That's what equipment giant Caterpillar is projecting for global GDP growth this year, in its recently released 2015 outlook document. That would actually be up a tic from the 2.6% increase it says we saw in 2014, but is an important percentage point below the 3.5% global economic growth the IMF is projecting for 2015 versus 3.4% for last year. The reasons for the differences between CAT and the IMF aren't clear. Perhaps surprisingly, Caterpillar expects that this modest total growth will mostly come from developed countries, and that economies in developing countries will, overall, grow at a rate slightly below their growth rate in 2014, probably due to the collapse of global commodity prices.

About what it would cost to put a printed RFID tag on a consumer product - if the technology works. That's a level that could compete with the basically free GTIN (formerly the UPC) code used in retail now, where even the cost of a one cent RFID tag is unaffordable, and we are nowhere near that level currently. While firms have been trying to develop such printable and/or chipless RFID tags for years, researchers at Monash University in Australia claimed something of a breakthrough this week, saying they have developed fully printable tags that will work on water bottles and soft drinks cans. Until now, this hasn't been possible because the metal and liquids interfere with the RFID signal. "The fact that chipless tags be printed directly on to products and packaging means they are far more reliable, smaller and cost effective than any other barcoding system," Dr. Nemai Karmakar of Monash says. Is it real? We hope to let you know soon.