Evan Schuman

Eight days after it said it was preparing for an IPO on a day-to-day basis, Alien Technology—which had been granted the RFID trading symbol—has given up the attempt, according to a statement the company issued on Aug. 4. “Alien Technology Corporation today announced that the company has withdrawn its Registration Statement on Form S-1 with […]

A free product coupon is a free product coupon, right? If its for the same product at the same merchant and the pricing and timing are roughly the same, it shouldnt matter how that coupon is given to the merchant. Andrew Kamps, the vice president of operations at a New York restaurant chain, recently learned […]

After stepping back from its planned initial public offering on July 28 to “when market conditions improve,” an Alien Technology executive defended the companys manufacturing yield and why the companys IPO was delayed. Linda Prosser, Aliens corporate marketing vice president, said the company had always been slated to launch its IPO July 28 and that […]

Alien Technology, which grabbed the coveted “RFID” trading symbol, was scheduled to launch its initial public offering July 27, but then moved to July 28. Now, however, it has “decided to postpone its IPO due to market conditions,” Alien spokesperson Sue Barnes said in an e-mail to reporters. Barnes stressed that this is not necessarily […]

In whats been called the self-checkout diet plan, retailers are learning the unintended consequences of self-checkout systems, as they see sales of candy, Hollywood tabloids, batteries and other checkout lane impulse items plummet. A small part of the answer for this phenomena is that retailers are typically opting to not put such impulse items next […]

Visa on July 21 changed its retail security requirement structure, which will—because of a change in definition of what a qualifying transaction is—force more retailers to use its more stringent security procedures. The core change includes all transactions when determining what level a retailer should be; Visa uses four levels to group retailers based on […]

There are many Web sites today that are designed to empower consumers, often ostensibly against the interest of big business, whether those are major retailers, government agencies or large publishers. Some of the more interesting ones help consumers get around mandatory free site registration—such as BugMeNot—or get to a human voice when locked inside voice-system […]

A new report from industry analyst firm Aberdeen Group does not bring a lot of optimistic news for RFID proponents. The report predicts that companies will have trouble in areas such as finding sufficiently experienced RFID (radio-frequency identification) personnel, migrating to the use of biometrics and other new data-collection methods, and scaling RFID to the […]

With high turnover being as much a part of an industrial kitchen as cracked pepper, the chief financial officer (and acting CIO) of the Fuddrucker chain of restaurants often looks for ways to get control of his training budget. CFO Matt Pannek thinks he may have found a tasty answer in a couple of hundred […]

When Wal-Mart corporate wants to change a policy or procedure, its fond of trying it in a small way in an out-of-the-way place to see if it works. After all, even a small pilot for the $312 billion retail empire can be fairly massive by mere mortal standards. So it was with interest that I […]

On a busy Saturday night, a good bartender makes a lot of money for the bars owner, but an overly generous bartender—or one fond of pouring free drinks for friends—can cost the owner even more. A Miami-based 7-year-old beverage-monitoring software company is drinking from the keg of RFID and is selling a tilt switch that […]

Despite the traditional mantra that item-level tagging makes sense when the price drops below 5 cents, and preferably below 1 cent, a major global consulting firm, IDTechEx, has found that the average price is 40 cents, compared with an average 18-cent price for pallet and case tags. The fact that the initial item-level tag prices […]