Security for the Car Driver

One of the recent issues of the IEEE Spectrum carried an article of a security breakin into the Greek telephony system.

In order to keep the telephony system updated, the switch manufacturer usually updates firmware in a "live" manner. In many cases, this happens remotely. During this procedure for a Greek telephony switch, some miscreant had tampered with the firmware and used the tampered software to tap many calls. Even the high level Greek government officials were not spared. Finally, the issue came to light due to several SMS being bounced causing people to look at the firmware versions and their authenticity.

Switch over to similar problems that may occur during any remote firmware updates. Such cases where firmware is used include cars reaching to manufacturers to give information about the car's health. Well, what's to say that a disgruntled or malicious employee replaces this with a software which for instance, connects to the GPS and keeps giving your coordinates always.

From thereon, it is not much to track you or your loved ones easily. Well, that's what tech does to society. Seemingly innocuous stuff being used for totally unknown purposes. Atleast, it keeps the security industry occupied and gives them job security.

Time for the embedded systems industry and engineers who have so far stayed away from main-stream security problems to start paying attention, especially if they are going to start updating firmware remotely.

Google Apps for small businesses

The IT infrastructure is the key enabler for any business today. Whether it is an Entrepreneurial venture or an established corporation, having proper IT infrastructure (mainly email accounts, website and other collaborative tools) is extremely critical to run the day-to-day activities. Maintaining the IT infrastructure with high investment may not be affordable for businesses which are in bootstrapping (startup) phase. Google has come up with 'Google Apps’. Fore more details and check out the 'Overview presentation'.

What Google has done different here?

• It has moved the initial IT setup work way from the business and made it available as an ‘on-demand’ application from the Internet.
• Added support for integrating Google’s popular applications (like Gmail, spreadsheets, calendar etc...) to the domain-name of the business.
• The whole package comes for free with guaranteed uptime of 99.9%. However for premium versions are charged additionally.

I feel this would be another killer application from Google. The main problem startups face is the cost and they may not be able to afford applications in hardware (servers) and software (like MS office) right from day one. Also, by making it available on the web, it’s been made independent of operating system.

How do Google make money from this?

Google makes money when the user clicks the sponsored advertisement.

My prediction – By offering Google Apps to small businesses, Google has opened up new avenues for contextual advertisement. For example when the user is reading the official, by having contextual advertisement displayed can increase the probability of clicking the sponsored link.

Whatever Google's strategy it may be, this is really a good application for startups which are in the ’bootstrap' mode.

United Villages

In third world countries like India, providing Internet connectivity to rural areas continues to be a challenge. Running copper cables to these areas is still a problem due to poor infrastructure. However the recent success of mobile phone re-iterates the fact the Wireless is the way to address this challenge. Also this kind of 'Bottom-of-the-pyramid' markets are having huge potential and yet to be tapped.

Recently came across the 'United Villages' website and the idea looks very interesting. Using pubic transport system (as Wireless Access Points) and providing pre-paid card for the service is definitely a good business proposition.

Reflections on Web 2.0

The success of any cutting-edge technological innovation can be measured by its adaptability it offers to the common man. In his famous book ‘Crossing the chasm’, author Geoffrey Moore calls this critical mass (the common man) as ‘pragmatists’ and they play a critical role in the success of any innovation. Conversely, when any new technology is hyped beyond certain level it is bound to hit the ground very badly. Nobody can forget the dotcom hype in the early 90s followed by the bubble burst in 2000-01. Fuelled by a bunch of startups, it was believed that anything and everything can be brought into the Internet and customers will start flocking into it. But by the end of the burst, only handful of those startups (like Google, Yahoo etc...) were able to survive mainly because they had products (rather online services) which made sense to a common man.

Last week I was reading the official whitepaper about Web 2.0 by Tim O'Reilly and found it pretty interesting. It mainly highlights how Web 2.0 is different from the initial Web 1.0. One of the main attributes of the Web 2.0 is its interactive nature. Unlike the previous version, where the contents are hosted by the service provider, in the 2.0 world, the end user becomes the creator of the content. This is very significant because, it inspires empowerment of the common man. Users of Web 2.0 can express their views about varied topics and share them in the form of a blog post or a wiki page over the Internet that connects millions world over. By creating such a platform for expressing individuals’ thoughts the Web 2.0 has truly emerged as a very strong platform for human expression.

Another main attribute of Web 2.0, is the ‘software-as-a-service’ (SAAS) model, where the user can access any application software from the internet without having it installed in the computer. More commonly used applications (like spreadsheets) are available online (Google spreadsheets), which can be edited by individuals or as a group. Thanks to high bandwidth, last mile technologies like DSL, the internet speed has increased tremendously and the prices have dropped sharply. For example, in the year 2001, I used to pay INR 250 (for the internet service provider) plus telephone charges to access a 56 Kbps internet. Now in 2007, speed upto 2 Mbps is available at the same price without any additional telephone charges. This has indeed set the stage for SAAS based model and Web 2.0.

At the same time, I have my own doubts about heavyweight applications being made available over the Internet using SAAS. For example -- recently I came across Nivio, which is an online version of Windows. By subscribing to this service (by paying $12.99 per month) it will provide 5 GB storage space with some pre-defined applications over the web. The main idea of accessing PC from everywhere looks interesting at the first sight and looks technically ‘cool’ as far as the geeks are concerned. But does it make sense for a common man? Ever falling hardware prices and free software (like Open source) have already made computing very affordable. So, if the user wants to store some data in the Internet, the online storage has become free of cost, hence providing a one stop shop for all stored and processed user defined data.

I have registered for the free trial version of Nivio and am yet to receive the login information. But when I look at products like these, they seem to be re-creating the web 1.0 days, in my opinion. I am willing to wait and watch the success or otherwise of such products no matter how skeptical I may feel about them at the moment.

"Personal Security" - What does it imply now ?

There was a time when security at the personal technology level meant keeping the virus invaders at bay. This usually meant that you buy some antivirus package (NAV being my favorite) and hope that takes care of things. The more conservative kept backup and maybe now we assume that life is fine.

However, the interactive nature of personal media/IT usage implies it is beginning to mirror our real life interactions with people. So, just like we tell ourselves to be careful with strangers, so too does it apply to unsolicitied chat messages etc. Just like we tell children not to mingle with foul mouthed friends, so too has that need come with games/movies etc.

A great post on this can be got at http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Towards_a_Safer_Internet_for_Children/551-81694-643.html

You probably can guess now that IT/Tech oriented security is a far greater threat than the virus now and is no longer concerned with just the computer.

I am hoping that soon there will be secure hardware scramblers for foul language builtin within a TV or a DVD player. Maybe even auto scramblers for porno images/videos/chat messages/sms messages.

I do think that Internet Service Providers, TV Broadcasters, Cable TV and other such Media Distribution Companies have a part to play and in fact, can give this as a value-added paid service. I know I will be willing to pay for it.

Keep safe !!

Network Bandwidth in a Company Infrastructure

Many areas in technology consists of cycles.

When for example, we want to host more web servers etc, we in turn want more powerful chips to host the traffic load and in turn want the telecom providers to provide for more fiber.

If then, the traffic load comes down because the expected usage of the web servers is not there, what happens to the telecom provider who has provided fiber. I guess there is revenue loss.

The same thing applies to a data center such as the networking within a company where we want faster LANs for applications hosted inside the company.

The reason i am saying this is that i believe that the IT industry has yet again come to a juncture where adding more networking capacity blindly within a company is going to result in wastage. Companies just do not need more networking bandwidth but due to the large growth of employees especially in places like India, they probably need more computing power and better applications which in turn needs to drive the bandwidth.

You may well ask, but "does not more people imply more bandwidth" ? That depends on the type of usage. Applications in companies are more data driven (as against multimedia) and interactive which are not bandwidth intensive but needs more data processing capabilities.

How does this affect the common guy ? Well, if you are the network infrastructure administrator of your company, my guess is you will begin to need very good reasons to ask for more budget to enlarge bandwidth capacity.

Computing As A Service In My Telephone Bill

Ever wanted to get updated with good software, computing environment and have somebody else bother about the computer maintenance.

Imagine this scenario.

a. I am an existing Airtel broadband subscriber
b. Airtel announces its new computing package @ Rs.99 a month
c. Curious, I go to see what they have to offer
d. The attendant says you can take a pre-packaged computing USB for free and put into your computer and start off using a given set of provisioned applications
e. She further says they have pre-packaged USB for Teens, Professionals, Adult etc and says I can try one free for a week.
f. I take the Teens USB and put into my computer (assume the comp boots off the USB)
g. On booting from USB, you automatically connect to live.airtel.net
h. Signing on is done and based on your profile, the Teen VM profile is loaded (the actual provisioning process)at the airtel site.
i. At this stage, it looks to be like a sophisticated pcAnywhere and I wonder whats its all about.
j. Then I realize that while the computing is going on at live.airtel.net, all data is being stored in the USB stick or my own hard drive.
k. The intelligent thing that these guys have done is not only with the provisioning (maybe using one of these hi-tech virtualization stuff) but also tap the data addresses, stream it over the net in a secure manner and store it the local USB.
l. Now, I can take this same USB stick with the data and go to any cyber café parlor and do the same operation. I am actually location agnostic now.
m. I went back to my small business and wondered whether I can get my accountant a corporate "Professionals" USB in the same way and stop him from telling me that the computer stopped working and he cannot give me my reports for this quarter.

Why should searching for a book be manual in libraries ?

I had requested for a few books to be purchased at my company office. There were the obvious delays (red-tape, you know) and finally it got purchased.The problems of ordering something in an office means that your manager keeps asking whether you are using what you ordered. Being familiar with the practice, i immediately set forth to the library and asked the librarian for the books.

The library is medium in size (not your usual community library size) but large nonetheless. The librarian used the technology at her command and searched for the book by name and got the ISBN number. From this, she got the location where the book was supposed to be and asked me to go take a look.I searched and searched at the location until the guy next to me started getting annoyed at me asking him to keep moving. Gave up and asked for help from the librarian. She too searched and searched and searched to no avail.

To cut a long story short, somebody had placed the book two rows away. We finally located it and all was well. Importantly, i now could tell my manager that i am reading the books i had ordered.The larger question of course is, why is there nothing that can help you search the rows for a book. How about this idea ?

Develop a ISBN reader. There are several small devices that can get programmed to read the ISBN number wirelessly. Get one with the wireless ISBN reader interface plus a USB or similar well-known interface. Attach it to a computer, run a program that will encode it to search for a list of ISBN numbers. Now take the device with you and run it across the rows. When it senses the ISBN number, i guess it can beep ?

Seems simple but of course, there may be stuff that i am not expert at. It may even be available already. Comments ?

Update [13-May-07] - I have been looking for a device that can do this. The closest is one that actually does the reverse. It collects the ISBN number of books on shelves and can input into your computer. Take a look at

http://www.collectorz.com/book/