Why Some Mobile Apps are Using Sound for Pay-by-Phone

Startups are using sound waves to let mobile gadgets transfer
data quickly and efficiently.

As reported by MIT Technology Review: Next time you take a taxi in New York City, there may be a new way to pay your fare. Instead of handing over cash, swiping a credit card, or—if you’re one of the few with a capable smartphone—tapping your handset on a near-field communication (NFC) reader, you could be able to settle up by pressing a button on a smartphone app that communicates using sound.

The new app, called Way2ride, is free for iPhone and Android from the payment service company VeriFone, which already provides payment processing systems for more than half of the city’s 13,000 yellow cabs. VeriFone recently acquired the underlying technology, called Zoosh, from a startup called Naratte (see “Ultrasound App Lets Almost Any Phone Pay”).
VeriFone is one of a number of companies using sound waves to transfer small amounts of data over short distances, which could make it easier to transfer money electronically, among other things. A well-funded stealth startup called Clinkle is said to be doing something similar (a spokeswoman for Clinkle had no comment for this article).

VeriFone's Way2ride application lets New Yorker's pay for a cab
by tapping their phone using sound.

VeriFone’s Way2ride app allows your phone to pick up an inaudible sound signal containing a unique code broadcast by a speaker in each taxi. The app sends this code to Way2ride servers, where it is matched with your cab, and your preset payment preferences are then sent to the cab over a cellular network and displayed on a backseat console. If you haven’t selected the auto-pay option, you can choose which card in your virtual Way2ride wallet to pay with and set a tip.

Zoosh could make its way into other payment terminals in the near future. “Anywhere we have a speaker and an entertainment system, like a gas station or in a taxi, it can work with that technology,” says Jason Gross, vice president of strategy and marketing for VeriFone Media, which is a unit of VeriFone.

The general premise isn’t new at all: it’s analogous to the tones traditional telephones emit when a call is placed over analog lines. Years later, we have much faster (and quieter) Internet connections, as well as short-distance communication systems like NFC and Bluetooth. However, some companies believe sound-wave data transfer is a good alternative because two of the prerequisites—a speaker and a receiver—are already so widespread, and the technology doesn’t require any special hardware or device pairing. That could make it easier for consumers around the world, including the millions who do not have smartphones, to do things like buy and sell goods locally. Sound can also be used as a simple way to let completely different devices communicate, which is becoming increasingly important as we split time between an ever-growing number of gadgets.

Another startup, Animal Systems, offers an app called Chirp that uses sound to let users share photos, links, and notes with friends; it could also be used to retrieve coupons in a store. While the method works only over short distances and can’t reliably move much data at a time—Animal Systems CEO Patrick Bergel says his startup aims for 97 percent success at ranges of three to four feet—the use of sound waves may at least serve as a useful intermediate technology. “It seemed like there was a sort of secret network waiting to be used,” Bergel says of the rise of sound as a data-transfer method. He says Animal Systems may also open up its technology to outside developers.

Sonic Notify (see “Startup Sends More than Music through Speakers”) has a technology called Adomaly that plays high-frequency sound waves through speakers or small dedicated beacons, which send a trigger to your phone. If your handset already has an appropriate app and you’ve opted to receive location-specific messages, the trigger prompts the phone to take an action. This could mean connecting to a server and grabbing a coupon for a product in front of you when you’re in a store, or accepting an invitation to a special event while you’re watching TV. Sonic Notify can also use low-power Bluetooth to communicate with users even if they haven’t paired their devices, but this version of Bluetooth is still not very widespread. Unless you’re using sound, “to get a large volume of people now and not three years from now, you really don’t have any other option,” says Sonic Notify’s CEO, Aaron Mittman.

Others are already developing tools to make it easier to communicate with sound. Boris Smus, a Google engineer, recently released an ultrasonic networking JavaScript library called Sonicnet.js, which uses the Web audio API to allow users to transmit and receive data via sound waves. So far, a handful of people are trying it out, he says, and though he’s not yet sure what results this will yield, he does feel it’s important. “The problem of multiple devices together in our close personal area network is a big problem to solve,” he says.

Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe says there’s “huge potential” for such technology because phones of all kinds are already primed to use it, which is not the case with NFC. However, he thinks it will have to be easy to use—perhaps a system enabled by something similar to the dedicated low-power processor on the new Motorola X smartphone, which is always on and listening for specific voice commands (see “Motorola Reveals First Google-Era Phone, the Moto X”). “There are pluses and minuses—audio clearly is going to be a tougher technology to use on a crowded conference floor than an electronic radio technology,” he says. “But it really depends on the environment and the application.”

High Tech Infrastructure: Why We Should Build a National Internet System Into the National Highway System

As reported by The Atlantic Cities: Earlier this month, The Daily Yonder, a well-named site about life in rural America, brought us this unsettling map of broadband availability, or lack thereof, in the country's remote counties.

Truth is, the connectivity of U.S. cities is nothing to brag about either. A 2012 report from the New America Foundation found that residents of major American cities pay more money for slower Internet service than their counterparts in major cities around the world. Case in point: in Hong Kong, roughly $35 gets you access to a fiber-optics network with 500 Mbps download speed; in New York or Washington, it gets you a cable network at 25 Mbps.

The point is that broadband service in the United States is neither what it could be nor what it should be. Yes, the vast majority of Americans have access to very basic Internet service, but here the devil's in the details. Too many rural residents lack even minimal access; too many big cities lack the competition that would create world-class service; and for whatever reason — be it access, cost, quality, or something else — 100 million Americans don't subscribe to broadband service at all.

Here's an idea to change that: let's build a National Internet System under the National Highway System.

The concept isn't a new one — it was most recently floated out there by Benjamin Lennett and Sascha Meinrath of New America in early 2009 — but it remains viable and merits a comeback. Lennett and Meinrath argue that broadband access is a basic public service every bit as necessary as good roads. Since 90 percent of the country lives within 5 miles of a national highway, and since utility infrastructure is already planted along highway rights-of-way, bundling the network is the simplest and surest way for service to reach everyone.

"Our idea was that you create this open infrastructure, so that anyone could come in and provide connectivity," says Lennett. "It would be a public asset along the highway system."

The obvious benefit of such a system would be its national scope. Rural regions that private providers might consider unprofitable and ignore would gain broadband access, but remote areas wouldn't be the only victors. So-called "middle mile" access would improve, too, meaning Internet service in smaller cities and towns wouldn't have to go out of its way to reach big interconnection hubs in major areas, leading to faster speeds.

The economic boost, meanwhile, could be gigantic. Private service provider competition would increase, especially in major cities; small businesses could count on fast and reliable access at a fair price; the telecommunications network in general would become more secure and robust. Imagine all the productivity advantages that Google Fiber is bringing to Kansas City, writ large across the country.

And let's not forget the Department of Transportation's push toward an intelligent transportation system. Connecting cars with traffic infrastructure via roadside networks has the potential to reduce congestion and increase safety in metro areas and beyond. Laying fiber along the national highways would facilitate the arrival of this "smart" roads system that DOT believes is the future of American car travel.

"You're going to need higher [broadband] capacity along highways anyway," says Lennett. "It's a heck of a lot cheaper to have some sort of public asset that the states and local governments can use, versus paying for it from a private provider."

Which brings us to the cost. A plan to pair broadband infrastructure with national highway construction or repair creates natural savings; after all, the Federal Highway Administration says that 90 percent of the cost of deploying fiber-optics is related to road work. Installing fiber (or, at the very least, pipe conduits to house it) during open road construction costs roughly $30,000 per mile. At a low-end cost of $3 million per mile of road, therefore, the plan only adds about 1 percent to each national highway project.

With those advantages in mind, Lennett and Meinrath estimate that a national broadband network could be laid along the entire national highway system for roughly $3.6 billion. In the great pie of transportation funding, that's a sliver.

Other efforts have been made in recent years to expand the U.S. broadband network, but while Lennett calls them "positive steps forward," he doesn't believe they've gone far enough. (Others agree.)

The National Broadband Plan of 2009, for instance, was mostly limited to policy recommendations and failed to encourage competition (which explains why incumbent providers like it so much). Proposed legislation requiring highway projects to install broadband conduit hasn't made it too far. The Obama Administration did issue an executive order last year calling for a "dig once" [PDF] policy to help promote broadband-highway coupling, but that still relies on private enterprise to do what it hasn't done to date: lay fiber everywhere.

So why not make the whole national internet system a public one, like the national highway system before it? At a time when elected officials are struggling to find a truly federal transportation goal, the concept might serve as a welcome rallying point. The government could sell some of its broadcast spectrum to foot the bill, but the user-pay model could probably work well, too — especially since people don't suffer the illusion that Internet access is free, unlike they do with roads.

"There is a really interesting parallel between transportation and broadband," says Lennett. "In the 20th century we needed to move cars, and in the 21st century we need to move bits."

Making The World Less Safe For GPS Jammers

As reported by Strategy Page: The U.S. is building and testing more compact GPS anti-jamming systems for smaller (as small as 200 kg/440 pounds) UAVs. This is part of a program to equip all American UAVs, even the smallest ones, with more secure GPS. While all UAVs can be “flown” by the operator the GPS makes it a lot easier for the operator to keep track of exactly where his UAV is at all times and sometimes the UAV is programmed to simply patrol between a series of GPS coordinates. If the GPS jams or fails the operator can usually use the video feed to find landmarks on the ground and bring the UAV back to where it can be seen and landed.

While American troops have not yet encountered much (if any) battlefield jamming, the threat exists. The most tangible threat is from North Korea, which has long made, sold and itself used GPS jammers. Last year North Korea attacked South Korea with a massive GPS jamming campaign. The jamming began in late April, 2012 and continued for over two weeks. It took about a day for South Korea to confirm that the signal was coming from North Korea and was mainly aimed at the South Korean capital (Seoul). The jamming had little impact inside the city itself (the ground based jamming signal was blocked by buildings and hills) and was only noted by several hundred aircraft landing or taking off from local airports and over a hundred ships operating off the coast. In all these cases the ships and aircraft had backup navigation systems, which were switched on when GPS became unreliable. This is how navigation systems, especially those that rely on an external (satellite) signal are designed.

This is the third time North Korea has used GPS jamming against South Korea. For most of March, 2011, North Korea directed a GPS jamming signal across the border towards Seoul. A separate jammer has been directed at cell phone traffic. The GPS jamming signal could be detected up to a hundred kilometers south of the DMZ.

The usual response to GPS jamming is to bomb the jammers, which are easy to find (jamming is nothing more than broadcasting a more powerful version of the frequency you want to interfere with). But such a response could lead to more fighting in Korea, so the south protested and refrained from responding with force. The jamming is a nuisance more than a threat and most military equipment is equipped with electronics and other enhancements to defeat it. The North Korean jamming confirmed what was already suspected of them. So now, South Korean and American electronic warfare experts have an opportunity to study the effects of jamming on a large metropolitan area. It is causing intermittent problems for users of GPS devices and many more cell phone connectivity problems. There were briefer and less powerful jamming incidents in August and December of 2010.

Meanwhile, this is old news for the U.S. Department of Defense which has spent most of the last two decades developing anti-GPS jamming technology. For years military aircraft have been equipped with complex and expensive GPS receivers that will usually continue to work even if they are being jammed. There are several ways you can defeat attempts to jam GPS signals. While some of the methods are well known, others are classified. No one has successfully used GPS jammers in combat yet but the potential is there. Now the North Koreans are giving large scale demonstration of GPS jamming.

Anti-jamming technology is more complex. None of the major players (the U.S., Russia, China, Israel, and several other industrialized countries) are talking and for good reason. If you don't know what techniques the other guys are using, you can't deal with them.

China and Russia are both selling GPS jammers. Six years ago China brought to market a powerful, truck mounted, GPS jamming system. These "GPS jamming vans" are meant to create a protective "bubble" over an area the van is in the middle of. Sales have been slow.

A year before the 2003, invasion of Iraq, it was believed that Saddam had bought many GPS jammers, to deal with U.S. JDAM GPS smart bombs. The JDAM has a backup inertial guidance system, so that if the GPS signal is jammed the less accurate inertial guidance system takes over. The inertial guidance (INS) will land the bomb within 30 meters (92 feet) of the target while GPS gets to within 10 meters (31 feet). The U.S. Air Force does not discuss what, if any, jam-proofing it is doing for its JDAM bombs. The Iraqi GPS jamming efforts had no significant effect on the 2003, campaign.

There are several approaches to defeating GPS jamming, and knowing which one each American GPS guided weapon uses makes it easy to develop a way to jam the "jam-proof" GPS. So the U.S. Air Force is understandably reluctant to discuss what they are doing. Given the cost of jam proofing all existing GPS weapons, it's more likely that jam-proof GPS weapons will only be used against targets where the GPS accuracy is vital. Against most targets the accuracy provided by the inertial guidance system will do. Also note that you can bomb GPS jammers with a bomb equipped with a guidance system that homes in on a GPS jamming signal. For that reason it's thought that any use of GPS jammers will involve dozens of jammers in each area so protected. The GPS jamming has no effect on the even more accurate laser guided bombs, and some countries buy smart bombs with both laser and GPS/INS systems.

Bluetooth device and Smartphone App can use Crowdsourcing to find your lost keys

A new Bluetooth device called the 'Tile' can be paired with most Bluetooth 4.0 capable smartphones, in order to find your keys - or any other item you want to keep track of (wallet, purse, luggage, bicycle, etc).

Designed to last up to one year, they have a 50-150 foot (17-50 meter) communication range. If you are out of range, anyone with a similar application on their phone can crowdsource the location of the device, without violating your personal security, and direct you to the device's last known location.

Here’s how it works. The Tile tags themselves are small, waterproof plastic squares that are no bigger than a slim custom USB drive with a key-ring loop on one corner and a two-sided adhesive strip.

They’re inconspicuous and stylish at the same time. You then attach your Tile tag to any of your personal items. If any of these items is ever stolen or goes missing, the Tile app radar sensor will increase in strength as you get closer to your lost stuff, as long as you’re within range of the Tile tag.

This might seem as though it limits Tile’s dependability on tracking stolen items, but actually there’s more to it than that. If someone takes your bicycle, purse, or laptop with a Tile tag attached to it, you can mark the tag as a lost item on your phone. If the item is within range of another Tile app user, their receiver will pick it up and alert you of its location. Granted, even with the large amount of pre-orders that Tile has already received, there’s still a good chance that only a small number of users will be within distance of you upon the product’s launch in the fall of 2013. But like Waze and other network based apps before it, as Tile becomes more popular and its user base grows, you’ll be much more likely to have your thief cross paths with the Tile app.

There is of course the every growing concern with privacy that comes with sharing your location data with the public at any given moment. But some will more than likely see it as a means to an end in this regard.

Each Tile costs about $18.95 - and you can link your phone up to 10 Tiles.  You can also share access to your Tiles with trusted family members or friends.

Shipping starts in the winter of 2013/2014.  At the release of this article, they have already sold 49,586 units at a total potential income of $2,681,297.

SiriusXM to Get More Involved in Telematics

As reported by Radio World: SiriusXM intends to acquire the telematics arm of Agero.

The satcaster says the deal, $530 million in cash, is for the connected vehicle unit, which offers safety, security and convenience solutions.

SiriusXM says after the deal closes it will provide connected vehicle services to more automakers, including Acura, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Lexus, Nissan and Toyota. The deal comes a month after SiriusXM, AT&T and Nissan formalized a partnership for in-car services.

SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer says the Agero deal “accelerates SiriusXM’s development in architecture supporting connected vehicle services, as well as the ability to provide services over both satellite and cellular networks.”

The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter, though the transaction is subject to antirust review and other usual closing conditions.

Morgan Stanley advised SiriusXM about the arrangement.

Telematics Market Drivers: Customer Return Visits to Dealerships

As reported by Connected World Magazine: The connected car is gaining ground as safety and convenience technologies are added to vehicles. For manufacturers, in-vehicle telematics systems may be the wave of the future. But there are also challenges to face when integrating connected technologies into the automobile.

One recent report states the increasing complexity of design is one hurdle the industry needs to overcome. TechNavio, says telematics use is definitely growing for vehicles, but that growth brings with it more complexity of design in the applications to manage all the telematics.

TechNavio says the infotainment trend is one of the driving factors in the growth of the in-vehicle telematics market. As more vehicles are sold worldwide, and more consumers look for telematics capabilities in their cars, the overall demand for telematics is increasing. Right now, the largest markets are the Americas and Western Europe, according to the report.

Telematics also presents opportunities for dealers and OEMs (original-equipment manufacturers). A report from Frost & Sullivan, says auto manufacturers are seeing the value of including some telematics services in the cost of the vehicle.

“Vehicle manufacturers are waking up to the advantages of signing up users for a connected service for three or more years than having them pay a monthly subscription of $15 or $20 for a year,” says Frost & Sullivan Telematics and Infotainment Research Manager Praveen Chandrasekar.

Frost says successful telematics systems need to bring dealers into the value chain by providing them with vehicle data and performance information. With this data available, dealers can reach out to car owners to provide additional services throughout the life of the vehicle. Access to vehicle data can allow both manufacturers and dealers to provide value-adds to the customer.

Telematics is a $1 billion service market in North America, according to Frost. But the research firm says even more significant revenue can come from customers returning to dealerships during their ownership of the vehicle.

For customers, safety and convenience are driving the selection of telematics in vehicles. But for manufacturers and dealers, additional service opportunities may be the most important force for embedding telematics. 

Hitting The Road Without A Driver

GM-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research
using a modified Cadillac SRX crossover.

As reported by NPR: The cars we drive have gotten ever more sophisticated. They can just about park themselves; they tell us if we're drifting out of our lane; they can prevent skids. Some even automatically apply the brakes if they sense that a collision is imminent.

Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are developing a car that can do all of those things and more — it can actually drive itself. Imagine that commute to work.

The car, developed with General Motors, is by all appearances a normal Cadillac SRX crossover. That's by design, according to Jarrod Snider, the chief engineer on the project.

"We're not using really fancy, really expensive devices all over the car," he says. The sensors are integrated into the car, "so when you look at the car you don't see a lot of things hanging off of it."

Hidden in the bumper and behind the car's grille are three types of systems that guide the car's decision-making — sensors, lasers and cameras. Snider says the sensors provide input for the car's software, "so when we see an object we can say that's a person or that's a sign or that's a traffic light. ... We can actually do some classification of the object."

The car's navigation screen will show and identify pedestrians and bikes, as well as traffic lights and some road signs. It also has thermal imaging, useful to identify objects at night, beyond the range of the car's headlights.

In the back of the car, below the floor where the spare tire would normally be, are four computers about the size of Apple's Mac Mini, cooled by an air-conditioning system. Snider says the computers are a development platform and won't be as big or noisy when driverless cars are commercially available.
Inside, the car looks pretty normal, too, with one exception — a big red button that sits prominently in the middle of the dashboard. Snider says it's there for when engineers are testing a new system. If something goes wrong, "we can just push that button and that just turns the car back into a stock car, immediately," he says.

Surprisingly, a test ride in the autonomous Cadillac occurs not on a closed course, but on busy Route 19, a multilane highway in Cranberry Township, outside Pittsburgh. Snider says township officials have been cooperative and helpful with development of the driverless car, installing special radio transmitters on traffic lights to tell the vehicle when to stop (the car can also "read" the lights with a camera positioned over the windshield).

Snider says it's hard to replicate real-world conditions on a closed course. People drive in unpredictable ways; they stop suddenly, change directions; there are pedestrians jaywalking.

To put the car in driverless or autonomous mode, Snider simply turns a knob located near the gear shifter.
"System starting up," a female-sounding computer voice intones. "Autonomous driving."

The car pulls out of the parking lot. Though Snider is behind the wheel, he's not touching it, as the car stops at a stop sign, waits for traffic to clear and then makes a right turn onto the highway.

The car is programmed much like a driver programs a GPS for directions. In this case it's heading for a restaurant in a shopping center. We travel about a half-mile down the busy road, the car accelerating, stopping at a red light and moving into a left-hand turn lane, where it waits for a green arrow before proceeding.

The drive is not always smooth. The car tends to wait until the last minute before braking and floors it when accelerating to its desired speed. Snider says engineers are working on that, but that it's difficult to precisely re-create the human touch on the gas pedal and brakes.

Carnegie Mellon's car is not the only driverless vehicle around. Google has one as well. Raj Rajkumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon, predicts that by 2020 the technology needed for driverless cars to travel normal roads will be ready. Though he says it make take a bit longer for the legal system and insurance companies to catch up.

"It has to go through the societal process of acceptance, the legal process of laws being in place that allow driverless vehicles on the roads, the insurance aspects of liability, the legal things falling into place," Rajkumar says.

The federal government has already begun conducting research with an eye toward
establishing standards for driverless vehicles. Three states — California, Nevada and Florida — have passed legislation allowing testing of driverless cars on their roads.