Mister Beacon

How is it ‘that virtually every person on the face of the earth has the ability to scan a barcode in their pocket’? Success in IoT depends on understanding how the ecosystem operates. Auto-ID is a building block at the heart of IoT and AIM is the industry group that defines auto-ID standards. It does the things that companies on their own, even giants, can’t achieve. This week we have a peek inside AIM. For ‘nearly half a century, it has provided unbiased information, educational resources and standards to providers and users of these technologies’, Barcodes, QR Codes, RFID, and Bluetooth, to name a few. Sprague Ackley, Principal R&D Engineer at Digimarc, a contributor to AIM for much of his career, points out the many parts of our lives that auto-ID enhances: think of getting packages to your door just in the nick of time, making sure your COVID vaccine has been accurately tracked and traced, or the military receiving the materials they need under incredibly difficult conditions. Now that