Internet of Cars

In San Diego Car2Go has become very popular in the last couple of years. The other company offering similar service is Zipcar. In both cases the underlying premise is that you can use a car on as needed basis, which if you live in a city, seems like the perfect way to leave the city without having to buy a car.

For me, the obvious evolution of this concept would be if I could be able to have access to different cars for different uses. I may want to own a small car for getting around, but select a car as a service to get a mini-van or a SUV for when the kids come home and we want to all go to Disneyland, or get a small truck for that trip to Home Depot, and then get a luxury vehicle for when we want to attend the Opera that one time a year!

Today’s younger generation, like my son who is 22, aren’t that interested in car ownership. They see the ever increasing gas prices, and insurance costs on top of what a new or slightly used car costs, and it’s a turn off for them. They no longer see having a car as a status symbol. They live in the digital world, and expect things to be available on demand and on as needed bases. For them the idea of Internet of Cars is obvious. That’s probably why Zipcar grew mostly on college campuses.

With all the recent telematics developments and the idea of the Internet of things and the connected cars, the use based insurance and Google’s self driving car in addition to the Car2Go and Zipcar, I think we are closer to the realization that car individual ownership may be a thing of the past.

But then what? What will that mean to the auto insurance industry and car manufacturers who today depend on you having more than one car per family? And who will they sell cars to? Will Verizon Wireless and Sprint be selling you the next telecommunication device which will drive itself to your home and all you have to worry is your one data plan?

I, for one can’t wait!

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/01/forget-the-internet-of-things-here-comes-the-internet-of-cars/

Perfect stocking stuffers, perhaps for next year, courtesy Kickstarter!

I have followed a couple of start-ups that got their beginning on Kickstarter, even gave one some of my own cash!

The first one is Ninja Blocks, , which peaked my m2m interest with their open source m2m blocks that you can program to do things like turn your lights on/off, run your thermostat, let you know when the door opens, etc. I’m not a developer, just an enthusiast/evangelist, but it looks simple enough even for me, so I’m seriously thinking of getting one of their kits to tinker with… will report on my progress, because if I can do it, then anyone can do it!

Second is Bia Sport, a very innovative GPS Sports Watch designed mainly for women, by women (Cheryl Kellond is the founder and CEO)!! Girls so rock in this case!! Not only is it beautifully designed, but it’s finally a device that works in the water as well as on land, so for a Triathlete like me, it’s an ideal sports device! And again, it’s sooo cool looking! Can’t wait for mine to be ready later in 2013!

M2M Data and Product Quality

One of the key uses of the “big data” that is generated by the devices connected to the Internet of Things is something that you may not have considered so far. As a former QA guru who relied on metric and statistics to determine whether a product was ready for deployment and then follow the standard improvement processes for new feature additions, I see M2M data as a great way to measure the quality, reliability and usability of the products out in the field.

Imagine that the new refrigerator you just launched is now connected and you’re getting logs of data as to its functionality, frequency and time of use, energy used, maintenance information, etc. that you can now incorporate into your next product development cycle to add to your test plans and product development plans and to prioritize next feature upgrades.

You now have a real-time connection with your customers and can respond to problems before they are even aware that the problem exists. In this new world of IoT, you will be the one proactively contacting the customer to let him know that the new refrigerator they just bought needs a replacement part, and that it’s already being shipped, and a repair person has been notified to arrive and replace it tomorrow!

Internet of Things, M2M, Facebook, and Asimov’s Solaria

I’ve been an avid Science-fiction enthusiast for most of my life, gobbling up most of the well known series from the early Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, to Lem’s Solaris and The Invincible, to the entire Asimov Robot and Foundation series, and on and on. Asimov in his Robot series created a world, Solaria, which specialized in the construction of various robots. Ultimately, Solaria became totally dependent on robot labor and roughly 10,000 robots existed for every human. Over time, Solarians became extremely isolated, living on their estates, surrounded by robots anticipating their every move, and becoming completely isolated from other Solarians and other humans, communicating via a sophisticated telepresence viewing system. Eventually, they genetically engineered themselves to become hermaphrodites, hereby removing the need for even sexual contact. I am often reminded of Solarians and their evolution, and amazed by Asimov’s vision and perhaps pre-scient view of our own future. We already have automated farm equipment to ensure proper watering, manufacturing is done mostly by robots, and even in our personal lives, we are starting to have sensors ensure our living environment is set to the optimum conditions. We even have sophisticated viewing systems (FaceTime, Skype) so that we can see each other without being there, and our social interactions on Facebook are in isolation, so that you can interact with your friends, without actually being together.

So my worry is that with the technological advancements and connectivity, what are the social implications? In our politics we hear about the class warfare of the 1% v. 99%, but what about classes being defined by whether you are the isolated, Solarian-like group, who can no longer relate to the lives of those who are part of real social circles, or worse, not be able to relate to issues of those communities that don’t have access to proper food and education, let alone technology!

DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A BILLION $$ M2M BUSINESS FROM SCRATCH?

Well, that may be an exaggeration, but, my colleague and founder of FieldLogix, Yukon Palmer and I, are putting together a panel discussion at the upcoming MobileCON 2012 focusing on how to start an M2M business on a shoestring budget. Here’s the longer write up, as we were limited on MobileCON’s site.

It is estimated that we are on track to connect 20 billion M2M devices by 2020, so the opportunities are wide-open for entrepreneurs that have a bold vision and the proper support to see it through.

Machine to machine communications requires a solid understanding of diverse technologies.  Attempting to navigate this space on a startup budget only compounds the challenges.   During this panel discussion, we will discuss the various M2M eco-system players and related business models, the process of streamlining the development of the technologies to fit your vision and budget, the types of of hurdles you may expect to jump through to successfully develop and deploy your product, and how to leverage strategic partnerships to find the right talent, vendors, and customers.  You will also hear the investors’ perspective and advice on what they may be looking for as an investment opportunity.

For this upcoming discussion we have invited an expert panel representing entrepreneurs who already had a successful exit after bootstrapping their company, a service provider, a company that will help with everything from proper system design and certification to how to integrate all the components, as well as a representative from the VC community who has a background in M2M investments.

Our speakers include Steve Pazol, former CEO of nPhase, Mo Nasser, BD Director at Sprint, and Kelly Venturini, CEO of  M2MCertified.

Join us on October 11 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM at MobileCon as part of the Thought Leadership series inside the Exhibit Hall at the San Diego Convention. For more information go to MobileCON’s Thought Leadership Series page here: http://www.mobilecon2012.com/events/eventdetails.cfm/1731

GPS Spoofing – potential problems with drones and NYSE

In case you haven’t heard yet, the US government will be using drones to monitor our movements, well ok, the idea is to monitor movements of those trying to cross our borders or other illegal activities, but I suspect that regular citizens will be caught on camera much more often than “the bad guys”.  But guess what? It turns out that the GPS signal is one of the biggest security vulnerabilities we have encountered in a long time, and those signals can basically turn a drone into a missile. Here’s the full story of how a team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin’s hacked into a drone’s GPS.

But this is just part of the story, and Fox News should have followed up with these researches on their other, and in my opinion, more important findings of what this vulnerability means. It turns out that you can also use GPS Spoofing to mess with the time stamps of financial transactions on the NYSE and NASDAQ. Here’s the link to that research paper:

http://radionavlab.ae.utexas.edu/images/stories/files/papers/summary_financial_sector_implications.pdf

Berg Insight – M2M Global Market Stats

Interesting statistics in Berg Insight’s recent M2M Market Research Report Abstract.

According to Berg, Chinese seem to be adopting M2M in a big way: “The most significant market development in 2011 was a major breakthrough for cellular M2M communication in Asia-Pacific. The number of M2M subscribers in the region increased by 64 percent to reach approximately 34.5 million at the year-end, fuelled by massive growth in China that almost doubled its cellular M2M subscriber base to approximately 21 million.” This explains conversation I had with the China Telecom person the Telecom Council event in San Jose recently about their need for an app to track all those bicycles 🙂

Looks like Ericsson shares my worries

This article validates many of the ideas that I expressed in my panel discussion a few weeks ago about the concerns I have regarding what really happens with all the data that is collected from all the millions and billions of devices that are being deployed as part of this Internet of things.

On one hand there is a utopian view of having various gadgets around us collect data and help us in preventing problems with things like our appliances and our cars for example. However on the flipside all this data as we have seen recently may be collected for intentions that we’re not even aware of and will paint patterns of activities that may be used for tracking us, or worse it may fall into hands of unknown entities, which may have even more nefarious intentions.

What about M2M and Data?

Technology Spectator said this earlier this year about The Internet of Things

The development of high-speed broadband infrastructure is now well and truly underway in many countries and one of the real value propositions of this new infrastructure will be the further development of the ‘Internet of Things’(IoT) which is going to be a real game-changer. It will transform every single sector of society and the economy and it will be out of this environment that new businesses – and indeed new industries – will be born. For the telecom this trend will be driven not so much by the carriers as by internet-based services (databases), and it looks as though these developments will come from the bottom up. Exciting new internet applications and mobile apps will see people installing sensors to link to the internet, and data-gathering and real-time analytics will be valuable services that people will want to use. Companies will follow later –either by building their own IoT infrastructure and/or by buying up some of the IoT start-ups.

So when Anil Kripalani asked me to moderate a TiE South Coast panel on wireless, I chose this particular topic. Here’s the video from that panel discussion with the following industry leaders: Mo Nasser from Sprint, Naresh Soni from Interdigital, Fred Yentz from ILS Technologies, and Prof. Subramanya from National University.

Machine to Machine, or “The Internet of Things”, we have a name, now what?

I’m now involved in a new project in the M2M arena, or the Internet of things, the newly coined name by Cisco’s Chief Futurist Dave Evans. I constantly come across the projections of 50 billion connected devices by 2020 in everything from all your appliances being accessed through a facebook-like application where you can get your refrigerator to order your groceries while you’re driving home and your roomba having vacuumed your floor at the same time, to smart meters ensuring energy efficiency, and health monitors allowing your mother to age with dignity in her own home just to name a few.

But I am also finding that there are still many hurdles that need to be overcome to make this future a reality. For now, I can’t even really figure out how to get my mom to be able to use one of the new tablets seamlessly. She doesn’t have Wifi at home, and I don’t really want to spend additional $50/month on a 3G or LTE data plan! My last Verizon bill was already $500 because I went to Europe with my Global Droid and had to pay $2.95 per minute of voice time and $.50 per text! Whatever happened to that  free Wifi everywhere idea that I remember hearing about several years ago?

But I digress. The real problem is how to make all the disparate devices communicate and transmit data in standardized fashion and how to make real sense of the data into information that will help enterprises with their processes and show them that there is real ROI in implementing these costly integrations of sensors, gateways, networks and finally software applications. Oh and yes, having a billing system for it all that somehow makes sense would probably  help too!