Corporate fraud, in-flight Wi-Fi, R&D tax credit, more

modern business, and IT managers need to be certain that equipment is documented, traceable and secure," notes the report. RFID "can deliver quicker, more detailed and more accurate day-to-day management of these important operational assets."

This is where RFID makes sense--high-value items that need to be tracked. "Managing and auditing this equipment is a serious pain point for IT departments, and automating those applications with RFID can drive clear ROI," states ABI principal analyst Jonathan Collins, in the report. He notes that "the density of valuable equipment within a restricted area limits the cost and increases the efficiency of an RFID deployment."

One last note comes from vendor Odin Technologies. Its IT asset tracking report shows that within the last six months, passive RFID technology delivered increased performance on servers, laptops, blades and other high-value IT assets. For instance, IT staff using RFID tags could inventory a rack of 40 servers in 12 seconds or identify all IT equipment within a typical cubicle five times faster than manual methods, with 100 percent accurate data entry.

-Thomas Wailgum

Limits to In-Flight Wi-Fi

A Delta Air Lines decision to block "inappropriate" websites from its planned in-flight Wi-Fi service could be the tip of the iceberg for airlines' control of Internet use. Delta, which will offer Wi-Fi on some planes later this year and on its domestic fleet in 2009, has decided to prevent passengers from accessing inappropriate content, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In-flight Wi-Fi is emerging on a few airlines and was launched by American Airlines on a limited basis in August. Both Delta and American will block VoIP, avoiding the uproar over annoying in-flight cell phone calls. But the prospect of passengers surfing the open Web at their seats raises concerns about children and others being subjected to objectionable material, such as online pornography. Delta plans to offer the GoGo service from Aircell, also used by American. Aircell says it will implement content filtering for airlines if asked.

One privacy rights advocate criticized the idea. "I don't think it makes much sense," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. It won't stop passengers from looking at inappropriate material stored on laptops, he says. It also opens the door to blocking content such as news or political opinions.

Another problem is also likely to come up, says analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates. The thin, cellular-data pipe that passengers will share means airlines may have to throttle back heavy users. One person downloading a movie all through a flight could ruin the access others paid for.

Airlines are likely to guard against this in an automated way. "The flight crew are not going to be IT managers. The policies are going to have to be set and uploaded to the systems," Gold says.

-Stephen Lawson

R&D Tax Credit Extended as Part of Bailout

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend a research and development tax credit to U.S. businesses as part of its approval of a giant bailout of the mortgage industry.

Several tech companies, including Microsoft and Texas Instruments, had called on Congress to extend the tax credit, saying it helps U.S. businesses to invest in R&D and keeps workers in the country. The credit, which would have expired at the end of 2007, will be extended for two years.

"In today's challenging economic environment, R&D is a critical catalyst for American innovation, economic growth and job creation," said the R&D Tax Coalition, a group representing the tech, manufacturing, chemical, pharmaceutical and other industries, in a statement. "The R&D tax credit motivates U.S.-based companies to keep cutting-edge research projects in the United States while funding high-wage and high-skilled jobs for American R&D workers across diverse industries."

The tax credit can cover up to 20 percent of qualified R&D spending. It has expired 13 times since 1981, despite calls by tech, pharmaceutical and manufacturing groups to make the tax credit permanent. Lawmakers have resisted making it permanent largely because of