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Turkey Revenge
The turkeys are pissed this Thanksgiving they are seeking revenge.
Germs Infest 60% of Americas Phones
60% of Americans sleep with their phones, harboring germs. Cleaning regularly with UV sanitizer or alcohol wipes can help keep your phone and bed germ-free.
Smartphone Sanitizing: A Practical Guide
Securely erase personal data from your old smartphone before recycling. Protect your identity from hackers—easy steps to follow.
Why Soft Skills Matter in Today’s Job Market
Boost your career with essential soft skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence. Learn why they’re crucial for workplace success.
Bach Seat Under Attack from China
Sean Buckley at FireceTelecom reports that China Telecom is setting its sites on the U.S. market. He is reporting that China Telecom announced plans to expand its global business unit. The move will drive $1.6 billion (CNY 10 billion) of sales in 2013.
Wang Xiaochu, China Telecom’s chairman, said in a China Daily report that the service provider saw the potential for its international business, after developing its China Telecom Global division. They plan to target including Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Americas. The article states that the service provider said it will aggressively purchase international assets to expand its presence in the U.S. “It is for sure that China Telecom will conduct M&As globally, and we are training talent to be more well-prepared,” said Wang.
China Telecom Americas
China Telecom Americas (CHA) is the largest international subsidiary of State-run China Telecom. CHA has launched its self-branded retail mobile service in Chicago. Donald Tan, president of CHA said the service will expand to Los Angeles and New York soon. In addition, the Chinese service provider has opened an office in Chicago.
However, one analyst says that given the recent government opposition to Chinese-based companies Huawei and ZTE (783), China Telecom could face similar challenges in serving the U.S. market in a significant way.
“Given the failure of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp. in their attempts to gain a foothold in the U.S. market, I am not optimistic that China Telecom, a truly State-owned Chinese company, will do any better,” said Xiang Ligang, a Beijing-based telecommunications expert who also runs the industry information website cctime.com.
China Telecom, the State-owned Chinese service provider owns and operates CHINANET (China’s largest Internet network). This may be why U.S. regulators will try to squash CHA’s growth. My personal experience says that China Telecom does not control its networks very well.
For the last several months, this blog has seen a huge uptick in attacks. The attacks were primarily from China Telecom-controlled IP subnets. So far they have been defended off by the smart use of good software. For the past 10 weeks, there has been a peak of 87 attack attempts and an average of 27 attacks per day from China Telcom-controlled subnets. The attacks originated from the Anhui, Jiangsu, and Shanghai provinces. Over this time the most attacks came from China Telecom’s CHINANET locations ib:
- Anhui province network subnet 60.169.78.x
- Jiangsu province network subnet 61.160.194.x, 61.160.212.x, and 61.160.247.x
- Shanghai province network subnet 61.169.195.x
Akami (AKAM) claims that China is the source of most cyber-attacks in its latest State of the Internet report. The Content Distribution Network (CDN) reports that about 33% of attack traffic originated in China between July and September 2012. Akamai also reports China has been the top source of attack activity since the end of 2011.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Another Net for IoT
Kevin Fitchard at GigaOM writes about the French start-up Sigfox that wants to take on the mobile service providers. Sigfox plans to build a new network just for the Internet of Things (IoT). Thomas Nicholls, Sigfox business development chief, and internet of things of evangelist said that cellular networks are built to connect humans, not objects. Sigfox is proposing to build an alternate wireless network dedicated solely to linking together the internet of things.
The Toulouse France-based start-up argues that the majority of objects linked to the network will connect rarely. A GPS tracker in a vehicle or shipping container may send out its coordinates just once a day. A smart meter may link back to its utility company’s servers once a week. Many of the sensors being embedded in devices from vending machines to security cameras only transmit when something goes wrong, meaning an M2M module may wait months if not years between connections to the Internet of Things. Connected home appliances like LG Electronic’s (LGLD) new Smart Thinq refrigerator, GPS tracking devices, smart meters and medical alert sensors are all the types of devices that Sigfox hopes to target.
Mr. Nicholls added that Sigfox thinks there’s a huge opportunity in the growing business-to-consumer connected device space. The assortment of gadgets and wearable devices making their way into the connected home and onto our bodies are typically connected by local area networking technologies like Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Wi-Fi. But he thinks there’s a big case to be made for replacing those technologies with Sigfox according to the article.
The author claims that as Sigfox achieves economies of scale, its radio will not only shrink, their costs will fall to just a few dollars per module. Due to the huge efficiencies in running its network, Sigfox can support a device connection for little more than a dollar a year, Mr. Nicholls said. At those prices, gadget manufacturers can include IoT connectivity costs into the device costs without requiring customers to sign up for a subscription.
Not only would using Sigfox give these devices a range far beyond local networks, but they would also be “on” right out of the box, the Sigfox IoT evangelist said. It also wouldn’t require any signing up or logging on, as the machine-to-machine communication would just work out of the box.
To host these devices over power-hungry and expensive cellular radios makes little sense, the business development chief said. The better course is to attach these devices to a network optimized for their use cases — one that can support billions of devices each sending relatively little data at distinct intervals, the start-up believes. “Our network is structured in a radically different way,” Nicholls claims in the GigaOM article. “There is really no notion of a network. You only connect when you have a payload to deliver.”
Sigfox has developed a wireless architecture using ultra narrow-band modulation techniques that can theoretically support millions of devices with only a handful of network transmitters. Using the unlicensed frequencies commonly used for baby monitors and cordless phones (868 MHz in Europe and 915 MHz in the US), Sigfox says it can offer the same coverage with a single tower that a cellular network could provide with 50 to 100 cell sites. Sigfox is building a network covering all of France with 1,000 transmission sites, and Mr. Nicholls estimates that the company could do the same in the US with 10,000 transmitters.
The author describes the embedded radio modules as about the size of two thumbnails, and they transmit at power levels 50 times lower than their cellular M2M counterparts. Such low consumption levels mean that objects that normally have no external power supply could stay connected for as long as 20 years before their module batteries would need recharging, Mr. Nicholls said.
rb-
Apparently, Sigfox’s ultra narrow-band technology can only support bandwidths of 100 bps (YEAP THAT’S BPS, NOT KBPS) — which makes it far slower than even the poorest 2G data connection so it will be popular with wireless service providers who will try to connect everything to the Internet of Things.
Sigfox does not seem to be the answer for devices that send large quantities of data or keep up constant connections to the network like telemedicine aren’t the “things” that Sigfox intends to connect to the Internet.
Related articles
- M2M and the Internet of Things: A guide (zdnet.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2013, Ambient Devices, Bluetooth, Cellular network, Internet of Things, IOT, M2M, Machine-to-Machine, SigFox, Wi-Fi, ZigBee
5 Odd Tech Predictions
Julie Bort at the BusinessInsider found some really interesting ideas buried within this prediction season’s avalanche of humdrum thoughts. She shared them in the hope they will become self-fulfilling prophecies.
1. Bad guys start offering “hacking as a service” – Security company McAfee says that criminal hackers have begun to create invitation-only forums requiring registration fees. The author speculates that these forums could become some sort of black-market software-as-a-service. Pay a monthly fee and your malware is automatically updated to the latest attack. Don’t pay, and it would be a shame if something happened to your beautiful website …
2. Bad guys try to kidnap your smartphone – Hackers have become fond of a form of malware called “ransomware.” It’s a popular way to harass people who view Internet porn. While visiting a porn site, bad guys plant malware on a computer that threatens to report the computer user to the police unless they pay up.
In 2013, the article says the trend will be to hold your smartphone hostage. Hackers will sneak malware onto smartphones and then make you pay if you don’t want all the data on your phone destroyed or leaked. So thinks Chiranjeev Bordoloi, the CEO of security vendor Top Patch.
3. Fake meat becomes a real thing – Vegetarians have been manipulating vegetable protein to make it look a little like meat and taste nothing like it. But now BusinessInsider says the race is on to produce fake meat like bacon in much more technically advanced ways.
Dutch researchers have found a way to “grow hamburger” in the laboratory from just a few bovine stem cells. Tech investors have funded companies that will create food from plants. Stealthy startup Sand Hill Foods is one such company on investors’ watch list. Beyond Meat, a startup funded by Twitter cofounders Ev Williams and Biz Stone, makes realistic fake chicken and will ramp up availability in 2013.
4. Your smartphone will be like a personal nurse – Ms. Bort reports there is a healthcare revolution headed to your smartphone. IBM (IBM) has promised that one day soon doctors will use tech that will scan your body. They will send that data to the cloud for a diagnosis. Companies are developing smartphones with biosensors that do everything from check your blood sugar to detect the flu. Apple (AAPL) has promoted the iPhone as a platform for health technology since 2009, but some new devices are just coming to fruition.
5. The technology you use for work will be as much fun as the stuff you use at home – Most of us are so used to tech at work being a source of frustration that we can’t imagine a different world. But the author predicts that’s changing. In 2013, tablets will lead software to be redesigned for touch interfaces—which will make it fun and easy to use, more like a game than a spreadsheet. Best of all, more companies are adopting tech that lets you download a “virtual work desktop” on any device, simply by logging in on a Web browser or launching a mobile app.
Related articles
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2013, Apple, Biz Stone, Business, eHealth, Evan Williams, IBM, iPhone, Malware, McAfee, Ransomware, Smartphone, Twitter
WiGig, Wi-Fi Join Forces
Wireless Week is reporting that the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) and the Wi-Fi Alliance have joined forces. According to the article, the Wi-Fi Alliance and WiGig Alliance have collaborated for over two years on the WiGig Alliance’s work to develop an interoperability certification for 60GHz products.
Wi-Fi Alliance President and CEO Edgar Figueroa said in a statement that the 60GHz technology has been an important highlight in the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification roadmap for some time. “Combining the expertise of Wi-Fi Alliance and WiGig Alliance will deliver a terrific user experience with 60 GHz solutions, and will help ensure that a full range of interoperable WiGig solutions reach the market as quickly as possible,” Mr. Figueroa said in a statement.
WiGig operates in the unlicensed 60 MHz band and offers short-range multi-gigabit connections with speeds up to 7 Gbps. FierceBroadbandWireless reports that early applications will include ultrabooks and peripherals. WiGig offers short-range multi-gigabit connections for applications ranging from high-definition WiGig Display Extensions (WDE) to peripheral connectivity and I/O cable replacement such as WiGig Serial Extension (WSE), WiGig Bus Extension (WBE), and WiGig SDIO Extension (WDS). Tablets will then include the technology, primarily for media streaming, and smartphones will drive more widespread WiGig adoption from 2015 on according to ABI Research.
Its major limitation is the extremely high 60 GHz frequencies it uses, which limits its connections to near-line-of-sight within a single room. Signals in the 57–64 GHz region are subject to a resonance of the oxygen molecule and are severely attenuated.
Early 60 GHz implementations based on the WiGig specifications are entering the market now, and ABI Research forecasts that by 2016, annual shipments of devices with both Wi-Fi and WiGig technology will reach 1.8 billion units.
Related articles
- WiFi spec update promises to double your wireless speeds (pcproactive.wordpress.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2013, 60 GHz, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Alliance, WiGig, Wireless, Wireless Gigabit Alliance
Internet of Things
Adding computer communication to otherwise dumb devices isn’t new. As far back as the 1990s, a whole list of Internet-enabled Coke machines around the world had varying functionality. The granddaddy of all Internet of Things was the Coke machine at Carnegie Mellon University, set up in the 1970s.
Internet of Things vulnerable to false data injection
The power grid delivers electricity to charge iPads and run data centers. The power grid connects users with electricity producers through interconnected transmission and distribution networks. In these networks, system monitoring is necessary to ensure reliable power grid operation. The analysis of smart meter measurements and power systems is a routine part of system monitoring.
Help Net Security reports that most energy security professionals told nCircle they did not believe smart meters are secure enough. When asked, “Do smart meter installations have enough security controls to protect against false data injection?” 61% of the 104 energy security professionals said “no”. False data injection attacks introduce arbitrary errors into state variables while bypassing existing techniques for bad measurement detection to exploit the power grid.
Patrick Miller, the founder, CEO, and president of EnergySec noted, “Smart meters vary widely in capability and many older meters were not designed to adequately protect against false data injection. It doesn’t help that some communication protocols used by the smart meter infrastructure don’t offer much protection against false data injection either.”
“… we need to make sure that all systems that process usage data, especially those that make autonomous, self-correcting, self-healing decisions, assure data integrity,” Miller added.
Related articles
- Not-so-smart meters costly | Herald Sun
Railroad Sensors Predict Derailments Wirelessly
Union Pacific (UNP), the nation’s largest railroad company, has deployed Internet of Things technology throughout its network. according to Dailywirless.org, the IoT can predict certain kinds of derailments days or weeks before they are likely to occur. This will improve safety and avoid millions of dollars in damages.
According to the article, Union Pacific, which moves 900 trains a day, started using acoustic sensors 10 years ago to monitor noises from vibrations of ball bearings in train wheels. This allows the company to get trains off the track before a faulty bearing causes a derailment. More recently, the company started using visual sensors that can detect when wheels begin to flatten–another factor that can cause accidents on the rails.
Lynden Tennison, CIO at Union Pacific, told CIO Journal, that the company can now check 40 million patterns every day and can alert the train operators of any anomaly in a bearing within five minutes. “Our goal was to design a system that requires very little maintenance,” he said.
To do this, Union Pacific worked with Intel (INTC) which addressed some of the unique challenges of designing a wireless sensor network for a rail system (pdf). The blog states that to overcome the battery-life issues, Millennial Net paired its i-Bean wireless technology with “energy harvesting” technology from startup Ferro Solutions. An inductive vibration generates power to send [battery free] at 115 Kbps over a distance of 30 m,” said Tod Riedel, cofounder and vice president of business development at Millennial Net.
Related articles
Are you ready for appliances that are smarter than you?
Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOM asks “Are you ready for appliances that are smarter than you?” She points out that LG has introduced its first connected appliance, a Smart Thinq refrigerator that knows what’s inside it. The appliance can communicate with your phone. Your kitchen is about to get a similar level of connectivity as your living room.
The Smart Thinq refrigerator got a lot of press at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as smart appliances were all the rage. The Android-based OS that enabled the fridge to communicate with your smartphone and share information like the contents of the fridge excited the press. The idea, according to the author, was that when someone got home from the grocery store they could choose to tell the fridge what was inside using a touchscreen or they could scan a bar code on their receipt that would contain the information about their purchases.
In this ideal world, the fridge would then be able to suggest recipes for the family based on their weight goals, age, gender, and whatnot. If the consumer selected a fridge-offered recipe the appliance could shoot the recipe to the Smart Thinq oven and it could preheat. All of the connectivity occurs via Wi-Fi and is controlled by the phone and the touchscreen.
The article explains that other features include such as calorie counting and notifications of expiration dates. And if grocery stores take part – then the fridge could show when certain items are out and order them for home delivery.
Is Your Dishwasher Really Yearning for the Internet?
Is Your Dishwasher Really Yearning for the Internet? A startup called Ube thinks so. The firm is betting that smart devices and smartphone apps will make home automation cheap and easy.
In MIT’s Technology Review article “Is Your Dishwasher Really Yearning for the Internet?” Glen Burchers Ube’s chief marketing officer says that more and more home gadgets will ship with microprocessors, enabling the automation and remote control of everything from your lights to your laundry. Until this is a widespread reality, he’d like to sell you a wall outlet.
The wall outlet includes an ARM processor, runs Google’s Android mobile operating system, and can connect to the Internet. This means anything you plug into it can be controlled via your smartphone, and it will also track how much power your devices are consuming.
According to TR, the startup plans to sell the outlet along with a “smart” dimmer switch and plug for $60 to $70 apiece. The Austin, TX firm also plans to offer a free smartphone app that can control these and other Internet-enabled devices.
The blog reports that the Ube app will access a Wi-Fi network to scan for nearby Internet-enabled devices it can manage and lets you know what it can control. Mr. Burchers says the app can control more than 200 devices, most of which are gaming systems, set-top boxes, and TVs.
Mr. Burchers believes that Ube’s first products are just the beginning. He told TR most new electronics will be able to connect to the Web, and home builders will offer smart dimmers to new home buyers as they do granite countertops.
Related articles
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.