Evan Schuman

Early on the morning of Oct. 10, reports started circulating that German police had arrested a man they accused of being Osama bin Ladens Webmaster. It was at that moment that I realized how different a war this is and how the Internet—and particularly its multimedia-friendly Web component— truly has changed all. Imagine if during […]

As retailers and consumer goods manufacturers struggle with achieving the supply-chain nirvana of complete item-level tagging, $60 billion aerospace giant Boeing has gotten item-level RFID to soar, with 2,000 high-memory passive tags in every plane of an upcoming line. Boeings item-level RFID efforts are intriguing because of their scope, but also because of the extreme […]

A major trade group on Tuesday unveiled new e-commerce product format guidelines, which might help consumers more accurately compare products. But first, retailers have to reverse their proprietary ways. The new standard data exchange formats were introduced by the ARTS (Association for Retail Technical Standards), which is a part of the NRF (National Retail Federation). […]

A new Web gift card exchange could shake up the gift card space, with cards selling to consumers for less than face value and retailers getting the gift that keeps on giving: previously unavailable data on who is using these cards. Trying to address the hundreds of millions of dollars lost each year in gift […]

As the established large e-commerce sites pour millions of dollars into security and enterprise-league hardened point-of-sale systems, cyber-crooks have been giving more attention to much smaller and less well-protected merchants. Those smaller merchants cant even necessarily protect themselves by opting to not have a Web site, as the thieves are grabbing credit card information as […]

Some of the biggest names in retail and consumer goods—including Wal-Mart, Kroger, Walgreens, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Disney, Kelloggs and Miller Brewing—have gotten together to make a sort of Nielsen Ratings for retail aisles. The concept, which has been the subject of a major trial with 10 stores, is not especially cutting-edge. Using no more […]

When a federal judge in California agreed that a lawsuit from the National Federation for the Blind can proceed against Target, e-commerce executives should have breathed a collective sigh of relief. The lawsuit essentially argues that Targets online operation violated the American with Disabilities Act because it is not designed to be easily accessible to […]

When Amazon.com has server problems, it shares them with other key retail players, including Target.com and Borders.com. At least thats the e-commerce lesson those three retailers—and perhaps others—are learning this week. All three retailers began seeing a sharp drop in server response times starting Sept. 20, at about 9 a.m. Eastern, according to sources familiar […]

David King, CIO of the $2.7 billion Regal Entertainment Group with theaters in 40 states, faces a challenge that is a combination of arithmetic and consumer incentives—that is, to get the throngs of movie-goers through the concession lines before their movies begin. However, beyond staggering movie start times and trying to get people to arrive […]

Recent changes to credit card security requirements reflect a maturing of the payment standards, with wireless monitoring rules made more stringent while file software integrity monitoring frequency and the encryption demand have both been softened. “This is a bow to reality,” Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who now specializes in retail security issues, in […]

Two huge global retailers—Wal-Mart and Germany-based The Metro Group—pledged Sept. 12 to only support Gen 2 systems from now on, in a move that one RFID analyst said is intended to do some damage control because of an RFID “pullback” from another global retailer, U.K.-based Tesco. Wal-Mart opened the day by issuing a statement from […]

Germany-based retail giant The Metro Group this summer started quietly experimenting with a radical change in supermarket layout and procedure: physically separating where groceries get scanned and where customers make their payments. The move is designed to both cut costs and accelerate customers through the checkout process, said Gerd Wolfram, the groups chief technology officer […]