Category: Strategy

Inspired and frustrated by the closed, murky, proprietary nature of FireChat, and equally frustrated by my experiencing working on the way too complicated Commotion mesh project, I wanted to find a simple way to answer the question “what do we do when the Internet goes away” problem. FireChat is clearly not the answer for the types of communities I am trying to help, but in its absence, we have no other solutions, it seems.

What I have discovered is that Bluetooth device names (the things  you see when you are trying to pair a bluetooth device to your phone for instance) are actually a really great way to broadcast messages from your phone or computer to anyone within distance. This was partly inspired by the humorous wifi SSID messages that people often use, but the key difference is that Bluetooth device names can actually be 248 bytes long (80-240 letters/glyphs depending upon unicode language), as opposed to the much shorter ~30 character wifi SSIDs. It is also very easy to dynamically change your Bluetooth device name through open programming APIs.

The idea then is to use your device’s Bluetooth name as a kind of Twitter status message bearer, sharing key information during a crisis or as an act of protest/speech. It doesn’t require an app, just a little bit of knowledge and a new behavior. I have built an app (more below) that makes the user experience much simpler, and adds the ability to support retweets/shares (to expand the radio mesh reach), verification, privacy and even encryption (in theory).

To test the basic premise however, if you have an iPhone or iPad, you can set your device name in the general about settings. Then go to the Bluetooth settings area, and you will see all devices that are currently broadcasting. With Android, go to the Settings->Bluetooth screen, and you can “rename phone” from the menu, and set the visibility and timeout of your broadcast. With iPhones, as long as you stay on the Bluetooth screen, it will broadcast. With many new Android phones, you can set your visibility/broadcast timeout to 1 hour or infinite.

You can set a message like “!Gather 7pm at 1st and Main” or “@press please don’t photo faces” or “#Legal Aid is 2125551212”, or even just motivational messages “#staycalm #noviolence” or “#theworldiswatching”. If people like what you have written, they can change their status that message, and rebroadcast another 30 feet in whatever direction they are headed. Again, it is basically Twitter combined with doing “the wave” at a football game, except the wave is powered by these little super computers+radio stations we have in our pockets.

The Gilga app I am working on makes this all feel much more like a chat or Twitter type experience. The app also supports direct messaging using a secured RF socket. The important thing is that there a baseline concept here, that can be tapped into by anyone with a bluetooth device, be it a smartphone, an old Nokia, a PC with a huge Bluetooth antenna etc.

From a threat modeling perspective, there are risks about Bluetooth device IDs being scanned and logged, impersonation attacks based on modified Bluetooth radios, and the same misinformation spreading we see whenever we have an open commons, be it FireChat or Twitter. We have some ways to combat that, but it will be hard. My hope is that, by doing this work in the open, and with contributions by brilliant minds like yours, we can come up with some additional breakthroughs.

Overall, I am positive on the acquisition, with my main concern being that Google is clear and decisive about how they plan to proceed with the integration and operational side, and that they don’t unintentionally create confusion and concern in the consumer market.

ARMING UP FOR THE PATENT WAR
Obviously this acquisition is related to the ongoing patent wars between Apple and Google (with their hardware partners HTC and Samsung as the primary proxies for litigation). Motorola has a deep, broad collection of intellectual property. Not only did they invent the cellular telephone and have years of creating popular consumer mobile hardware (StarTAC!), but they also have created their own Linux+Java mobile OSes in the past, which could provide support for Google in the case vs. Oracle.

GOOD FOR DEVELOPERS FOR NOW
I don’t think this will change much for developers in the next few years, as Android has great momentum that won’t end anytime soon. It may be a boon ultimately, as Google must work harder to maintain the image of Android being open now. The more transparency and code they release, the better for all.  I would also hope Google uses this to support and/or indemnify its app developers from worrying about being sued by patent trolls like LodSys.

PUTTING THE NAIL IN THE RIM COFFIN
Motorola has a “Pro” category of devices, with enhanced security in the OS to meet enterprise and gov requirements, as well as Blackberry style keyboards. This device could be a “Nexus Pro” sold bundled with Google Enterprise services to take on RIM directly as complete business tack. Google is having a lot more success in this space than people realize, taking on IBM, Microsoft and RIM all in one swoop. This is an area that Apple cannot compete in.

COMPETING WITH YOUR PARTNERS
It will be a tricky task to manage Android and Motorola business units of Google. While not entirely comparable, there are some good lessons to learn from Palm and Apple’s own failed attempts at licensing an OS while producing their own competitive hardware. I was at Palm when we had the PalmOne (Hardware) and PalmSource (OS) divisions, when there were still Palm licensees such as Handspring and Sony, and it was a really difficult mess. PalmSource had to treat us like a separate company, in order to appease partners, but at the same time, we didn’t have the freedom those partners would have to implement their solutions because we had to maintain unity with the Palm vision. Eventually, all the licensing ended, Palm bought Handspring, and the whole company unified again, and then ultimately failed, and was acquired by HP.