RFID cell phones take shape at Nokia

For instance, retailers could put RFID-embedded “touch phone here” signs on store shelves to send a coupon to the phone, or put the same signs at checkout stands to instantly transfer personal information stored on the phone in order to complete a warranty, Nokia Director Gerhard Romen said.

At the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment trade show here, Nokia was demonstrating an early prototype built in collaboration with VeriSign, which is proposing a central repository for RFID data that companies can use to relay information about inventory and deliveries to customers and suppliers. The prototype was based on Nokia’s 5140 model, with an RFID reader contained in a shell attached to the phone.

“It’s still very early yet,” Romen said Sunday when asked when RFID phones may become commercially available.

The New York Times > Technology > Identity Badge Worn Under Skin Approved for Use in Health Care:

Real privacy concerns have emerged. “At the point you place the chip beneath the skin, you’re saying you will not have the ability to remove the ID tracking device,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest advocacy group in Washington. “I think, increasingly, if this takes off – and it’s still not clear that it will – the real social debate begins around prisoners and parolees, and perhaps even visitors to the U.S. That’s where the interest in being able to identify and track people is.”

Indeed, the debate over civil liberties and privacy has made discussing any practical benefits of a technology like VeriChip harder.

“The fact that we’re engaged in such a deep, fundamental privacy debate really does complicate the prospect for this kind of technology,” said Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., director of technology studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a regulatory research group in Washington. “We haven’t even sorted out the appropriateness of a RFID tag that goes on a pallet of tomatoes,” Mr. Crews said, “much less one that can go under a person’s skin.”

More evidence of the steamroller in action — but still, precious little to say of what the killer apps may be except to remind us that the status quo may be pretty awful to begin with. Here’s the state-of-the-art: “If there’s a discrepancy–the quantity shipped is less than the quantity ordered, for example–the system will automatically push an E-mail alert to the customer.” Sigh.

RFID Tops To-Do List In Consumer Goods
By Beth Bacheldor and Larry Greenemeier, Information Week

Consumer-goods companies this year once again embrace an innovative technology, though for now their time and attention are focused on the mechanics of implementation rather than the higher art of finessing it. Sixty percent of the consumer-goods companies on this year’s InformationWeek 500 list are developing or testing radio-frequency identification tags. The technology’s promise has caught the imagination of large companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which is requiring its top 100 suppliers to affix RFID tags on all the cases and pallets of goods they ship to the retailer by January. Target Corp., the U.S. Department of Defense, and others have similar mandates, hoping that RFID will help them track products as they move through the supply chain, providing up-to-the minute inventory details, triggering automatic replenishment, and ultimately generating more sales.

Imperial Sugar Co., with sales of $1.1 billion in 2003, already has begun the arduous task of planning to use RFID in its distribution centers so that it can meet customers’ requirements. But the company’s aggressive stance has more to do with VP and CIO George Muller’s belief that RFID offers a way to outsmart competitors. “With RFID, the people that get there first will have a competitive advantage,” Muller says. “And they’ll be able to take costs out of their supply chains sooner.”

…Muller has bigger designs that would take advantage of the fact that IT is a core competency of Imperial Sugar. He’d someday like to co-develop and co-market an RFID system with a third-party service provider that could hook into any back-office ERP system and provide visibility into any company’s flow of inventory. “This is late-breaking news that I haven’t really discussed with management,” Muller says. “We can generate a nice revenue stream with some very attractive margins.” Extra revenue would be welcome in the sugar industry, where, Muller says, margins are only about 3% to 3.5%. Plus, “this would give our IT employees an opportunity to expand their horizons,” he says. “That could be a lot of fun.”

The biggest challenge regarding RFID is to comply with business partners’ requirements without breaking the bank, says Jeryl Wolfe, CIO and VP of global business solutions for McCormick & Co. Inc., which makes spices and sauces. “The technology isn’t mature, not even close,” he says. Whereas cost-effective use of RFID is predicated on the 5-cent tag, decent tags aren’t available today for less than 20 cents. “The costs get scary as they scale,” he says. McCormick also is a second-tier Wal-Mart supplier with a January 2006 RFID deadline.

RFID implementation cost estimates vary wildly, and much of it depends on how many tags will be required and whether the use of scanners and other associated tools will extend beyond the point that goods are loaded on trucks and moved to retailers. In a Forrester Research study earlier this year, which included interviews with 10 of Wal-Mart’s top 100 suppliers as well as 25 tag and reader manufacturers, the research firm estimated that Wal-Mart’s mandate could cost a supplier $9.1 million in startup and maintenance fees for one year.

…Imperial Sugar’s IT team has just implemented a custom collaboration tool that lets it more effectively communicate order and delivery information with its customers. It’s integrated with Imperial Sugar’s PeopleSoft supply-chain apps and compares supply-chain data against a number of predefined rules. If there’s a discrepancy–the quantity shipped is less than the quantity ordered, for example–the system will automatically push an E-mail alert to the customer. “We’re using push technology to people that need to know so we can provide better customer support,” Clemmons says.

Interesting opinion/recap piece this morning on a perceived alliance of interest between libertarians and Christian millenariast (‘mark-of-the-beast’) folks to oppose RFID (specifically, when used for humans — no word on the privacy rights of cats and dogs :-)

This piece is supposedly triggered by reading recent reader feedback mail about some RFID apps, including the infamous Spanish nightclub VIP pass for buying drinks and getting into the lounge…

RFID tags: The people say no | Perspectives | CNET News.com by Michael Kanellos, Editor-at-Large

“When our society reaches the point that credit cards can easily be faked, look for a push to implant a chip that will take over our trade institutions,” reader Jeff Phelps wrote.

A large number of letters also asserted that human RFID tags are a demonic tool.

“I can assure you the resistance to this will be very strong from Christians…You will see tens of millions refuse this chip, even when it means great personal suffering will ensue.”

…this is going to be one long, ugly, uphill battle. The issue has united people with fairly strong religious beliefs and libertarian privacy advocates. That doesn’t happen often.

On the other hand, the relationship between consumers and industry isn’t even close to a crisis point. At the turn of the last century, corporate leaders often faced assassination attempts, and striking factory employees sometimes got shot. Try to double-park in front of, or across the street from, an office of J.P. Morgan Chase. Private security officers will immediately shuffle you away, the legacy of a 1920 bombing at the financial institution’s New York offices.

Many wrote to say they fear that the tracking technology will be exploited to monitor our private lives–but that won’t likely happen. Governments and companies won’t have the time or energy to sift through all that data. Even if they do, what will they figure out? That car thieves are among the most loyal consumers of Sunny Delight?

On a gut level, I think that much of the antagonism against the technology is rooted in a general distrust of large institutions. Anyone who has been stuck on hold when phoning for help knows that the standard of customer service continues to plummet.

But in the end, people distrust RFID, I believe, because it forces people to get tagged like a circus bear so that an already overpaid executive can obtain a bonus for cutting costs. If companies want to win the public over to this technology, they are going to have to be the ones jumping through hoops.