Microsoft has announced its bet on RFID, a wireless technology to identify products which, according to experts, will replace the current bar codes. This technology promises to become the communication standard for retailers in the future.

Among other applications, RFID will enable companies to track products permanently and, in this way, to have real time accounting of inventory or to avoid shoplifting.

The announcement by Microsoft, which has already signed agreements with retailer chains such as US 7-Eleven, comes after that made public by IBM, Philips and Intel.

RFID, a Mature Technology in a Varying Industry
This wireless technology to identify products is appearing as a substitute for current bar codes. However, is the distribution sector ready to assume this technological challenge? Javier Vello, Senior Manager of PwC, pauses to reflect on the obstacles this sector has to overcome to adopt the RFID technology.
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Title: Estadística sobre actividades en I+D 2002
Source: Fundación Cotec and INE
Date: January 2004
Abstract: Spain invested €7,193 million in Research and Developmemt (R+D) in 2002. For the first time, Spain has topped 1% of the GNP in R+D, now standing at 1.03%. This is the major finding of a survey about R+D investment conducted by the Cotec Foundation and the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE).
The report highlights that companies finance 49.6% of R+D activities, while 39.1% is paid for by the Government. Funds coming from foreign countries account for 6.8% and Universities chip in with 4.5%.
However, private capital expenditure only overcomes government spending in seven Autonomous Communities: Aragón, Castilla y León, Cataluña, Madrid, Navarra, País Vasco and La Rioja. In fact, Madrid, País Vasco, Cataluña and Navarra are the communities most involved in R+D activities, investing more than 1% of the GNP. The total R+D investment grew by 10.7% compared to 2001.
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Title: 2004 Invention Index
Source: Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT)
Date: January 2004
Abstract: Nearly one in three (30%) adults say the cell phone is the invention they most hate but cannot live without. That asserts the eighth annual Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, which is done every year to gauge customers´ attitude toward inventions.
The cell phone topples the alarm clock (25%) as the most detested in this index, where computers also appear.
While a vast majority of users (95%) admit inventions have improved the quality of their lives, contradictory feelings towards cell phones illustrate both the benefits and unintended consequences of innovation. Teens are more inclined to appreciate benefits, while adults notice disadvantages more. So while 81% and 71% of teens believe email and voicemail make life simpler, the percentage decreases to 59% and 58%, respectively, in the case of adults. 
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With just a few hours between them, the European Commission on the one hand and Bill Gates on the other, announced the adoption of new measures against spam.
Microsoft’s president, with a more specific commitment, forecasted the disappearance of spam by 2006 in the presence of a reduced group of participants at the World Economic Forum at Davos (Switzerland). There are two ways to do it: to encourage opt-in consentment by sending users, before they become subscribers, a question that can only be solved by a person; or to sanction economically those who generate spam, a ‘more effective measure’ according to Gates.
For its part, the European Commission is also working to ban spam, which accounts for 53% of daily e-mails, seven times more than two years ago.
Measures proposed by the European commissary for Companies and New Technologies, Erkii Liikanen, are the identification and prosecution of spammers, the adaptation of commerce activities to the opt-in feature, and education on filters and security.
For the moment, the European commission will organise a seminar on spam in Brussels on 2nd and 3rd February which will be attended by  all the OECD countries. They will study international solutions for this problem.
Program from OECD
Press Release from European Commission

This year, the Computing Innovation Award, which is awarded every year by The Economist, has gone to Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.
His great merit, back in 1989, was to imagine that electronic documents stored in different computers could be connected to each other: the hypertext.
The idea was developed in a software application called Enquire, which Berners-Lee programmed for his own use while he was working at the CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The expert also designed the first browser and the first web server. It meant one more step towards the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee is currently director of the World Wide Web Consortium, an organism whose aim is to boost the technological development of the web.
News from The Economist
Organism World Wide Web Consortium

The European Union has already launched the new Internet protocol IPv6, which replaces the current IPv4. The new version – faster, more flexible and more secure – offers an almost unlimited number of Internet addresses and a promise to improve applications in fields like transport (through location via the Internet or GPS, the global position system) and domotics.
However, the new protocol also has detractors. The researcher Simson Garfinkel, for example, explains in the MITs´ (Massachussets Institute of Technology) magazine that the change to the new version will be slow and costly. He calculates it will cost a standard company more than a million dollars and it will mean having to reconfigure more than 100 million computers. In addition he argues that the huge number of internet addresses that the IPv6 offers is not necessary when there are other technologies that allow thousands of computers to be connected under just one IP address. Nevertheless, the Spanish operator Telefónica has already displayed the first services based on this technology.