Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

We now have closure to a story we reported in April about a Texas man who smashed in a Wal-Mart self-checkout man when it froze. The punching consumer—46-year-old Joel Wallace Hansen of Euless, Texas—pleaded guilty this week to disorderly conduct and was fined $286 and ordered to pay $1,000 for restitution, according to a report in the Star-Telegram.

“Our office position was that we attempt to get some type of restitution and that the defendant be held accountable for his actions” Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Al Lazarus told the daily newspaper. “We accomplished that.”…

PayPal expanded its global reach Thursday, adding ten new currencies: the Czech Koruna, Danish Krone, Hong Kong Dollar, Hungarian Forint, New Zealand Dollar, Norwegian Krone, Polish Zloty, Singapore Dollar, Swedish Krona, and Swiss Franc. PayPal had already supported U.S. Dollars, Australian Dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling, Canadian Dollars, Japanese Yen and Chinese RMB.

PayPal also announced that residents in 48 new markets can now use PayPal in their local markets to send money online. These new markets include Indonesia, the Philippines, Croatia, Fiji, Vietnam and Jordan. PayPal currently has 114 million accounts globally. In the second quarter of 2006, PayPal’s total payment volume — or the total value of transactions — was $8.9 billion.…

Tuesday morning, reports started circulating that German police had arrested a man they had accused of being Osama bin Laden's webmaster. It was at that moment that I realized how different a war this is and how the Internet—and particularly its multimedia-friendly Web component—has truly changed all.

Imagine if during World War II, French law enforcement had arrested Hitler's speechwriter? But that's not even a clean analogy because a speechwriter would presumably help craft the message. This guy, identified in a Reuters report only as a 36-year-old Iraqi named Ibrahim R., is accused of being a programmer and of helping Bin Laden's Web sites stay up. But even German authorities know that taking out one HTML wizard isn't going to cripple the terrorist kingpin with Page Not Found errors. Read more...

An upcoming retailer/supplier trainwreck collission over store localization, Amazon's abandonment of key features of its A9 search engine, whether a new giftcard service will change retail approaches and the privacy controversy surrounding Hitachi's new RFID tag. Those were the topics for this week's StorefrontBacktalk Week In Review audiocast.

This week's panel featured Forrester Research's Nikki Baird, the Retail Systems Alert Group's Steve Rowen and Ken Morris of The Lakewest Group, along with StorefrontBacktalk Editor Evan Schuman moderating.Read more...

Hitachi on Monday announced what it is billing as the industry’s first WiFi active RFID tag for wireless LAN position detection and management of people entering and leaving buildings.

According to a report in the Japan Corporate News wire service, Hitachi’s new offering will also include an emergency message capability that reportedly “allows users to send a message to the control center, automatically informing disaster relief officials of their whereabouts.” The Air Location II Tag-w, which will be released on October 3 at 21,000 yen, will be displayed at CEATEC Japan 2006 from October 3-7.…

As the established large E-Commerce sites pour millions of dollars into security and enterprise-league hardened POS systems, cyber crooks have been giving more attention to much smaller and less well-protected merchants.

Those smaller merchants can't even necessarily protect themselves by opting to not have a Web site, as the thieves are grabbing credit card information as its transmitted over the Internet to POS servers. "In general, the smaller retailers, whether they're operating E-Commerce sites or physical stores, don't have the resources to think about security," said Gartner Group retail security analyst Avivah Litan.Read more...

The marquee names of the participants in lockstep agreement couldn't have been more impressive: Wal-Mart, P&G, Kellogg's, Coca Cola, Miller Brewing, Disney, Walgreens and more. They were all coming together to support a method for tracking aisle traffic for the purpose of properly pricing promotion fees. But according to a panel of retail technology experts this week, they couldn't be more wrong.

The dramatic infrared sensor announcement will offer no true advantages over the old-fashioned mechanical counters and is a puzzling move, said Paula Rosenblum of the Retail Systems Alert Group.Read more...

The folks at Visa and PayByTouch just want everyone to know that they’re doing fine. Visa on Thursday issued a statement identifying a handful of retailers–7-Eleven., Clearview Cinemas, Dairy Queen, Domino’s Pizza, and Sonic Drive-In, to be precise–who have agreed to use the card’s No Signature Required Program, for transactions costing less than $25. That campaign is aimed at cash-intensive retailers.

The day before, it was PayByTouch’s turn to reassure people that it was still around by announcing its three-millionth consumer customer. That is a good indication that biometrics is gaining a little acceptance out there, but signing up to get whatever incentives are being offered is one thing. The frequency of use is another. …

Edgar Dworsky, a former assistant attorney general for consumer protection in Massachusetts, has launched a Web site solely focused on catching misleading retail advertisements.

“My comments to advertisers who pull this stuff: Why antagonize potential customers with hidden ‘gotchas’?” Dworsky said. “Not only will you likely lose their business, but they will tell their friends—and hopefully also the state attorney general—about the deception.” Initial examples? A Chrysler campaign touting a “if not satisfied, return within 30 days” that only in the fineprint mentions some $2,000 in associated charges, a Charles Schwab promo touting $9.95 commissions, but using a microscopic footnote to point its only for those with “$1 million in qualifying assets” and Mazda, which pushed low prices that required very large down payments.…

A survey released Monday morning tells us all what we already knew, that consumers still run into a lot of problems when trying to make online purchases. Although the high percentage of consumers reporting problems (88 percent) is eye-opening, the upshot isn’t.

The lead with the announcement of the Harris Interactive survey–paid for by TeaLeaf– pretty sums up the “and this surprised you in what way?’ response: “Online transaction failures can wreak havoc on Ebusiness.” I read that a few times and tried to figure out what point Harris was trying to make. Were they expecting online transaction failures to help E-business? Perhaps they had anticipated consumers saying that they would ignore online transaction failures and continue to work with that site regardless. The word itself–“failure”–pretty much telegraphs the answer.

That all said, if the survey makes IT execs say, “OK. We knew about these relentless glitches, but we sort of hoped no consumers would notice” take notice, that’s fine. But I’d just as well hope that IT execs who think that way get punished. There’s something just about that.…

RFID tags are secure for only a handful of very specific situations, according to a new report from Forrester Research. “RFID is not mature enough yet to protect your company secrets,” the report said. “This technology will inevitably bring changes to business processes, but adopters need to anticipate the potential threats that can arise with new changes and know the limitations of their RFID systems.”

Forrester says that risks include the lack of ability to see modified data on a RFID tag, passive tags lacking confidentiality protection and an attacker’s ability to send their own signals and block others.…

The CIO of the nation's largest movie theater chain struggles with how to push 500 popcorn-popping patrons through the refreshment stand before their movies start. For David King, CIO of the $2.7 billion Regal Entertainment Group with theaters in 40 states, the challenge is a combination of arithmetic and consumer incentives.

Beyond staggering movie start times and trying to get people to arrive earlier, King's non-technology options are limited. Among some of the options is stealing some ideas from sports arenas. "We're even going to be experimenting with some things that are ballpark-like where people will take orders in the auditoriums and have food and refreshments delivered to them," King said. "In a variation on that, we're looking at something called hawking, which is like the guys who walk up and down aisles in a ballpark with Cokes and a tray that has a strap around their neck and they sell Cokes out of the tray to the patrons." Read more...

Recent changes to credit card security rules reflect a maturing of the payment rules, with wireless monitoring requirements made much more strict while file software integrity monitoring frequency and the encryption demand have both been softened.

"This is a bow to reality," said Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who now specializes in retail security issues. "The first version was more of a Utopian of what Visa and MasterCard thought were workable standards based on what people should do. This is a minor tweaking based upon what people are doing." Read more...

This week’s show included a special guest, David King, CIO of the Regal Entertainment Group, which is the nation’s largest movie theater chain, bringing in about $2.7 billion a year from theaters in 40 states. King lead a spirited discussion about the new PCI changes and how his chain is viewing them, including a new wireless requirement. On the RFID front, the panel looked at the new Gen2 support promised from both Wal-Mart and the Metro Group as well as what may be truly behind it. Metro’s experiment with physically separating payment from checkout also prompted a debate of whether two lanes would be seen as being slower even though it’s faster.

Other than CIO King, our panel this week featured the Retail Systems Alert Group’s Paula Rosenblum, IDC’s Pete Abell, Chris Noell from TruComply and former federal prosecutor and security consultant Mark Rasch. StorefrontBacktalk Editor Evan Schuman moderated.…

Our panel this week whipped up some sweet insights into Starbucks’ headaches with an electronic coupon that they had intended to be strictly localized but the Web had other plans. It also jumped into the renewed interest from some major retailers into using closed-circuit video feeds for a lot more than catching thieves, including CRM and preventing child abductions.

Our panel this week featured IHL President Greg Buzek, the Retail Systems Alert Group‘s Steve Rowen, Forrester Research‘s Sucharita Mulpuru and The Lakewest Group‘s Sunita Gupta. StorefrontBacktalk Editor Evan Schuman moderated.…

Networked CCTV cameras are doing a lot more in retail than catching shoplifters. The latest track how consumers react to specials and can digitally find abducted children. With a system being piloted today by CVS and other large retail chains, a lost or abducted child has a lot more protection than from a mere Code Adam.

When a parent reports a missing child, the system can—within a few minutes—locate the video of when the parent and the child were last together and then see footage of exactly where the child went and with whom, even showing where the child is at that moment, assuming the child has not left the store. Read more...

A major analyst firm will soon report that most retailers still do not have a formal incident response plan for consumer data security. The most likely reason: such a plan would tell retailers things they don't want to hear.

Why would they retail IT execs do that? They know that any reasonable data security and privacy policy would set stringent restrictions on how data can be used, how long it can be stored and how many people can have access to it. The longer such a policy is delayed, the longer the data can be used in whatever way IT and Marketing feel like using it.Read more...

Some major retailers—including The Home Depot, CVS, Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s—have brought a new video security system in-house for evaluation, while officials at J.C. Penney have also expressed. This system is from a Cambridge, Mass., company called IntelliVid, which itself is mostly a spinoff from MIT’s artificial intelligence group.

The system itself claims some very science-fiction-sounding capabilities, such as that the software can watch customers, examine body and head movements and determine who is about to steal. The system then uses multiple closed-circuit video cameras to track the suspect through the aisles and—camera position permitting—out into the parking lot. The claims are interesting enough, but with such pedigree retailers—including Babies R Us–testing out the system, there might be something more here than a high-tech take on low-res images. (Related note: BusinessWeek just did a wonderful overview piece on retail anti-shrink techniques.)…

For your listening pleasure this week, you can hear us discuss video. (That’s probably more fun than watching us discuss audio.) Buy.com’s video reviews effort, to be precise. Will consumer-generated video content shake up E-Commerce? Also, the panel looks into why fewer than half of all retailers today even have a formal plan for dealing with consumer data security breaches as well as whether technology deployments today are often hurting retail sales.

Our late summer panel this week featured IHL President Greg Buzek, the Retail Systems Alert Group’s Steve Rowen and ABI Research’s Michael J. Liard. Special industry guest was Dave Samuel, co-president of Grouper Networks, which is now part of Sony Pictures Entertainment. StorefrontBacktalk Editor Evan Schuman moderated.…

Please click to listen in on this week’s audio discussion, as the panel rips into Google’s substantial new challenges, with both Google Checkout and marketshare, the question of whether the major E-Commerce sites are ready for the holiday rush or the holiday crash, and a European look at RFID pricing and ROI struggles.

Our inquisitive panel this week included returning panelists Paula Rosenblum from the Retail Systems Alert Group and former federal prosecutor and security expert Mark Rasch plus Safa Raschtchy, senior research analyst with Wall Street’s Piper Jaffray (who authored the initial report that questioned Google Checkout’s retailer acceptance) and Ben Rushlo, from Keynote Systems Evan Schuman, Editor at StorefrontBacktalk, moderated.…

This week’s audiocast looked at a key payment system issue: the feds cracking down on giftcards. We also explored some of the hotter topics this week in RFID, including the enviable positioning of Impinj. In Online, we explored the implications of Amazon’s patent to suggest gifts based on—among other things—religion and sexual orientation.

This week’s panel featured return visits from IDC‘s Pete Abell, former federal prosecutor Mark Rasch and the Retail Systems Alert Group‘s Paula Rosenblum. The newcomer to StorefrontBacktalk’s Week In Review this week was Bruce Cundiff, a former payments analyst for Jupiter Research and today a senior analyst with Javelin Strategy. …

Federal regulators on Monday clamped down on bank-issued giftcards, forcing the banks to much more prominently disclose expiration dates and any inactivity fees. Industry observers expect federal authorities to soon extend such rules to retailer-issued giftcards.

These rules could actually help retailers as few retailers want to make a lot of money from keeping unspent giftcard dollars. First, the tax and related business issues make the money less profitable but the much concern is that a gift card's objective is to encourage more consumer spending and merchant loyalty. A card that dies with cash on it represents dollars not spent, up sell opportunities lost (where a consumer uses a $25 giftcard to pay for part of a $50 product) and likely yields a very unhappy customer. Read more...

The Spychips people—some privacy advocates who are not fond of RFID efforts—have unearthed another several-year-old RFID demo video, this one apparently designed for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA). These videos are amusing for two reasons. First, they show how quickly technology evolves and how state-of-the-art from just a few years ago can look positively ho-hum today. And secondly, it shows how far the political climate—in terms of how much security controls Americans will tolerate—has changed.

My favorite part of this video, however, are the many Cold War era Soviet-sounding typos, just to add to the Natasha-Boris theme of the demo itself. “Now we know where he want to fly,” “The ID number is now readed,” “passagers profil” and “would you like to print you boarding pass?”…

The field of RFID blocking devices is growing almost as rapidly as RFID deployments. A far cry from the homemade crudely-designed aluminum-foiled-lined wallets that were cropping up just nine months ago, companies now want to block unwanted radio frequencies with some style. In Japan, an outfit is selling RFID-blockers adorned with Hello Kitty designs. This would never work in the U.S., as our cats are more independent (read anti-human). “Why should I block this signal? It’s not my credit card. What’s in it for me?”…