Following Walmart another big buyer of stuff mandates that their suppliers adopt RFID tags, i.e. the
DOD

A nice example of an exchange standard that’s driven by the buyer side of the supply chain, though I presume the platform suppliers are also hard at work advocating this as well.

I also find it interesting that back in the 60’s and 70’s the DOD often lead standardization efforts; now they seem to be much more a follower – somebody you want to get onto you bandwagon after commercial interests have done defined the standard.

Meanwhile over at MIT where much of the work was done to bootstrap the RFID effort they are winding down their effort. Universities provide a good venue for coordinating an emerging standard; as long as you can manage to shut down the effort when it’s no longer an research or design problem.