The hardware in the vehicle opens the door for revolutionary new technologies services to be introduced such as voice-based email, vehicle control from an iPhone, real-time diagnostics and remote emissions inspections provide real benefits for the consumer.

Similar to cell phone application stores, HUGHES Telematics will provide drivers with the ability to add applications, content, functionality and services to their vehicles. These services may include traffic management tools, customized weather notices, social networking applications and other location based services instead of simply relying on product planners to predict what will be current in three years, five years, ten years.

In the near future drivers will have access to “virtual accessories” Hughes Telematics will provide drivers with the opportunity to purchase connected accessories such as navigation, satellite radio and Bluetooth at any time after purchasing the car. These accessories come built in to every car, and the drivers can choose how and when to activate such as for a one time use, one month, or lifetime.  This technology will do for the vehicle what USB did for the computer. Hughes Telematics is the first in the industry to achieve Next Generation Telematics Architecture, which is both flexible and open, allowing the ability to add services, content providers and applications long after the purchase of the vehicle.  This means that they are able to future-proof tomorrow’s cars with a combination of connectivity to the vehicle and their Next Generation Telematics Architecture gives them the ability to continually update the vehicle’s capabilities protect obsolescence as future services are introduced.

One of the core values of Hughes Telematics is simplicity.  The technology leverages natural voice recognition allowing drivers to speak naturally in their own words to activate services.  This eliminates the need to memorize key words and is as simple as having a conversation.

HUGHES Telematics is a tier-one supplier to Chrysler and Mercedes and will be launching “connected car” service with both companies in calendar year 2009.  While the initial service will be focused on safety and security, the company has developed an industry-first auto communications platform that includes:

About Eric:

Erik Goldman is President of HUGHES Telematics, a telematics service company that is majority owned by Apollo Management, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. He has served in this position since the company’s inception in 2006.

Prior to joining HUGHES Telematics, Goldman spent nearly 25 years in varied engineering, operations and business development roles in the telecom and telematics industries. Most recently, Goldman served as Vice President of SkyTerra Communications, where his responsibilities included acquisition, development and corporate oversight of the organization’s portfolio companies in the wireless and satellite services industry.

Prior to SkyTerra, Goldman served in leadership roles developing military communications networks with Raytheon and Mitre Corporation, commercial mobile wireless businesses with dbX Corporation, a holding company established to invest in, develop and operate new businesses in the telecom, paging and satellite communications industry and most recently was with Leo One Worldwide where as Vice President of Technology & Strategic Development he led the development of a global Telematics solution for the automotive industry.

Goldman earned his MBA from the University of Michigan, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois. He has written numerous white papers, and has published in the International Journal of Satellite Communications. In addition, he has held a number of government security clearances including Top Secret and holds a U.S. Patent, with several others pending.

About Hughes Telematics:

They are delivering the next generation of vehicle information-based technologies and services – today. Their patented systems allow complete connectivity to any make or model vehicle, but that is just the beginning. What really differentiates them from other companies is their broad portfolio of services. Each designed to significantly improve vehicle and customer relationship management potential while greatly reducing costs. Whether in the business of automotive manufacturing, dealer operations, fleet management or affiliated services such as insurance or car rental, we can help map out the fastest road to greater efficiency and revenue. They will also demonstrate solutions never thought practical.

In today’s economic climate, this ability to bring innovative technology to the masses is more important now than ever before. So at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Ford announced the revolutionary Ford SYNC with Traffic, Directions and Information.

Beginning this Spring, drivers of Ford cars and trucks will be able to get personalized, real-time information by using simple voice commands.  Ford is able to bring these innovations to market quickly by partnering with INRIX and other best-in-class technology companies.

INRIX was selected to power the personalized traffic, directions, and alerts that are delivered to drivers via voice and SMS alerts on their phones. INRIX’s traffic, directions and alerting technologies transforms the in-car navigation experience into one as personal as the contact list on your phone. SYNC users can get answers to questions such as “Traffic Ahead,” “Fastest Route Home,” and “Traffic Around Me,” leveraging the integrated GPS feature in new vehicles shipping with Ford SYNC. That is the kind of personalized service consumers – and the marketplace – require right now in order to stay afloat and to thrive.

The technology in the new SYNC does not require a $2,000 navigation system with an in-car screen. All it requires is a cell phone with Bluetooth, which is why Ford expects to ship over 1 million vehicles with SYNC by this Fall. INRIX provides accurate real-time, historical and predictive traffic information in North America and Europe to over 65 customers including Ford, MapQuest, TomTom and the I-95 Corridor Coalition. INRIX delivers traffic reliably, quickly and better than anyone else.

About Scott

Scott Sedlik is responsible for the marketing of INRIX products and services. He has 20 years of experience in strategic marketing, product management, brand development and go-to-market strategies. He has a successful track record of building leadership positions with public and startup companies in emerging markets from early-stage to international presence. Sedlik’s domain expertise includes mobile and embedded devices, telematics, wireless, enterprise software, Internet services, and e-commerce.

Sedlik was most recently Vice President of Marketing at BSQUARE, the leading solutions provider for the smartphone and embedded device markets, where he was responsible for product management, marketing strategy, strategic planning and partnerships. He served as Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing at Sageport, an Internet services company acquired by BSQUARE in 2001. Sedlik also held Vice President of Marketing roles at InfoMove, USWeb/CKS, and at iCat Corporation, an e-commerce pioneer, where he led a large team during the rapid growth of the company and its acquisition by Intel.

Early in his career, Sedlik directed marketing and business development at Corbis Corporation and led OEM sales and product management at Reference Software International (acquired by WordPerfect). Sedlik holds a MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a B.S. from San Francisco State University.

About INRIX

INRIX is the leading provider of real-time, historical and predictive traffic information offering the broadest coverage, exceptional accuracy, innovative technologies and a unique approach to ensuring the success of our customers’ navigation and traffic-enabled solutions.

Building on a unparalleled technology portfolio and the industry’s broadest network of partnerships, INRIX’s traffic data saves businesses and consumers time and money by predicting the future – not only showing what traffic is like right now, but what it will be like an hour, a week or even a year from now. Device manufacturers, public sector agencies, Web sites and mobile solution providers are using INRIX’s technologies and services today to deliver richer, more useful traffic services that help their customers drive smarter.

This year, you can give a lot of popular Wi-Fi enabled gifts like phones, mp3 players and digital cameras, to share something special.

Wi-Fi technology enables devices connect to other wireless devices at quick speed. This technology has been in place for quite sometime but surprising reality is that many are still learning about Wi-Fi and its blossoming capabilities – not just to access the Internet but it’s another way to connect with people around the world.

Digital cameras and even an SD card are sporting Wi-Fi devices which can transfer your photo’s, not just to your computer but your photo sharing sites and social network site like Flickr, Kodak Gallery and Facebook.

When you are buying Wi-Fi gifts users must look for the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED seal of approval. This will enable to connect to other devices. Also, check different standard such as 802.11a, 11b, 11g, 11n, etc. These standard will help you to connect to other devices. To know more about these standards, click here.

Veterans and even early adopters are hooked to Wi-Fi technology. Perhaps just like the introduction of the Tivo and DVR– those who’ve adopted them now find that it’s something they can’t live without.

Mobile phones like the iPhone are becoming dynamic Wi-Fi enabled devices that is will open your dad’s eyes to capabilities they were unaware of or perhaps only dreamed about. A cell phone is no longer just for making calls or sending text messages, now we are talking about devices that revolve around, capture and organize our lives via e-mail, web access, photos, gaming, video and more.

Wi-Fi alliance is a non-profit organization comprised of 300 member organizations, which develops Wi-Fi products and alliance certify these products. Already 4000 products have been certified so far.

Kelly Davis-Felner
Senior Manager
Wi-Fi Alliance

Kelly Davis-Felner- A biography

Kelly Davis-Felner is a Senior Manager for the Wi-Fi Alliance, where she works on new program development, strategic planning, market research, and communications. Before joining the Wi-Fi Alliance, Kelly enjoyed roles in consumer and business marketing, as well as in non-profit management. Kelly holds a BA from Loyola University of New Orleans, an MSW from Tulane University, and an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is a global, non-profit industry association of more than 300 member companies devoted to promoting the growth of wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). With the aim of enhancing the user experience for wireless portable, mobile, and home entertainment devices, the Wi-Fi Alliance’s testing and certification programs help ensure the interoperability of WLAN products based on the IEEE 802.11 specification. Since the introduction of the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification program in March 2000, more than 4,200 products have been designated as Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™, encouraging the expanded use of Wi-Fi products and services across the consumer and enterprise markets.

Currently more than 52% of Internet users are exposed to this problem due to ISPs who haven’t properly updated their DNS (Dynamic Name System) servers, but there’s a way you can tell if you’re at risk.

Visit www.doxpara.com and click on the “Check My DNS” button on the upper right side of the page.  It will run a series of tests for you, automatically, and tell you if your machine is at risk.  There’s another checker at DNS-OARC and one at the lower left corner of DNSstuff, but you don’t have to run all three.

Business personnel must check their DNS to ensure that there are not problems that could expose personal or proprietary data to criminal enterprises abroad.  Failure to do so could result in criminal prosecution for the company themselves  — it’s unlikely the true criminals will ever be caught.

How do they do it? Cleversafe provides unique technology that allows the distribution and slicing of data across multiple, geographically disparate data centers. [Listen Here to my interview with Russ Kennedy, a Vice President at Cleversafe.]

• International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the average data growth rate will increase more than 600 percent between now and 2010 ( in next two years).
• Companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe and others are now offering “Storage as a Service” for both consumers and small businesses.
• Cleversafe technology will provide the fundamental underpinning for the storage needs of the future. – with unlimited scalability, longevity, security and reliability and cost-effectiveness.
• Superior technology – Current storage backup and archiving approaches rely on multiple redundant copies, replication and synchronization. That compromises security, adds complexity and increases cost. Instead, Cleversafe is changing data storage from a “copying paradigm” to a “slicing paradigm.” With Cleversafe’s model, data is sliced and dispersed across servers. As a result, there’s no data redundancy. And, data expansion can be reduced from 300 to 500% down to a skimpy—and infinitely more manageable—10 to 50%.
• Reliability and security – Cleversafe’s slice-and-disperse technology delivers significantly higher levels of reliability and security than existing architectures. Since only a pre-defined threshold of slices is needed to retrieve the data, individual servers or entire locations can be down—and data still can be accessed. And because data is sliced and scrambled, the data is inherently private and secure. In fact, access to individual slices doesn’t compromise the original content.
• Limitless scalability – Unlike older storage products, Cleversafe’s dsNet architecture is designed to scale and grow, because it’s built without a central management or system component. So, additional capacity can be added to a dsNet independently—and in quantities to meet specific business requirements.
• Cleversafe is the first and only company to provide the necessary components to build commercial dsNets, laying the groundwork for making dispersed storage the future of data back-up and security.

Russ Kennedy,
Vice President, Product Management and Strategic Alliances
Cleversafe

Russ Kennedy – A biography

Russ has more than 20 years experience in the storage industry, and is responsible for product management, product marketing and establishing key technical and go-to market alliances.

Prior to joining Cleversafe, Russ was the Senior Director for Product Marketing and Strategy at Pillar Data Systems, a San Jose-based storage solutions provider. Russ also spent 19 years at StorageTek. During his career at StorageTek, Russ also led the StorageTek Software Development organization and was responsible for delivering many world class software solutions, including StorageTek’s flagship VSM product.

He also was the Chief Technology Officer for the Information Lifecycle Management Solutions Business Unit in Sun’s Data Management Group. In that position, he was responsible for a portfolio of solutions designed to help customers address their storage and compliance challenges though ILM.

Russ has an MBA from the University of Colorado at Denver and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Colorado State University

Cleversafe.org was formed to build and deploy a better way to secure the world’s data. We are primarily located within the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA. Since the project was initially located within the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, many of our contributors are students and former students of IIT. We also have former students from a variety of other schools, including MIT, Harvard, RPI and the University of Illinois who are a part of the project.

hris Gladwin developed the concept for the project along with the initial information dispersal algorithms. The initial support for the Cleversafe project came from its founders, including Chris, Matt England, Julie Bellanca, and Don Plaskett.

n 2006, the Cleversafe Open Source Community released an initial test version of its Dispersed Storage software under the GPL2 open source license.

The Dispersed Storage project is now mainly funded by Cleversafe, Inc., a company that will be offering commercial products and services using the technology at Cleversafe.org.
Cleversafe.org welcomes your participation and your insights.

Cleversafe is the leader in dispersed storage technology, the ideal way to store large, growing amounts of digital assets cost effectively. Founded in 2004, the company is backed by world-class investors including NEA, OCA Ventures, Harrison Street Capital and Alsop-Louie Partners. Cleversafe is also the sponsor of an open source community movement to help standardize Dispersed Storage™ technology through its cleversafe.org project. For more information, please visit www.cleversafe.com or www.cleversafe.org.

The solution also offers added control over removable storage devices. In detail, the product can:

• ZENworks Endpoint Security Management provides administrators control over the use of local optical media (CD-R/W, DVD+/-R/W) and all attached storage devices (USB thumb drives, MP3 players, flash memory cards, zip drives, and other removable media types). Administrators can set policy-based restrictions on device access privileges, which protects the integrity and confidentiality of data on the endpoints, while simultaneously protecting the endpoint from the introduction of malware and of any other unauthorized activities.
• ZENworks Endpoint Security Management delivers granular control over which devices are allowed, blocked, or set to “read only.” A separate utility is also available for capturing device names and serial numbers in a master list that can then be imported into a policy.
• ZENworks Endpoint Security Management protects against the introduction of local storage devices that can copy data without leaving an audit trail. These transactions are blocked by either completely disallowing use of such devices everywhere, or by disallowing their use based on an endpoint’s network location. Storage devices can be placed in read-only mode or fully disabled, while the endpoint hard drive and all network drives remain accessible and operational.
• ZENworks Endpoint Security Management includes reports and alerts to notify administrators and security officers of potential threats. Reports can include relevant location information, the names of files transferred to removable storage devices, their sizes, who transferred them, and when the file was transferred and to what device.

Richard Whitehead
Director, Product Marketing at Novell
Richard Whitehead – A biography

Richard Whitehead is director of product marketing for the Systems & Resource Management (ZENworks) business unit within Novell. The business unit is responsible for developing enterprise systems management from the desktop to the data center.

With over 15 years experience in the software industry, Richard has worked for Novell in a variety of roles, including engineering, product management and product marketing. He has also held senior positions in product management and marketing for Citrix, Franklin Covey, and WordPerfect.

Richard is a graduate of Brigham Young University with a BS in Design Engineering Technology and Mathematics.

Novell is a global infrastructure software and services company headquartered in Waltham, Mass. The company provides leadership in Linux and Open Source, Identity Management and Security, Systems Management, and Collaboration, which helps customers with their IT Management to operate and integrate mixed source environments.

I was reminded of how useful this network is by getting a notice from LinkedIn about an old friend I hadn’t heard from in a long time. I’d sent him an invite to the network, originally, years ago and he signed up. We hadn’t kept in touch until now. He’s got a new photo up and an update to what he’s doing. I also found another friend of mine who has made a huge career change. Kinda cool.

I even went so far as to update my profile online. Hope you have fun keeping in touch with LinkedIn!

By the way, they also use this information to sell to marketing companies who are looking for information about you — but in the years I’ve been on LinkedIn, I haven’t had any problems.

Google’s kit (shown on the right) provides everything you need to tap into this fiber-optic underground free network. Visit Google’s TiSP page for more information.