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.