Atlast!

TiE stands for The Indus Entrepreneurs , a nonprofit organization , founded in silicon valley by entrepreneurs who are interested in,as their tag line says, fostering entrepreneurship globally. They conducted the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit also known as TES – 2008 .

What to expect at TiE :

Intense Networking of the highest order – Meet  VCs (Venture Capitalists), Angel investors,  ideas for your startup,  potential partners for your startup, mentors for you and your startup,  and some of the most successful entrepreneurs.

Talks by entrepreneurs, my story sessions, panel discussions and personal one-to-one mentoring from the masters themselves.

To know if a startup plan that you have has a potential market.

Insight into the current market trend.

Answers to those unanswered questions that you have.

P.S : an interesting article about Dr.Kanwal Rekhi, TiE Global Charter Member

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/05/15/279748/index.htm

The distinguished list of speakers at the summit only added to my expectations and I, particularly looked forward to meeting speakers like Azim Premji and Nandan Nilekani in person and to also get the answers to some of my questions.

The first day…blah blah…

The last session on the second day, just before ‘Cocktails and Networking’ was on —- by Dr.Vijay Mallya, Chairman of UB Group, India’s first multinational company  . I was on my way to the hall where the common sessions were usually held. I was surprised to see people walking in the direction towards the —. Then it dawned on me ‘oh man! it’s Vijay Malllya!! why didn’t you think?!’  I have not been particularly fond of Dr.Mallaya’s policies, inspite of appreciating him for his professional success. His speech was not one that I was really looking forward to. As if to confirm it, he arrived with the usual

Finally I left for Bangalore with Deepak giving me a ride to the bus stop. This was the first time that I was travelling on my own to another city – I was excited about it and looked forward to it as much as I looked forward to the event awaiting me at Bangalore – TiE Enrepreneurial Summit 2008 (TES 2008)

This is an article written by me with Aarthi that got published in the Computer Science Magazine Exemplar (2007) as well as in my college newsletter Vibrations (July 2008).We were offered to choose between a tech article and a non tech one. Being passionate about tech stuff,we chose  to go with this one. Hope u enjoy bluejacking 

What You Ought To Know Before Switching On Your Bluetooth

Wonder what we are trying to say??? Well, how many of you know about Bluejacking or Bluesnarfing. Not many hands go up, do they?? Well that’s what we are going to talk about in this write up.

So what is Bluetooth in the first place? Bluetooth technology enables your digital peripherals to talk to each other without needing wires and cables. Being an ‘open specification’ means that any manufacturer can make a Bluetooth device and it will also allow transfer of data to any other Bluetooth device from any other manufacturer. Bluetooth devices are only designed to operate over short ranges – typically less than 10m(30 feet).

Then so what is this term Bluejacking. Bluejacking is a new term used to define the activity of sending anonymous messages using Bluetooth to other Bluetooth equipped devices (typically PDAs and Mobile Phones) in range of the senders’ device.

Whilst the ability to receive such messages can be disabled or the Bluetooth functionality of the device can be switched off, the fun nature of Bluejacking is likely to encourage people to participate and to enjoy the new phenomenon.

Still wondering what it means. Lets say its analogous to what we use everyday Orkut. It allows us to connect to people whom we never know. Its fun if we use it in the right sense to connect with people, but when it falls in the wrong hands it becomes a medium of criminal activities too. Want to make it even simple. It’s just hacking using Bluetooth (but the techies would obviously disprove us defining it like this)

In today’s scientific world every innovation has a grey side unless we show discretion in using them. Similarly there is also a code of rules that must be mentioned before we go any further.

Bluejacking is meant for FUN! So make sure it is.

No-one has yet written a definitive statement on what is allowed or not-allowed and so we have given you some common sense rules below:

• Don’t send abusive messages
• Don’t threaten anyone
• Don’t put your personal information in a Bluejack message
• Don’t reveal yourself to the ‘victim’
• Do disable Bluetooth if you don’t want to be Bluejacked

Firstly you need to have a Bluetooth enabled Mobile Phone or PDA – if you have then great, if not then you will not be able to enjoy the world of Bluejacking – sorry.Whilst you can choose to “Accept” the message it’s best to avoid doing so.If Accepted then the message will be added into your own Contact Phone Book and that could fill up quite quickly. If the sender has added any additional information into the Contact that they sent you then you can only see this by accepting it and then opening up the new Contact. However as the idea behind Bluejacking is sending simple messages there is nothing to be gained by storing it. Simply choose “Delete” or “Erase” and then get your own back on them  The future of Bluejacking holds many interesting possibilities. Especially, to all you marketing savvy’s and Mba’s out there. Bluejacking holds the key to personalised advertising of your product. So good bye to all jingle’s and ad’s. The New Age of publicising has arrived.Best of all this is completely free of charge – no 10p text messages or phone calls and not finding that the other person lives 150 miles away – they are in the same bus/queue/class or train as you are.So the future is blue, not pink.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dltjEnrePxc. Wondering if it’s a movie link? No, it just demonstrates how Bluejacking turns to Bluesnarfing when it falls in the hands of real time hackers

So, what’s Bluesnarfing?? Confidential data can be obtained, anonymously, and without the owner’s knowledge or consent, from Bluetooth enabled mobile phones. This data includes, at least, the entire phonebook and calendar, and the phone’s IMEI.The Bluesnarfing is a more detailed elaborate planned attack.First is Data collection. This gives primarily the Bluetooth name, address of mobile, class of mobile, real time clock.Then the blue bug attack. It is to set up covert serial channel to device. In other words with this facility, it is possible to use the phone to initiate calls to premium rate numbers, send sms messages, read sms messages, connect to data services such as the Internet, and even monitor conversations in the vicinity of the phone. Bluetooth access is only required for a few seconds in order to set up the call. Call forwarding diverts can be set up, allowing the owner’s incoming calls to be intercepted, either to provide a channel for calls to more expensive destinations, or for identity theft by impersonation of the victim.

Thirdly the Backdoor attack, it involves establishing a trust relationship through the “pairing” mechanism, but ensuring that it no longer appears in the target’s register of paired devices. In this way, unless the owner is actually observing their device at the precise moment a connection is established, they are unlikely to notice anything untoward, and the attacker may be free to continue to use any resource that a trusted relationship with that device grants access to.

Finally, we have the Snarf attack. It is possible, on some makes of device, to connect to the device without alerting the owner of the target device of the request, and gain access to restricted portions of the stored data therein, including the entire phonebook and any images or other data associated with the entries, calendar, real-time clock, business card, properties, log, International Mobile Equipment Identity (which uniquely identifies the phone to the mobile network, and is used in illegal phone ‘cloning’).

This is normally only possible if the device is in “discoverable” or “visible” mode, but there are tools available on the Internet that allow even this safety net to be bypassed.

So, how do u Bluejack?? Well, it’s pretty simple once you have downloaded the tools from one of the following links…once you have opened the application, all you have to do is scan for Bluetooth devices and select one of the devices and (type and send the message) attack them

http://www.bluejackingtools.com/

http://www.mobiluck.com/

http://www.youtaggedme.com/

http://trifinite.org

I think now you got what we tried to say in the title. Bluejacking is fun, if within the limits. Just don’t try to use it to spam or abuse people even worse don’t snarf them.

So how do we protect one against blue snarfing? Well, there are no fixes till now though some brand of mobiles claim to have plugged the holes to make it safe against backdoor attacks. But hey we never know. So for now to permanently remove a pairing, and protect against future BACKDOOR attacks, it seems you must perform a factory reset, but this will, of course, erase all your personal data.

However, Bluejacking is a completely different ball. It’s now being accepted abroad as what we can call a social networking tool. Do we want it? Doesn’t really matter, because, if you don’t then simply switch off the Bluetooth. “just say no”. 

Me, I can’t wait! And for those who after reading this have got hooked on to Bluejacking, GO AHEAD! But hey remember play it safe.

In case it all goes wrong:

If you manage to identify your victim and they are looking angry rather than puzzled & confused, our advice is to run, not walk, in the opposite direction! Have fun.

P.S : Special thanks to Bharathi for allowing us to test bluejacking and bluesnarfing on her (although dumb??! :p ) mobile 

Once, I had given this mail address in an application and had written it very clearly to avoid any misinterpretation. Unfortunately for me, my worst fears came true, when the person asssumed that I had made a mistake and mailed my hall ticket to arunbala [at] gmail.com. I met him and spoke to him for fifteen minutes (am not exaggerating!!) convincing three people at the office that there EXISTS something called ymail.com.

In mid 2008, Yahoo! introduced email addresses ending in rocketmail.com and ymail.com to users all over the world. Positive of getting arun [at] ymail.com or at least arun [at] rocketmail.com, I logged into my pc at 5AM I think or a little earlier than that on the same day it had been introduced, but there were already taken and I settled with the ID mentioned in the beginning of this post.

Gmail is one of the technologies that I appreciate the most, but I needed a new email address badly that was a “as much sensible as possible” email address, which is difficult or impossible to be created with an older mail service like Gmail. That’s, another story.

Thanks to Gmail , I still login to my Gmail account to send mails most of the time, because of its flexibility and ‘n’ number of features. Only one thing goes against Gmail – they always seem to implement any innovation when you feel that you have struck on a new idea. Some of the features that I appreciate most in Gmail are its features like “attachment detector (it helps me )”, “Mouse Gestures”, “Chat and Google Docs Integration with mail” and their flexibility in forwarding mails, POP3, custom “From:” addresses and allowing users to choose where the replies to mails sent from custom “From:” addresses are to be addressed. If Google is going to introduce innovations to all its products like this, it’s going to be a difficult task for the rest to thrive in the dotcom world. They have been cleverly integrating all there services one-by-one, just like Windows Live has been done.  A user comfortable with Gmail would immediately choose to use GoogleTalk, Google Docs, Orkut etc., as it makes the transition easy. The much anticipated integration of GoogleTalk and Orkut has also been introduced by them. My friends and I have always appreciated Yahoo! messenger as the best in the chatting world, but today, most of us are using GoogleTalk as they integrated the chat and the mailbox before Yahoo! did, not to mention that Gmail is a lot faster and has a more convenient User Interface. Although Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! have also introduced their own Ajax interfaces, they have not been welcomed as much as Gmail has been. Recent innovations and clever integration of its tools has formed a user base for Gmail among my friends that will be tough for Google’s competitors, including Microsoft, to beat. One of the things that Google has not taken care of (yet!!) is improving the stand-alone Google Talk which does not have the option to go/stay “invisible” and also has no option to conduct a conference either. However, it’s only a matter of time before they solved it. 

One feature that I like in gmail and has gone unnoticed is the multiple IDs given to every user that can also be used as a very effective filter. For example, in gmail the following mail addresses all go to the same inbox : 411abc@gmail.com, 411.abc@gmail.com, 4.11abc@gmail.com, 411abc….@gmail.com, 41.1a.bc@gmail.com.

You can add or/and remove any number of full stops to your gmail ID and you would still receive mails addressed to it to your own inbox. You can put it to use by giving your original ID for official reasons , then add a full stop to it and give it to your friends alone. then add another full stop to it and share it with your relatives. Then you can filter the mails using the destination IDs. 

These days, I still mention my official email address (ymail) at least five times to be sure, when people ask for it.

The name can be very relevant to its theme or to itself. I attended placements for a company named ThoughtWorks. I had gone through the company’s background and its employees’ blogs etc., I was asked to tell about some of the blogs that I had seen, if any. I had simply seen too many blogs – but I remembered only one and I still remember it – its blog title is MyThoughtsAtWork.

Controversial names also often do a lot of good by creating publicity – one such instance is the Tamil movie Virumaandi

The movie’s proposed name was changed because of heavy opposition and this created enormous publicity to it – it definitely saved a lot of work right? You don’t have to create the publicity, others do it for you

Funny nicknames have so many times given that ‘popularity’ to our friends. Also noticeable is how stylish names contribute to success – example : Pulsar bikes. Or if the product name is so different that it arouses curiosity to anyone who might hear it then it might add on to its success too.  Example , say some company has the biggest ever name then it makes people and the media notice the company.

So what does a good name really do? It mainly creates easy publicity. Publicity creates customers. Customers build a customer base. Customer base creates a brand. A brand name ensures success. What do you say?