Podcasting the inside of Sun Microsystems, for those on the outside. I/O Podcast

Hot on the heels of Cory Doctorow's DRM Speech, several technology heavy weights, including Sun, are announcing an alliance called the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition.

More information at CNET, Tech heavies support challenge to copyright law, and the Register, Microsoft, Apple snub consumer freedom coalition (is it alright for a blogger to link to Orlowski these days?).

If you're not sure what all the fuss is about then it's well worth reading Cory's speech at his craphound.com site, or you can download Kottke's mp3 version at kottke.org.

This Coalition should make for some interesting press over the next few months, and hopefully they rattle enough cages to make a difference to everyones freedom.

Coles Myer, one of Australia's biggest retailers, is testing RFID to see how it will help its supply chain. Sun, Intel, Accenture and EAN are all assisting in the trial. UPDATE: Coles Myer kicks off RFID trial.

"The trial, which started in late May, uses RFID tags to track the movement of roll-cages in the supply chain from a Coles Myer distribution centre to a Coles supermarket."

In an example that is often cited by Sun Australia's CTO, it's important that organisations consider RFID today or they could substantially limit their use of it in the future without major changes of expenses. If Coles Myer didn't consider the correct roll-cages when they were buying a new batch, it could have left them without the ability to use RFID. This is explained in another article, RFID ready: Sun. "But if a product had a lot of metal around it -- such as in the metal roll cages often used for stock in UK and Australian warehouses -- RFID readers could have difficulty picking up the tag’s signal through the gaps in the metal, Clarke said."