"rfid" news and stories

As we've seen, wine toys that scan bar codes for the serious, and even not so serious, oenophiles are not totally new. However, RFID (radio frequency identification) is now starting to come to wine, as posted by wine blogger Dr. Vino. RFID goes beyond simply identifying a brand or group of wines by a barcode or a SKU, but actually tracks each unique bottle of wine. You may have 10 bottles of a certain Chardonnay in your cellar according to a barcode scanner, but with RFID, each bottle would show up individually.

The technology is useful, especially with rare fine wines that may be vulnerable to fraud. However, RFID sensors currently can only be placed in synthetic corks, which many of the more expensive wines don't use.

[Via Dr. Vino]

A Japanese company called VitaCraft has come out with a pan that communicates with the stove top using RFID. Simply place your recipe card under the reader, and the pan will monitor and adjust the heat on the pan according to the recipe. This is a really neat idea, but the problem is that there's simply more to recipes than heat regulation. There are just too many variables to regulate when cooking, which is probably why it's so difficult to make a robot to cook without supervision.

Another potential problem with the RFID pan is that someone could hack it to burn your shrimp. Think about it--just go around the city with a powerful RFID transmitter and burn everyone's meal!

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