From the Editor's Desk

Welcome to the latest issue of the High Tech AIDCourier.

A trip to Sydney Australia for the SC 31 Plenary was the main event of the month. Sounds like a great trip except that it is winter in Australia and my first few days there saw a lot of rain. Later in the week the temperatures fell to 40 F overnight but it never failed to get back up to at least the high 60s each day – a little different from winters here in Pittsburgh, PA. Of course we had some free evenings to do a bit of sightseeing, it always seems strange to me to be sitting outside in a restaurant in winter, but we were lucky enough to do that on several nights. The meetings all went very well (see the report below); as always standards are moving forward.

The economy seems to be hitting some of our industry hard and even here in sunny Pittsburgh, we are seeing the effects with cut backs and a decrease in work. They say the consultants are always the first to go, but there are many ways that a short term consultant can save your company a lot of money. If you need help in these difficult times, visit the website to see what we do and drop me a note to steve@hightechaid.com to see if we can help you.

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E-mail me at editor@hightechaid.com and tell us what you think. Don’t forget to send this issue to your friends so that they can sign up for their own issue of the free newsletter at www.hightechaid.com. If you have news to share or info you need, let me know at news@hightechaid.com.

Technology News Briefs

RFID Standards

It has been a busy month in the standards world with the biggest meeting of the year (the SC 31 plenary) being held in Sydney, Australia. Several standards groups also had meetings. These were WG4 (RFID) and what will now be WG7 (Security for Item Management) as well as WG 4/SG 7 and WG2 (Data Syntax).

The work of SC 31 continues to grow. If you are not familiar with the work of JTC 1/SC 31, I suggest you visit http://www.hightechaid.com/stdsupdate/stds_update3.htm.

The presentations showed that we are continuing to make a lot of progress in AIDC Standards. SC 31 now has a membership of thirty-three National Bodies voting and twenty-five liaisons working within our seven Work Groups on eighty projects and standards.

Since last year four projects have advanced to Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) status, and two standards (IS) have been published (bringing the total to 47 IS since the formation of SC 31). Eleven (11) new NPs have been filed since the 2008 Plenary.

Several items of note occurred at the meetings last week:
• The formation of a new Work Group on Security for Item Management. This Work Group replaces a sub-group formed under WG4 (RFID) to allow for work on other technologies.
• Closing of WG3 (Conformance). This workgroup was previously broken up to allow the conformance work on RFID and RTLS to be done by their respective workgroups. At this meeting, WG3 was closed down completely and the bar code conformance work was moved over to WG1.
• Review of a new work item to look at possible interference of pacemakers and defibrillators by RFID devices.
• The work of IEEE 1451 (Smart Transducer Interface Standards) is being brought into ISO SC 31 and it was agreed that WG6 will take the lead on this work.

If you want more information on ISO standardization or on any issue of RFID standardization, then email steve@hightechaid.com/a>.

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