Radio Frequency Europe

6:00 PM -- I'm accustomed to thinking of Europe and Asia as being way ahead, and pulling farther away from the U.S. when it comes to most wireless technologies. When it comes to a lot of things, actually. The whole "Freedom Fries" thing in D.C. didn't exactly go over very well in the People's Republic of Boulder, Colo., where I live. For a former resident of Paris and baguette-chewer like me, the idea of a growing trans-Atlantic divide has been a source of baffled angst.

OK, French pop music sucks. But hell, even their basketball players are getting better. The American century was nice, but it's time to wake up and smell the Gitanes, n'est-ce pas?

Thus it came as a pleasant surprise to hear from Bob Berg, global RFID program manager for (German-based) DHL that the U.S., from a standing start, has actually surpassed Europe with RFID deployment, thanks mainly to the spread of so-called "Gen 2" UHF tags. (See DHL Chips in on RFID.)

Now if we could only master the 36-hour work week.

— Richard Martin, Senior Editor, Unstrung