick form for office environment, where laptops, PCs and smartphones are widely used. It is designed as a plug-and-play, easy-to-use device while maintaining low cost.
This USB RFID reader from Daily RFID enables a low cost platform for deploying interactive read/write applications. Communicating with your computer through USB data connection, it can read and write RFID tags meeting compliance with ISO/IEC 15693 or ISO/IEC 14443A/B protocol.
The USB RFID reader/writer can easily fit in your pocket and is compatible with devices running a variety of operating system, such as Microsoft Pocket PC 2002/2003, Microsoft Windows 98, Palm OS4.1 and LINUX etc. And it can be easily installed without complex engineering or technical know-how.

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PR.COM:
Guangzhou, China, August 08, 2009 --(PR.com)-- DAILY RFID, a Chinese leading producer of RFID hardware, unveils its new PDA based Mobile RFID reader DL710 available in LF or HF version. It delivers high performance to cater for the requirement of RFID mobile solutions, with a low price at 380USD this month.
Designed for true mobility and mobile applications, this PDA based Mobile RFID reader supports GPRS Voice and Data transfer, Bluetooth 2.0 standard, WiFi and various physical layer communication interfaces. RFID tags can be easily tracked when this Mobile RFID reader is moved throughout your operations.
The Mobile RFID reader DL710 features 400MHz Samsung S3C2440 Processor, 128MB SDRAM and 64MB Flash ROM storage to protect data from resets or even complete power loss. In addition, it suuports numerous advanced applications such as integrated barcode scanner, bluetooth and camera, thus allowing for the capture of a comprehensive range of data – including RFID tags, barcodes and images.

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ipodnn: A variety of Apple patent applications have been newly published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, exposing possibilities the company has been considering for the iPhone and iPod touch. Unusual filings include one for an RFID tag reader, which would be embedded within a handheld's touchscreen, allowing users to scan an RFID tag simply by passing the device over top. An iPod or iPhone could alternately be made to operate as a tag itself, quickly transmitting information such as personal identification.

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long island business news: Yesterday Motorola celebrated the anniversary of the barcode scanner. Today the Holtsville division of the company looks to its future. Motorola’s enterprise mobility business released its FX7400 series of radio-frequency identification readers today, a line that the company says is half the size of your average RFID reader, making it more practical for retail applications. RFID tags are different than your average barcode in that they are read using radio waves, making them scannable from a further distance. An E-ZPass tag used in automobiles so drivers can pay tolls without having to come to a complete stop at tollbooths is one example of an RFID application.

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