Oyster smart cards stop working

An investigation has been launched into how 60 000 Oyster smart cards were made inoperable over the weekend, says ZDNet.

The travel smart cards were corrupted when swiped at ticket gates in the London Underground, causing major ongoing disruption to the capital's transport system.

The authority responsible for the cards, Transport for London, is working in conjunction with supplier Transys to find out how the cards could have been affected by the gates.

RFID interest is rising in the US financial industry, which recently launched an initiative to develop standards to facilitate adoption, says RFID Update.

The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC), an association headquartered on Wall Street that evaluates technology and develops standards for banks, investment firms, credit card companies and other organisations in the industry, announced the RFID initiative last week.

"We were approached by several of the largest banks in the country, who stated a need to standardise how RFID could be implemented so they could avoid some of the pitfalls and obstacles," FSTC chief of staff John Fricke told RFID Update. "There are three or four institutions that are struggling to implement RFID right now, and there are eight or nine others who are considering it. If you're going to develop a standard, the time is now."

The Sri Lankan Information Department will introduce a special bar code to media accreditation cards to prevent them being misused from next year, reports Sri Lanka News.

Information Department director Anusha Pelpitata says all particulars regarding the bearer of the card is expected to fed in the accreditation card, enabling the security forces manning checkpoints and government institutions to identify them.

This will make their identification easy as the all details are included in the bar code. "We will introduce these cards to the media persons covering the forthcoming South Asian Youth Summit for Colombo - SAARC-2008 - too," Pelpitata says.