Technology Futures

"When Toilets Attack" would make a great name for a B-grade movie, but this is a true story. We hear constantly now about "the Internet of Things," and Cisco is promoting this idea among many other companies. It's the idea that we will have many devices in our homes and businesses that are IP-addressable (and hence the need for IPv6, but that's another story). A Japanese toilet has an accompanying Android app that lets you "control" toilet functions like flushing, bidet faucet, and odor control fans, among other options. But the Bluetooth enabled commode can be controlled by any nearby Android device with the app, not just the owner of the flush-a-tronic crapper.

While this is mainly funny, the marketing hype of "the Internet of Things" is outstripping adequate software design and testing, as evidenced by this article about how cars can be hacked easily to create dangerous or deadly driving situations. While a computer has to be attached to the cars input port, this could be done easily without the owner of the vehicle even knowing, and then the rogue computer could control the throttle and brakes.

The researchers that demonstrated the car hacking noted that, "There's no authentication." In other words, the car designers and engineers never bothered to think about data security. It's a scary world out there.....

Wired reports that Google has changed its position on net neutrality. The search giant has apparently told the FCC that it may not allow residential customers on its Google Fiber networks to attach servers to their home fiber connection. The company is suggesting that instead, customers that want to run a server will be encouraged to purchase a "business class" service that costs more.

It makes sense to charge more for the symmetric bandwidth that is usually required to run a server efficiently, but on our open access, multi-service networks, we don't find it useful to try to control what customers do; it turns both the service providers and the network owner (typically a community enterprise) into bandwidth police, and forces the network owner to be judge and jury about what might constitute "business" use of a fiber connection.

Instead, we develop pricing models that focus on user needs, which lets the customers choose if they want a residential service or a business class service, and takes providers and the network owner off the hook for judging what their customers are doing. And not incidentally, that policy approach encourages innovation and entrepreneurship in the community by keeping the cost of starting an Internet-based business very low.

Fred Pilot excerpts two key points from a speech by Milo Medin, the head of the Google fiber initiative.

• Communities are still putting off taking control of their economic future...despite more than a decade of waiting for the private sector or the Federal government to do something.
• Many communities have a blind faith in wireless...that if they wait long enough, a "breakthrough" wireless technology will save them the effort of investing in duct and fiber. Medin makes the point I have made many times, which is you can't expand wireless without lots of fiber.

Read Pilot's summary, and he also links to Medin's full speech.

Here is a great article on how to manage people working remotely. This article has very specific and useful tips on what you need to do, what software tools you should use, and provides links to some of the recommended tools. We have been using this approach very successfully for years, and the two most important things we have found are:

1. Videoconferencing that is easy to use and can be "always on" or nearly always on. This means Skype or some other one-click video tool, rather than something like Webex or GoToMeeting. We use GTM all the time, but you have to go through a dialogue to set up a videoconference with Webex and GTM, and the overhead is too high for remote collaboration.
2. Good symmetric bandwidth at every worker's location. This means if you have someone working remotely from their home, they need business class broadband with a minimum of several meg of upload bandwidth. You need symmetric bandwidth to support the videoconferencing.

There are a variety of collaboration and project management tools, and you need something, but the minimum requirement will be a tool that can be accessed remotely so that all employees can easily keep project activities up to date.