>  >From what I understand, RFID is better than bar coding because you can scan
>stacks of objects all at once, and it will read right through various
>materials, so unpacking is not necessary.

Better in some circumstances. It's possible, in some instances, to
read an RFID chip from a few feeet away. For example, a tagged object
might be read as it passes through a doorway if a reader is embedded
in the door frame. Generally, readers sense the RFID chip that's
closest to the reader, so if you have a stack of chips, usually the
closest one is the one that's sensed.

I helped develop an exhibit that made use of RFID - changing the
exhibit experience depending upon where and what the visitor had
already done - and we designed around these limitations. You're
right, though, convenience of reading is substantially easier than
with barcoding. In the exhibit, the visitor only needed to be near
the reader for the RFID chip to be sensed as opposed to being
deliberately scanned like you would need with a barcode reader.

>Works on paper can have the chip attached to a rice paper hinge which gets
>pasted to the back of the work itself.  This is preferable to attaching it
>to a mat or folder, because you are actually tracking the work itself, and
>not it's housing.

There's an incredible amount of flexibility in designing the RFID
chip and antenna. They can be mounted or embedded in practially
anything and the antenna is often created using just magnetic ink or
similar, so the device can be reasonably flexible. In the exhibit, we
used a credit card sized form factor, but just as easily we could
have made a bracelet or a keychain, or a sticker, etc.

-bw.
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Director of Creative Development           v:  617.491.3184
Nearlife                                   f:  617.354.4191
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