Android Project Approved

Our second research and development project has been approved by the National ICTR&D Fund, Pakistan. ICTR&D is a highly reputable funding agency and funds only state-of-the-art projects in the field of information and communication technologies. We at SERG have become the first group in NWFP to have two projects approved by ICTR&D. This one brings 14.7 million to SERG. (Not that we can use it willy-nilly but still.)

This project is about Android security. We’ll be making the details of the project available soon using our group’s homepage but I can announce right now that we will be needing highly skilled, motivated and energetic individuals to work with us on this very interesting and challenging new technology. If you’ve been looking at the web, you’d know how much popularity Android is getting. I can also assure any potential candidates that the pay is very handsome.

So, keep reading this space to see when we announce the interviews, show up for the interview and join our team of dedicated, hard-working (and funny) individuals.

How’s about Corporate Microblogs?

This is a more of a brainstorm than an idea and I have no idea if this already exists. But here’s the thought anyway.

I read “Adobe Blogs” — a single interface to all the blogs contributed by the Adobe team. Is there an equivalent of that in the twitter/microblog world? To the extent that I’ve seen it, there is none. Each corporation dedicates a person to write on twitter for them. How’s about having a single aggregating microblog that provides a single interface to a corporation’s microbloggers. Right now, you have to subscribe to all the different microbloggers or have a single person write on behalf of the whole business. Can we not distribute this so that every employee can chip in?

HTC Hero

HTC (the guys who built the first Android phone for T-Mobile) have released a new Android-based smartphone called Hero. It’s an amazing piece of technology and looks really cute. We’ll be trying to get our hands on this one but only if it’s not SIM-locked. Not likely, since HTC is a manufacturer, not a carrier. It runs on a customized Android OS. Looks like HTC guys put a lot of effort into the UI of the device. Not only is it multi-touch, it also looks like the next gen of UIs for smartphones. Here are the specs:

http://www.htc.com/www/product/hero/specification.html

Here’s the phone:

Android-based Hero from HTC

Using Twitter

I’ve been an ardent fan and promoter of all social networking sites for a long time now. I’ve brought many people to twitter and I’ve even setup my own local laconi.ca server. However, in light of recent news surrounding twitter, I feel it necessary to inform the people I know about the hazards of using twitter without care. Here’s why:

Twitter is a mass communication medium. It’s falls under the same category as a television channel, a news site or even a printed newspaper. As with all mass communication devices, it can and is being misused. I’m not talking about spammers here. I’m talking about the use of the media as a (to put it mildly) opinion shifter. You keep listening to a news channel long enough, you begin to follow their line of reasoning. You keep reading a newspaper long enough, you begin to believe the perspective of the editor. Similarly, if you follow your political news on twitter, you begin to think like the 10% of the twitter “actives” before you know it. (I got that 10% from @erictpeterson’s talk at the “140 characters conference” on twitter.) Twitter is one of the most convenient brainwashing tools if you’re in that 10%.

So, when you use twitter, here are my suggestions:

1. Use twitter for your own domain only. Use it to communicate with your friends, follow the leaders in the area that you’re familiar with. Do not follow news sites! For me, I follow only computer scientists, bloggers and physics review sites.  Things I know I can trust my own logic and knowledge with.
2. Tread with care around controversial issues. See everything with skepticism.

These are the two golden rules I follow for any mass communication media. For twitter, they’re just as important.

Google Wave: Re-inventing Online Communication

Google is aiming at killing email altogether!

I’ve been viewing the newest beta product from Google called “Wave”. It’s rightly named not only because it’s arranges all conversations and communication in a wave that participants can join and leave but also because it’s most likely going to give rise to a new wave of technology products. For the complete intro to this amazing new technology, you should head over and view the complete (80 minute) demo given at Google I/O. What I like most about the product is 1) the real-time features including instant appearance of the text input in one user’s account on the other user’s wave inbox 2) the collaborative features (including multiple simultaneous editing users and 3) the way everything is linked together, much like Tim Lee’s linked data.

We have often been led to believe that certain pieces of technology are paradigm changing but this piece of technology is one thing that is surely going to change the way communication occurs. If it’s as good as the demo, it may mean a gigantic step towards linked data and streamlining of different technologies such as social networking sites, (micro)blogging, online comments and certainly email! If this works out, soon we won’t need to send email.

Gap Between Industry and Academia

I gave a talk today on the gap between industry and academia and what the students can do to bridge that gap. You can take a look at the presentation file below. Topic of the presentation was “Bridging the Gap between Industry and Academia: Perspective and Rants” and was presented in City University.

Download Presentation

Video Lectures Uploaded

For those who are interested in the activities of SERG but can’t come over to the end of the world (Phase 7 in Hayatabad), here’s a resource that you might benefit from. Video lectures of workshops conducted by SERG members are being uploaded online on different services. These will invariably be free and you can view them online if you have a reasonable internet connection. See the list here.

CCS Submission Complete

We’ve completed our submission for ACM Conference on Computers and Communications Security (CCS2009). Like SACMAT08, this was exhilarating due to the amount of effort it requires just to get each and every sentence right and to fit everything in the allocated space. As expected, I can’t much say about the submission itself but this one was my idea and I was responsible for the whole thing.

We think the idea is really good and we presented it real well. But of course, with CCS, all bets are off.

Oxford Visit for Trust 2009

My visit to Oxford was concluded with a two-day travel back. It was back-breaking (my back is still broken) because of all the walking and the sitting. The paper I presented can be seen on the publications page and the photos of the trip along with captions can be seen on my facebook album. I am currently writing the visit report (to be submitted to the funding agency — ICT R&D) and may upload it if it seems interesting. The personal costs for the trip were 14,000 pakistani rupees including the visa fees. Not bad for a trip to Oxford.

JSR321 Early Draft Release

JSR321: Trusted Computing API for Java Platform is now released as Early Draft. Download EDR here (provided under the restrictions of a cost-free review license, which is delivered in detail with the specifications).

“JSR 321 targets to develop a Trusted Computing API for Java(TM) providing selected functionality the TCG Software Stack offers to the C world, while following the conventions of modern Java APIs.”

The members of the JSR 321 Expert Group are:

• Ronald Toegl and Peter Lipp, IAIK, Graz University Of Technology
• Kenneth M. Graf, Intel Corp.
• Jeff Nisewanger, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Deepak Dasaratha Rao, Samsung Electronics Corporation
• Winkler, Thomas
• Keil, Werner
• Nauman, Mohammad
• Gungoren, Bora

Informal members of the Expert Group are

• Hong, Theodore

Reviewers are asked to send their comments and contributions to jsr-321-comments@jcp.org.

The official JSR 321 web page is located at http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=321 and a mostly-editable wiki is available on http://jsr321.dev.java.net/

If you’re a Java programmer who’s interested in Trusted Computing, your feedback is valuable and we look forward to seeing your comments.

Update: You can find the latest version of the EDR and further releases here: https://jsr321.dev.java.net/. Direct link: here (provided under the restrictions of a cost-free review license, which is delivered in detail with the specifications).