Tag: iot

Google’s Android problems point the way for the Internet of Things

How Google handle ongoing Android security issues will be a pointer for protecting the Internet of Things

As regular security problems are being exposed in the Android operating system, Google and Samsung have announced regular updates to their devices and software.

For long timers in the IT industry this is a return to the Microsoft days of Patch Tuesdays, the monthly bundle of updates for Windows and Office the company used to issue on the first Tuesday of each month.

While Android has nothing the like the problems Microsoft did in the early 2000s with the explosion of malware that crippled millions of users, the risks to the Google system are real with some predicting a security armageddon.

For users, there’s a serious question in the problems facing Android system in that unlike the Windows systems the rollout of updates is controlled by the telcos or handset vendors rather than the software developers.

As a consequence many older devices simply aren’t being updated leaving millions of smartphone users exposed to malware and having no way of fixing known security problems.

The problems facing Android are common across the entire Internet of Things, how Google respond the current smartphone security problems is going to be a pointer for the rest of the IoT sector.

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The need for an IoT manifesto

As the internet of things rolls out, more care in the design of products and services will be needed

Last May at the ThingsCon conference in Berlin a group of European designers came together to form the IoT Manifesto.

Now vendors have the ability to put a chip into almost anything companies and designers are tempted to add connectivity simply for the sake of doing so.

In many cases this is opens up a range of security risks ranging from the screaming baby monitor to the hackable jeep.

Coupled with the security risks of your intimate devices being hacked there’s the related privacy risks as millions of devices collect data ranging from how hard you press your car’s brake pedal through to last time you burned your breakfast toast.

In an era where governments and businesses are seeking to amass even more information about us, there are genuine concerns about what that data is going to be used for and why it is being collected in the first place.

The IoT manifesto looks to manage these problems facing the sector through ten guiding design principles;

  1. Don’t believe the hype around the IoT
  2. Only design useful things
  3. Deliver benefits to all stakeholders
  4. Keep everything secure
  5. Promote a culture of privacy
  6. Gather only a minimal amount of data
  7. Be transparent about who that data will be shared with
  8. Give users control over their data
  9. Design durable products
  10. Use the IoT and its design to help people

All of the principles are laudable and it’s not hard to think that meeting the guidelines would make devices and services that aren’t just useful and safe but also simpler, cheaper and more effective.

There’s many ethical, business and safety issues facing the Internet of Things as connected devices rollout across almost every industry. The IoT Manifesto may well be a good framework in which to design them and the cloud services they’ll depend upon.

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Marketing and the Internet of Things

We’re only just beginning to understand the marketing potential of the Internet of Things says Bosch’s Jim Fish

“There is no perfect product,” says Jim Fish, “but the Internet of Things makes it possible to deliver a close to perfect message.”

Fish, the Chief Innovation Officer & VP Global Automotive Diagnostics at Bosch North America, was speaking to Decoding the New Economy ahead of his visit to Sydney to speak at the 2015 ADMA Global Forum.

For marketers, the connected car and the Internet of Things presents a unique set of opportunities, particularly when overlaid with today’s social media tools.

“If you think about your ability to message with today’s Facebook and the ability for marketers to micro-target messages so you could push a message to people according to things they’ve shown preference for or things that they have liked.”

“The next leap frog ahead from an automotive perspective is in vehicle advertising specific to vehicle and location,” says Fish. “There is a battle for the real estate in vehicle’s infotainment systems. The automakers are placing a lot of effort in delivering the experience the mobile user desires.”

In the auto industry this has seen a battle between software vendors to stake a position on the smartcar’s dashboard. Fish sees Google with its mapping, search and advertising technologies as being the best placed in that field but doesn’t think there will be one single winner in the automobile space.

Smart Connected Living

One of the biggest opportunities beyond marketi Fish sees is in combining the smarthome with the connected car. “We see this exploding,” he says of Bosch’s future plans. “We see it as perfectly integrating,”

Fish sees how the connected home integrates with other technologies to provide seamless connectivity for people. Even if people lose their smartphones the smart house will be able to inform and communicate with them.

Again, combining the information gathered by social media and other services presents opportunities for businesses and governments.

Networking the smart city

For the smart city, Fish sees connected cars providing a key part in managing and planning the towns of the future citing how the Michigan Department of Transportation sees how equipping vehicles with road monitoring sensors could save the state 11 million dollars a year in inspection costs.

Fish also cites how cities are experimenting with monitoring how taxis and public vehicles are using their windshield wipers to determine weather conditions. The US Department of Transportation flags the smartcar as the mobile weather station.

Again Fish sees Google as having an advantage in applying these technologies with their acquisition of Israeli traffic crowdsourcing service Wayze.

“Crowdsourcing is in its infancy. There are many things computers can do but there are some things they will never be able to do. There are some human elements still required.”

Fish sees much of our understanding of what we can do with the internet of things and the data we generate from it as being in its infancy. The real value lies in extracting the value from it. For marketers the journey is only just beginning.

 

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Security, smartcars and Microsoft Windows – ABC Nightlife July 2015

Security problems with smartcars and dating sites along with asking if a new version of Microsoft Windows matters any more

Security problems with smartcars and dating sites along with asking if a new version of Microsoft Windows matters any more are the topics for July’s Nightlife tech spot.

Paul Wallbank regularly joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife on to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

If you missed this month’s show, you can listen to the program through the ABC website.

July’s Nightlife

A decade ago people lined up all night for a new version of the Windows operating system. Next week Microsoft will be launching Windows 10 to an indifferent market place, does what was once the world’s biggest software company matter anymore in a world of smartphones, connected cars and cloud computing?

Some of the questions we’ll be answering include.

  • So what are Microsoft announcing next week?
  • What happened to Windows 9?
  • Does Windows really matter any more?
  • The internet has changed things but not always for the better. What about connected cars being hacked?
  • Is this a bigger problem than just connected cars when we’re seeing things like kettles being wired up to the internet?
  • Of course it’s not just cars suffering problems on the Internet, adult dating site Ashley Madison has had potentially 37 million customers’ details leaked online.
  • Could this happen to any business? How do we protect ourselves?

Listeners’ questions

A few of the questions from listeners couldn’t be answered on air.

Running Flash of iPhones and iPads: Steve Jobs’ hatred of Adobe Flash was legendary and as consequence iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad don’t come with the ability to run the software. That’s a problem for those who need Flash for some packages.

The Puffin web browser gives iPad and iPhone users the ability to use Flash on their devices and is available from the iTunes store.

Securing Android: While smartphones are less prone to viruses and malware than personal computers, they still are at risk. For Android users there is no shortage of choice for security packages, some of which include;

Android power hogs: A downside with smartphone apps is they can drain battery life. One excellent feature on Android phones is the ability to easily check what’s using your juice.

  • Open device settings
  • Scroll to “about phone”
  • Click on “battery use”

Join us

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to@paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

 

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Management embraces M2M tech

Interviewing over 650 executives across 16 countries and seven industries, Vodafone looks at how companies are using M2M technologies in their organisations.

Companies are increasingly embracing machine to machine technologies, the 2015 Vodafone M2M Barometer reports.

Interviewing  over 650 executives across 16 countries and seven industries, Vodafone’s report looks at how companies are using M2M technologies in their organisations.

The most enthusiastic industry adopting M2M is the energy and utilities sector with 37% of respondents claiming they’ve implemented machine to machine projects followed by the automobile and retail sectors.

Slightly behind the leading three sectors is the consumer industry and we can expect to see that grow as wearable technologies become more common and more household devices come with connectivity built in.

Globally, the Asian region is driving M2M adoption with governments in China, South Korea and Singapore in particular driving the market growth as they mandate more connected technologies.

Vodafone concludes the report by stating the question for businesses is not whether to adopt M2M, but how best the technologies can be used to drive business. As organisations find new ways to gather data and apply the insights they find from that information, the business case for adopting machine to machine technologies will get stronger.

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Sony hopes mobile phones are an IoT Trojan horse

Are mobile phones the cornerstone of an IoT strategy? Hiroki Totoki, CEO and president of Sony Mobile, believes so.

“We will never ever sell or exit from the current mobile business,” defiantly states CEO and president of Sony Mobile, Hiroki Totoki, in an interview with Arabian Business.

“Smartphones are completely connected to other devices, also connected to people’s lives — deeply.” Totoki continues, “and the opportunity for diversification is huge. We’re heading to the IoT (Internet of Things) era and have to produce a number of new categories of products in this world, otherwise we could lose out on a very important business domain.”

The smartphone has become the remote control for the smarthouse and connected car and that doesn’t appear to be changing as Totoki acknowledges.

For companies like Sony it’s difficult to see the advantage of running their own hardware as it’s the software stack that matters in controlling the platforms with that battle long being settled as a contest between Google Android and Apple iOS for the user market.

For Sony, the challenge is to find a niche to join players like BlackBerry’s QNX, Windows 10 and the other systems carving lucrative, but less visible, market sectors.

Should Sony find a niche, it’s unlikely to based upon hardware unless they can find a modern equivalent of the 1970s Walkman.

Whenever a corporation’s executives make a declaration like Totoki’s, it’s probably worthwhile for staff members in the affected divisions start brushing up their resumes. It’s not a good sign.

Regardless of Totoki’s fighting words, it’s difficult to see how Sony’s mobile division can survive as a consumer vendor.

It’s likely Sony will have to find something other than smartphones to be a Trojan horse into the Internet of Things.

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Google Glass goes to the enterprize

Google Glass goes to the enterprize

The original Google Glass program closed down at the beginning of this year and bought to an end the first stages of the highest profile virtual reality headset project.

At the time, the company flagged Glass was entering another stage and now the 9to5Google site reports an enterprise edition is well underway.

Despite the focus on consumer and gaming applications, enterprise applications in fields such as logistics and safety have been the bigger immediate opportunities for these products.

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