RFID: Am I Just Lucky?

Given my past coverage of RFID technology, and my admittedly pessimistic (and some might say, paranoid) opinion of its help-vs-harm potential, you can probably imagine how speedily and strongly Engadget’s late-July report that the Consumer Electronics Show would be ‘going RFID’ in 2008 caught my eye. Evan Blass’s follow-on writeup yesterday confirmed that, at least in his case, the rumours were true. It prompted me to open up my envelope from the CES, which I’d received last week.

As you can see from the above images, however (copied to my computer using a slick little memory card reader from Kingston; apologies for the out-of-focus second one), my conference badge is of the traditional magnetic strip flavour. Why? Is it because EDN is first and foremost a ‘traditional’ print publication, whereas Engadget is representative of the ‘radical’ new online-only media? Did I get special treatment because I’m once again a CES Innovations Award judge this year, or because I’ve been attending CES more years than I care to recall, thankyouverymuch?

I dunno…but I’m not arguing! Happy weekend, all.