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Blue tags - where did you go, you little baggage?

The original idea was to track your baggage as you arrived at an airport; but Bluetooth Inc seems to have failed to persuade airlines to part with the cash needed to buy the RFID tags and bluetooth infrastructure. Instead, its first sale is to a zoo, to track groups.

Back in August last year, the travel papers were full of the exciting idea of making airlines safer with Bluetooth. Typical report in Airguide Magazine predicted that it would be "rolled out" in combination Sabre, a big travel-booking system.

But now, Bluetags has made a sale: Visitors to one of Denmark's largest zoological gardens, Aalborg Zoo, will be able to take advantage of the worlds first Bluetooth tracking system allowing them to keep constant track of each other.

"The tracking system provides amusement parks and Zoo gardens with the opportunity to make their visitors feel safe knowing that no member of their group or family will get lost or wander off," said the company.

As a money-making the scheme, it looks doomed. The idea is that parents stop on the way in to the zoo, while surrounded by impatient brats, all screaming to get in - and rent a tag for each child. And then they have to go through the bureaucracy of registering the ID and contact details, which includes their mobile phone number.

The system then sends an SMS to them with a code for making inquiries about the location of the individual child. The parent simply sends an SMS with the specific SMS code and, through the tracking software and the SMS gateway, a response comes back with information about the child's location.

Director of Aalborg ZOO, Henning Julin, appears to be on commission: "I see an enormous amount of potential in the system and have already presented it at a European zoo congress, where it was very well received. In November I will be introducing the system at the Zoological Gardens World Congress in San Diego, USA where I expect many of my international colleagues to receive this tracking solution for children with open arms."

Maybe, however, in security-aware environments (not just airport environments, but also conference areas) this sort of application will prove to be a useful demonstration of how it works, and will enable Bluetag to break into other markets?