Posts tagged Smart
Security Leaders: How Can Something This Dumb Be Called a “Smart Grid?”
Mar 8th
“I don’t know how you can call something this dumb a ‘smart grid.’” This from the former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security – the man who created the job. Serving nearly three-and-one-half years at DHS, and before that, several years with its predecessor agency and with the NSA, Stewart A. Baker got a first-hand look at the present and future battlefronts of electronic terrorism. You could read his book, or you could get the gist of his impressions from its title: Skating on Stilts.
Sec. Baker was referring to the relative state of readiness and resilience of the computer equipment protecting America’s energy distribution networks and industrial control systems. Presently a senior counsel at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, LLP, he introduced his firm’s report on our present status. “I thought I would start with some obvious things,” he began. “Security sucks.”
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Last year, the pervasiveness of the Stuxnet worm demonstrated that it’s possible to break, Baker said, the industrial control systems after penetrating the Windows networks that connect to them. “Not only can you, it’s a great idea if you’re thinking about attacking another country,” he told the RSA Security conference in San Francisco last week, with only a hint of sarcasm. “It’s a wonderful weapon, if you’re into weapons. It’s very effective at bringing down industrial control systems, upon which civilian life depends. There’s none of the taboos around this weapon that you have around nuclear weapons. And it’s easy to develop if you’ve got the makings of a cyber-weapons industry. It’s asymmetric – you can go up against the toughest guys in the world and cause some real pain in ways that they may not be able to cause you.”
A Fence Around a Hole
Baker notes that the authority for government agencies today, such as the Commerce Dept.’s NIST, to contribute to the management of Internet security is somewhat repurposed from their original mandate. But partly because these agencies are now perceived as protectors of all things digital, he said, those responsible for direct management and operation of industrial control systems are not focused on digital network security. Remarked Baker during an RSA panel on smart grid protection, “They’ve got an equally important nightmare that they have to live with every day, which is that the power will go out and they won’t be able to deliver it. All of their security features are designed around that.”
While these operators are focused on maintaining the nominal status of the power infrastructure, they tend to trust one another, like soldiers locked in combat against the common enemy of rust and corrosion. And as trusted co-combatants, they share everything with one another – including passwords. So when a power system does fail, and experts are sent down from Canada to manage the issue (gee, I wonder whom Baker was referring to), someone leaves them a note with the passwords so they can get into the system.
Because of incidents like this, Baker says, the security of power systems today is actually worse now than in the past several decades. “This is not exactly the security that you and I grew up with.”
Defending her agency’s role in protecting the grid, however smart or dumb it may be, was Donna Dodson, NIST’s Deputy Chief Cybersecurity Advisor. “The goal of standards is to provide the fundamental tools and technologies that you can use in support of information assurance, to really help protect the smart grid,” she told the panel. “We’ve been working very closely with DHS, the Dept. of Energy, with the entire smart grid community, so that public/private partnership has come together with our smart grid efforts… to begin to understand, from the very top level of understanding risk and risk management, down to the technical details of what standards are available. NIST has pulled that community together.”
Dodson said this community is comprised of standards development organizations and academic leaders, brought together by agencies with the goal of identifying gaps and deficiencies in current standards. As part of a partnership with DHS and private organizations, NIST is supporting a National Initiative for Cyber-Education. Later this spring, it will be hosting a workshop on smart grid security, followed by another on cyber-physical systems.
The Legislative Foundation
But the authority for these agencies to take decisive action, even after these more concrete standards have been ironed out, may only be established through new legislation. That process has made molasses seem slippery. As House Homeland Security Committee general counsel Kevin Gronberg described it, “The activity on the Hill, depending on whom you ask, is fast and furious or slow and monotonous.
“Cyber security – and especially securing the smart grid – has been recognized as an increasing need for legislation in Washington… Because there have been previous attempts at passing cybersecurity legislation, they have been thwarted, so to speak, by multiple jurisdictions.” Gronberg then reminded attendees of the simplified version of how a bill is passed, as presented by the old Saturday morning kids’ show from the 1970s, “Schoolhouse Rock.”
“With the underlying nature of cybersecurity being what it is, as everyone knows, it permeates almost every element of our economy. And as such, there are so many different committees on Capitol Hill that feel they have jurisdiction over the issue – whether it’s Financial Services or National Defense or Homeland Security,” he explained. “With the Republicans regaining the majority in the House in 2010, Speaker of the House [John] Boehner commissioned a task force report on what should be included in the cybersecurity bill.”
That report was released last October, with the hope of each committee being able to create a bill that addresses its respective jurisdiction. Those bills would then be combined into a version that could then be reconciled with a Senate counterpart bill. The resulting bill, called the PRECISE ACT (PDF available here) and which passed Gronberg’s committee on February 1, would enable interagency sharing of standards and information in the event of a national cybersecurity event, as NIST’s Dodson has called for.
The bill also includes measures enabling agencies, under DHS supervision, to acquire databases that happen to include personally identifiable information from services that host critical government infrastructure, so long as that data remains protected. So far, the ACLU has responded with guarded skepticism, but has not raised any alarms. The Union has stated its tentative approval of cybersecurity measures being managed by DHS, instead of the NSA which is also an intelligence service.
“As of now, the cybersecurity mission is poorly defined in legislation,” said Gronberg. “It has been more of a function of executive order and public expectation. I think the Department [of Homeland Security] has filled that role admirably, but we’d like to clarify those roles, especially the cross-jurisdictional aspect of the team sport that is cybersecurity.”
Next page: Failure By Design?
Stock image by Shutterstock.
Are You Using SEO Smart Links – Business 2 Community
Feb 18th
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Are You Using SEO Smart Links
Business 2 Community By Warren Wooden, Published February 18, 2012 Have you ever heard of SEO Smart Links? SEO Smart Links is a great plugin for WordPress users that allows you to automatically create in-content links. The nice thing about this plugin is that you just set … Link Building Company Announces an Increase in the Search for Keyword, "Link … Link Building – a Helpful Guide to Prospecting and Analysis |
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Google Plus SEO could equal profit for companies with smart social media strategy – Toronto Star
Feb 9th
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Google Plus SEO could equal profit for companies with smart social media strategy
Toronto Star … including key link to al Qaeda Air Canada loses $60M in fourth quarter Tooba Yahya to appeal murder convictions Google Plus SEO could equal profit for companies with smart social media strategy Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, social media and. |
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Future Of the Smart Home? Engineer Hacks Android With the Kinect API
Jan 25th
Take two open source projects, do a little creative hacking and ingenuity and what do you get? The Android-Kinect project. An engineer that goes by the name DDRBoxman hacked a Galaxy Nexus smartphone with his a projector, a PC and Microsoft’s Kinect API and was able to use “touch” based gestures to control the user interface by interacting with the projection. Everybody has been waiting for The user experience brought to us by the film Minority Report. Well, this engineer might have brought us closer than any other hack before.
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DDRBoxman works through something called Recursive Penguin, which from its website we cannot tell is a personal project or some type of company. The Facebook link on Recursive Penguin leads to an Android developer by the name of Colin Edwards that works for a mobile development studio called Ironclad Mobile (which is now called Uncodin), based in Austin, Texas. Uncodin has funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create a an app to boost math test scores for 9th graders and has some funding from DARPA for a mobile training application, according to the Facebook page.
DDRBoxman downloaded the Android 4.0 ICS source tree from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and created a custom ROM for his Galaxy Nexus. He then sends command to the Nexus with TUIOForAndroid. TUIO is, “an open framework that defines a common protocol and API for tangible multitouch surfaces” according to TUIO.org. The PC is then configured with the touch interface through the open source Kinect API and voila! We have a tangible user interface on the wall.
The Kinect API is fascinating. Some of the greatest innovations of using motion-based input methods are being cooked up at the MIT Media Lab where they use Kinects and its API as a cheap implementation of motion computing. That includes 3D interfaces, motion tracking and an array of other innovations.
Now, think of the potential with mixing Kinect with Android. One of the untapped potentials of Android is that it is not just a mobile platform. Android could run on set-top televisions boxes or control all of the electronics in your household. The concept of the “smart home” takes a step forward in the marriage between the two open source projects. It is all the more delicious that the sources come from two companies that have historically been at each other’s throats: Google and Microsoft.
Google announced a framework at I/O last year that can bring Android to all of your appliances or devices. Called Android@Home it was the first notion that Google has projected that Android could be have far more uses and be more ubiquitous than most people originally believed. Now, add the Kinect API to Android@Home and you could walk into your kitchen, wave to turn on the lights, program your microwave from across the room with just a few waves of you hand. Then, go into your living room where you have an Android smartphone hooked to a projector running the Netflix app and stand in the middle of the room, swiping the air until you find your viewing material for the evening.
This all sounds like some crazy science fiction movie a la Minority Report. It is not. The fact of the matter is that right now, this technology exists. The hack by DDRBoxman is just the beginning. Within the decade, we will see this type of functionality in homes across the world.
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Smart Hoteliers Embrace Google+ For Better SEO – Hospitality Net
Jan 18th
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Smart Hoteliers Embrace Google+ For Better SEO
Hospitality Net Starting now smart hoteliers need to begin embracing Google+ as a major component of their Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Those who move quickly will have a significant competitive advantage over the laggards. Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz provides a short … |
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Samsung Doubles Down on TV at CES, Makes Smart TV an Internet Hub
Jan 9th
It’s not even Day 1 at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, but already we’ve seen a flurry of product announcements. One of the more impressive was from Samsung. Internet TV is expected to be a big trend of 2012 and as the world’s number 1 TV brand, Samsung is a company to watch. Especially given the gains Samsung made over 2011 with the Galaxy series of smartphones and tablets, which made it the leading vendor of Android-based devices in the world.
The big news from Samsung today was a Smart TV push. The word “smart” here refers to Internet connectivity. Samsung’s 2012 model TVs will enable users to consume a mix of traditional TV programming and Web apps. It remains to be seen how well these new Internet features are implemented, because software and user experience have not historically been strengths of Samsung. But the message today was clear: Samsung is doubling down on its core TV leadership and attempting to make the TV the main household Internet device.
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The official theme at Samsung’s CES event was “Pushing Boundaries.” Boo-Keun Yoon, president of the Samsung Consumer Electronics Division, told the CES crowd that Samsung aims to “break down the walls that exist between devices.”
Yoon began by noting that Samsung is the world’s number 1 TV brand, for the sixth consecutive year. It sold 1.7m TVs in the month of November. He then reiterated that the TV is its primary product and is a hub for all of its other consumer offerings. “While we may have many devices,” he remarked, “the heart of this ecosystem is the TV. The TV plays an important role in bringing family members together.”
This reminds me a bit of Microsoft’s strategy around the PC. Substitute a TV for the PC and you have Samsung’s Internet strategy.
Smart TV
Samsung announced today that it is upgrading its TV line with a bunch of “smart” features. Labeled “Smart TV,” 2012 model Samsung TVs will feature Smart Interaction, Smart Content, Smart Evolution and Smart Hub.
The idea behind Smart Interaction is to move beyond the traditional TV remote control. Now, viewers will be able to control their TV using face recognition, plus gesture and voice controls. It will be similar to how Microsoft’s Kinect works on XBox.
Smart Content introduces social services to Samsung’s TVs. Yes, this means apps. Yoon claimed that Samsung Smart TV is already “the leading platform for developers,” with 25,000 developers working on the platform. 20 million apps will have been downloaded by the end of this month, he said.
At CES, Samsung introduced some key apps for its platform. One is called Family Story and it allows you to upload photos, videos and memos from mobile devices to your TV. Voice chat is coming in the future. Also, as if to prove that it is a major player now in the Web ecosystem, Samsung announced that Angry Birds will become available on Samsung Smart TVs later this year.
Smart Evolution enables you to upgrade your TV with future functionality, without having to buy a new TV. Basically it is an upgrade slot at the back of the TV and you will be able to insert an “evolution kit” into it. This will be available for all 2012 and beyond TVs.
Smart Hub is a new UI for the Web features and is in HD. Also announced at CES was an upgrade to AllShare, Samsung’s cloud connectivity service. AllShare now includes sync for photos and video.
Along with the Smart TV strategy, Samsung announced new television models. These included the ES8000 LED HDTV and the so-called “ultimate TV,” a 55-inch Super OLED TV. These and other high-end TVs which Samsung releases will feature an integrated camera, for both video chat and the motion controls.
What about 3D, last year’s Big Thing at CES? Samsung hasn’t entirely de-focused from it. Although 3D failed to get much interest from consumers, this year Samsung will attempt to drive 3D content through streaming services.
Other Computing Devices
The TV may be Samsung’s main weapon, but it’s been Android-powered smartphones, tablets and laptops that propelled the company to the top rung of Internet device vendors in 2011. At CES, Samsung announced that it sold 300m smartphones worldwide in 2011.
Among the many products Samsung announced today were several new computing devices. It unveiled a new tablet called the Galaxy Tab 7.7 LTE. Also the second generation of its “mobile PC” (a high-end laptop) called Samsung Series 9 2012 and a new “ultrabook” (a thin, lightweight laptop) called Samsung Series 5 Ultra.
Finally, the Samsung Galaxy Note, which appears to be halfway between a smartphone and a tablet. Which emphasizes another trend we’re seeing these days: it’s getting harder and harder to put a line between what is a smartphone, tablet or computer!
Whatever they’re called, all of these devices are becoming more integrated into Samsung’s Smart TV platform. Also with the Samsung Media Hub, coming to TVs later this year, users will be able to purchase content on their smartphone or tablet and watch it on TV.
Although TV and computing devices are the most high profile products for Samsung circa 2012, its consumer electronics range continues to be varied. Today at CES, the company talked about its latest WiFi cameras, refrigerators and a new connected washing machine (which enables you to control your washing machine using your smartphone).
Samsung announced a lot of products today, but the key thing to focus on is its Smart TV platform. With its traditional strength in the TV market, combined with its relatively new leadership in Android-powered computing devices, Samsung could become a very important company in the Internet ecosystem. Although again, we must caution that to date Samsung hasn’t proven itself in software or Internet implementation.
In the comments, let us know your thoughts on what Samsung announced today.
Image credits: The Verge
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Mobile Payments Need to Be Smart: On the Road With the Google Wallet
Jan 6th
The Google Wallet has been available to select users for several months. By select, we mean users that just happen to use a CitiBank MasterCard with an Android Nexus or other NFC enabled device on a carrier that supports it. Given those very specific limitations, there are really not many users that have actually put the mobile wallet through its paces.
One observer hacked Google Wallet onto his Verizon Galaxy Nexus device and took it on the road during his Christmas holiday travels. What he found was that as a dump-pipe processing system, Google Wallet works just fine. But, there is a lot that can be improved upon.
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A Fine Way To Process Payments
Cherian Abraham, a mobile commerce expert at DROP LABS and a contributor to Mobile Payments Today, put the Google Wallet through the paces. Verizon technically does not allow the app on the Galaxy Nexus (yet) but Abraham was able to fairly easily download the APK file and get it installed on his device. He then rode 900 miles through the mid-Atlantic states, testing out the wallet at any merchant he found that had MasterCard’s PayPass terminals.
There is one common truth about NFC and mobile wallets that rings true with every person has used a smartphone to pay for a physical good: mobile payments are cool.
“I pulled out my phone every chance I got during my roadtrip, and provided the retailer had a paypass terminal handy, went ahead and paid using my phone to hushed tones of awe and envy,” Abraham wrote. “My inner 8 year old had a field day!”
Abraham found that most transactions went off “without a hitch.” Employees did not need to be trained how to receive NFC payments because the PayPass terminal did everything itself. If NFC payments were only about transferring money from one point to another, this would not be an issue. Yes, paying with your smartphone is cool, but there is really no fundamental difference between taking your wallet out of your pocket and swiping the PayPass terminal and doing the same with you phone.
The Promise: Not Just Mobile Payments, “Smart Payments”
The promise of mobile payments goes so much deeper. Deals, discounts, offers, streamlined digital receipts, location-based coupons, loyalty rewards and other services that the modern smartphone makes possible are the major allure of mobile payments. At its base, there is no difference between a tap or a swipe or even handing over cash.
This is where Abraham started having trouble. Foremost, Google Wallet NFC payments will work on any MasterCard PayPass machine that has been set up within the last five years or so. The actual movement of money is not a problem. The value-added services that come with the idea of a mobile wallet, the notion of “smart payments” are not programmed into the run-of-the-mill PayPass terminal. This is where MasterCard and, really, the whole mobile payments industry, runs into a problem. A PayPass terminal needs a firmware upgrade to handle coupons, discounts, offers etc. New terminals will have those firmware upgrades baked in. But, imagine a gas station on some rural state highway that has had the same PayPass terminal for years. You think that MasterCard, Google, Citi or some NFC provider is really going to make an effort to upgrade those terminals? The only way that point-of-sale is getting upgraded is if it breaks and MasterCard sends the gas station a new one.
This is going to be a problem for the mobile payments revolution. Many urban areas will have no problem getting new or upgraded POS terminals. Yet, it is easy for city going folks to forget that a giant swath of the United States is not urban but still filled with people that want new and useful technology.
Google Wallet does not put offers front and center in the app, the way Abraham would like to see them. Abraham has the notion that the whole system – offers, credit/debit cards, rewards – should be as frictionless as possible. In this, he has a major point. Not only do mobile payments need to be as easy to use as your debit card, but the “extras” cannot be hidden or difficult to use. Imagine a location-based smart application that knows where you are and will push the appropriate card, deal and reward to the forefront of the app before you actually make a purchase. That is what Abraham is looking for.
Recommendations
Abraham has written a white paper on the mobile payments industry and specifically the needs of the Google Wallet. Here is a list of 12 things he would like to see ingrained into the application:
- Indicate to the customer how many rewards points she stand to gain by completing the purchase.
- Provide a transaction summary right away along with any rewards points accrued or redeemed as part of the purchase
- Allow the customer to redeem his rewards points instead of cash/credit at the POS and abstract all the complexity of that redemption from both the customer and the merchant
- Indicate to the customer if she so prefers, for a given retail category, where she stands for that current month in terms of expenses (e.g. $150 in Gas, $200 in eating out etc.)
- Warn the customer if she has insufficient funds to clear the transaction. Or better, if the purchase will in turn overdraw the account so that any scheduled bills or checks would not clear, then warn the customer.
- If the customer has one or more credit/debit cards with the bank, then default to the card that will provide the maximum value, in terms of rewards accrued or a favorable interest rate. Or pick a credit card that has a coupon that could be applied to this payment. Allow the customer to choose if there is more than one.
- Issuance of value stores including prepaid debit cards that automatically unlock to release funds when in proximity to a particular store, location or when used for a specific retail category.
- Use location and the purchased item as context and suggest to the customer a recommended accessory to her purchase at the same or a nearby store.
- Use location and time of day along with the social graph of the customer to recommend new retail experiences.
- Use past purchase history along with frequency of purchases on specific retail categories to deliver localized offers from nearby merchants.
- Provide couponing capabilities that just works – including picking the right coupon at the POS without the customer having to remember.
- If the bank deems the purchase amount to be significant, and requires that the customer credit limit to be raised, then it should do an STP (Straight through processing) and ask the customer whether to raise her limit.
Implementing these recommendations would certainly move the Google Wallet into the realm of “smart payments.”
What do you think of Abraham’s recommendations? Outside of the geeky-cool factor, what entices you about paying with your smartphone? Let us know in the comments.
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The Roku Streaming Stick Makes A Regular TV A Smart TV – ReelSEO Online Video News
Jan 4th
 ReelSEO Online Video News |
The Roku Streaming Stick Makes A Regular TV A Smart TV
ReelSEO Online Video News He is also founder of The Viral Orchard (http://www.viralorchard.com), an Internet marketing firm offering content writing and development services, viral marketing consulting, and SEO services. Jeremy writes constantly, loves online video, … |
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Internet TV In 2012: Roku Streaming Stick & Smart Televisions
Jan 4th
Who needs a big, expensive Web-connected television when there are so many other ways to stream content from the Internet to your living room? There are a variety of boxes and plug-ins that users can acquire to get the Web running on their TVs. One of the leaders in the space, Roku, has taken the notion a step farther. Roku is throwing out the notion of the box. Instead, stream movies and shows to your TV just by plugging in a stick.
The Roku Streaming Stick is intended to give users all the functionality of a Smart TV without any boxes or cables. It can be controlled by a TV remote and offer most (but not all) of the features that a Roku player can offer. Internet TV is going to be a maturing market vertical in 2012 and on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, we are starting to see how the space will evolve in the new year.
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Roku Partners With Brightcove
In addition to the Roku Streaming Stick, the company also announced today that it is partnering with video cloud content provider Brightcove to bring content from Showtime to the service. Essentially, Roku is making it easier for Brightcove customers to deliver content to Smart TVs powered by Roku. This will help cut down on creating user interfaces and design elements for adapting Internet content for televisions.
The Showtime app will feature HD-quality promotional content from shows like Shameless and House Of Lies. It does not appear that full Showtime content will appear on the Roku but rather clips, highlights, Web shows and interviews.
Roku Not The Only Game In Town
Everybody is waiting to see what Apple does with the TV space. Really, it is a natural vertical for Cupertino to move into. At this point the only product the company produces is Apple TV, the external box that can stream content and set up AirPlay that puts the content of your iPhone or iPad onto your television. There is also one of the original companies in this space, Boxee, which will likely iterate a new product this year.
One of the more interesting developments in the Internet TV space is being brought to bear by Myriad and Broadcom. Myriad is and Android development company that has introduced Davlik to the ecosystem with the intention of porting Android functionality everywhere. Myriad announced Alien Vue last month with the specific intention of putting Android apps and content on TV screens. Myriad is partnering with semiconductor company Broadcom to create set top boxes that will bring this product to life. The companies will be showing off the new product at CES.
What do you want from a Smart TV? Should it run apps from iOS and Android? Is streaming from Netflix and Hulu Plus mandatory? Let us know in the comments.
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Smart SEO tactics for small businesses – BetaNews
Nov 13th
 BetaNews |
Smart SEO tactics for small businesses
BetaNews In order for this to happen, people to actually visit, and for that to happen, a website needs to be designed around the principles of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. SEO, put simply, is how to make it easier for web users to come across your … iCopywriter Responds to Content Implications of New Google Algorithm iCopywriter Responds to Content Implications of New Google Algorithm |
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