David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

A soldier in Mumbai during the siege of the Taj Mahal hotel last month. The attackers studied satellite images of the city online.

MUMBAI, India — The terrorists who struck this city last month stunned authorities not only with their use of sophisticated weaponry but also with their comfort with modern technology.

The terrorists navigated across the Arabian Sea to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan, with the help of a global positioning system handset. While under way, they communicated using a satellite phone with those in Pakistan believed to have coordinated the attacks. They recognized their targets and knew the most direct routes to reach them in part because they had studied satellite photos from Google Earth.

And, perhaps most significantly, throughout the three-day siege at two luxury hotels and a Jewish center, the Pakistani-based handlers communicated with the attackers using Internet phones that complicate efforts to trace and intercept calls.

Those handlers, who were apparently watching the attacks unfold live on television, were able to inform the attackers of the movement of security forces from news accounts and provide the gunmen with instructions and encouragement, authorities said.

Hasan Gafoor, Mumbai’s police commissioner, said Monday that as once complicated technologies — including global positioning systems and satellite phones — have become simpler to operate, terrorists, like everyone else, have become adept at using them. “Well, whether terrorists or common criminals, they do try to be a step ahead in terms of technology,” he said.

Indian security forces surrounding the buildings were able to monitor the terrorists’ outgoing calls by intercepting their cellphone signals. But Indian police officials said those directing the attacks, who are believed to be from Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group based in Pakistan, were using a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service, which has complicated efforts to determine their whereabouts and identities.

VoIP services, in which conversations are carried over the Internet as opposed to conventional phone lines or cellphone towers, are increasingly popular with people looking to save money on long distance and international calls. Many such services, like Skype and Vonage, allow a user to call another VoIP-enabled device anywhere in the world free of charge, or to call a standard telephone or cellphone at a deeply discounted rate.

But the same services are also increasingly popular with criminals and terrorists, a trend that worries some law enforcement and intelligence agencies. “It’s a concern,” said one Indian security official, who spoke anonymously because the investigation was continuing. “It’s not something we have seen before.”

In mid-October, a draft United States Army intelligence report highlighted the growing interest of Islamic militants in using VoIP, noting recent news reports of Taliban insurgents using Skype to communicate. The unclassified report, which examined discussions of emerging technologies on jihadi Web sites, was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based nonprofit group that monitors the impact of science on national security.

VoIP calls pose an array of difficulties for intelligence and law enforcement services, according to communications experts. “It means the phone-tapping techniques that work for old traditional interception don’t work,” said Matt Blaze, a professor and computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

An agency using conventional tracing techniques to track a call from a land line or cellphone to a VoIP subscriber would be able to get only as far as the switching station that converts the voice call into Internet data, communications experts said. The switch, usually owned and operated by the company providing the VoIP service, could be located thousands of miles from the subscriber.

The subscriber’s phone number would also likely reveal no information about his location. For instance, someone in New York could dial a local phone number but actually be connected via the Internet to a person in Thailand.

In Mumbai, authorities have declined to disclose the names of the VoIP companies whose services the Lashkar-e-Taiba handlers used, but reports in Indian news media have said the calls have been traced to companies in New Jersey and Austria. Yet investigators have said they are convinced that the handlers who directed the attacks were actually sitting somewhere in Pakistan during the calls.

One senior Lashkar-e-Taiba leader who American officials believe may have played a key role in planning the Mumbai attacks is Zarrar Shah. Mr. Shah, known to be a specialist in communications technology, may have been aware of the difficulties in tracing VoIP.

To determine the location of a VoIP caller, an investigating agency has to access a database kept by the service provider. The database logs the unique numerical identifier, known as an Internet Protocol (I.P.) address, of whatever device the subscriber was using to connect to the Internet. This could be a computer equipped with a microphone, a special VoIP phone, or even a cellphone with software that routes calls over the Internet using wireless connections as opposed to cellular signals.

It would then take additional electronic sleuthing to determine where the device was located. The customer’s identity could be obtained from the service provider as well, but might prove fraudulent, experts said.

Getting the I.P. address and then determining its location can take days longer than a standard phone trace, particularly if service providers involved are in a foreign country.

“Ultimately, we can trace them,” said Mr. Gafoor, referring to VoIP calls. “It takes a little longer, but we will trace them.”

Washington is assisting the Indian authorities in obtaining this information, according to another Indian police official who also spoke anonymously because of the continuing investigation.

Further complicating this task is the fact that I.P. addresses change frequently and are less tied to a specific location than phone numbers.

Computer experts said that while these challenges were formidable, none were insurmountable. And they cautioned that security services and police forces might be disingenuous when they complain about terrorists’ use of new technologies, including VoIP.

The experts said that VoIP calls left a far richer data trail for investigators to mine than someone calling from an old-fashioned pay phone. Mr. Blaze, the computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania, also noted that 15 years ago the Mumbai attackers would probably not have had the capacity to make calls to their handlers during the course of their attacks, depriving investigators of vital clues to their identities. “As one door closes — traditional wire line tapping — all these other doors have opened,” Mr. Blaze said.

Cheng Wu is the co-founder and chairman of Azuki Systems.

As mobile social networks gain popularity, many are wondering how to ride the wave of this phenomenon. Leveraging the 3.3 billion potential mobile screens and the viral capabilities of social media, new forms of collaboration and media sharing will emerge and drive new sources of revenue.

As a result, we’ll see mobile social networking expand to build community around Web, user-generated and existing premium content – allowing users to discover and enjoy relevant content, rate and comment on high interest points, and share these elements with friends and colleagues, leading to a more vibrant, dynamic environment across both mobile and the desktop.

The Bad News

Today’s mobile social networks are admittedly primitive – confined to two fairly unattractive choices. Users can:

1. Access a mobile portal in an existing desktop community, where the experience is flat and text-oriented, or

2. Explicitly join a new mobile community in isolation.

It’s clear that change is needed.

The Good News

The broad availability of rich media-capable handsets is a harbinger of change, and with the increasing availability of platforms to enable interactive mobile media services, we’re also seeing the world of mobile evolve into a highly engaging and interactive means of sharing personalized and relevant content.

This evolving breed of mobile phones, along with the accessibility of one’s favorite content on mobile in bite-sized chunks that provide simplified navigation, is redefining the way people interact around content services. Mobile users are actively involved in sharing this ‘snackable’ content with friends and peers, voicing their opinions in online blogs, and viewing rich media content on a small, yet highly capable, mobile screen.

Additionally, mobile social networks are starting to incorporate location-awareness and contextualization capabilities to fine-tune the mobile experience and allow for more fluid formation of communities of interest around local events, news, sports or as an interesting clip that is quickly disseminated among friends. The viral, real-time nature, as well as the inherent contextual awareness, will expand both viewership and monetization options for content publishers, mobile operators and social networking brands.

What’s Next?

Interactive, Snackable Content
In order for mobile social networking to reach its potential, it needs to enable and be driven by interactive mobile content. This interactivity (in the form of rating, ranking, commenting, etc.) is key to enhancing the ‘stickiness’ of personalized and targeted mobile content in a snackable form. In addition, with the inclusion of these features, relevancy to the individual user is also greatly enhanced, increasing the likelihood of participation.

Focus on Content, Not the Community
To be successful and wide-spread, mobile social networking should revolve around the sharing of interactive, snackable, relevant content – and hinge much less on the sharing solely within a particular community. This new model implies cross-community dissemination, whereby group members are fluid and determined based on relevancy of said content. For this reason, it is important to keep in mind that adopting a one-size-fits-all approach for addressing social networks will be a mistake, and mobile users should not be pushed into any one particular network – but rather extend collaboration across Facebook, MySpace and other sites.

Integrate the Data
Mobile social networking will prove to be more about integrating mobile social data with desktop data and less about mobile specific data mining. Community data should be independent of the device that is used to access it. It needs to be a cloud resource in the Internet, accessible from all access devices including desktop PC’s and mobile handsets. Content publishers need to be able to leverage the existing content that is available on the desktop, and then have the ability to optimize it for personalized interaction on a mobile device.

Context-Enabled Social Communities
Mobile social networking also will involve real-time functionality and contextual awareness, with location-based services driving communication among physical communities. In that manner, and as interactive local content is rapidly disseminated, enthusiasm is generated about local happenings and local vendors, increasing the likelihood of service monetization and the overall success of mobile retailing.

Monetize
It follows then that mobile social networking represents the opportunity to monetize based on layered viral social activities over original content. For example, a pre-roll advertisement optimized for mobile consumption stands to be distributed to thousands of mobile users through user-initiated sharing of content on social networking sites. This radically increases CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) and drives revenue beyond a publishers own direct marketing efforts. Instead of the Web model of driving “eyeballs” to the ads, users drive the ads to the eyeballs.

There have already been some initial successes in mobile social networking that are now laying the foundation for this massive new category of advertising. By creating a more personalized experience for mobile users through contextual and bite-sized content, users naturally interact and share more through mobile mash-ups of this snackable content, involving contacts from their social networks. This creates an opportunity for viral mobile advertising where embedded mobile ads are shared along with the contextual content.

With interactive, personalized and snackable mobile content, the mobilization of fixed-Web social networks is indeed poised for growth and success.

Cheng Wu is the co-founder and chairman of Azuki Systems, which provides the industry’s first comprehensive interactive mobile media services platform, and is responsible for the company’s vision and corporate strategy. Wu is a successful serial entrepreneur and well-acclaimed industry veteran, having founded and led numerous businesses including ArrowPoint (acquired by Cisco for $5.7 billion), Arris Networks (acquired by Cascade Communications for $217 million) and Acopia (acquired by F5 Networks for $210 million).

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, lindsayking, tforgo

Tech Now by Paul Brent

No handheld cellphones … No dialing, no texting, no handheld GPS, no checking e-mails on the Blackberry.

That, in a nutshell, will be the effect of a new communication device ban proposed by the Ontario government that is making its way through the Legislature.

The looming ban will mean a big change in the habits of drivers accustomed to keeping in touch while on the go. However, wireless options are available for many of those same functions and since the law will still permit “hands-free,” a huge business opportunity awaits firms that can provide the right technology.

And that has QNX Software of Ottawa smiling. QNX’s software is already found in over 50 per cent of all vehicles equipped with factory installed hands-free systems. That works out to more than seven million vehicles.

Andrew Poliak is director of Business Development at QNX, for the auto sector. I reached him in his home state of Washington, which also has a cellphone ban.

He says the Ontario move is good news and will help expand the market. One month after California’s cell ban went into effect, for example, sales in that state of Bluetooth phone kits jumped to four times the national average.

QNX designs the software that allows phones, iPods, Global Positioning Systems — almost anything — to work in a car and interact with the car’s audio system.

For a phone, that usually means voice-activated features, so you don’t even have to look at your device or punch numbers while driving.

Poliak says studies show poor-quality audio on a hands-free system increases driver distraction, so they have developed improvements in audio both incoming and outgoing. The next step is to use their software as a gateway for a variety of onboard electronic functions, from entertainment systems linked to the Internet using Bluetooth and WiFi in the car, to sensors that tell the driver if they’ve wandered out of their lane.

Another piece of technology that’s getting attention comes from Vancouver’s Aegis. Their software determines if your cellphone is moving above a certain speed and it then stops accepting calls until you stop. Emergency 9-1-1 calls and other calls that you designate — such as a parent trying to reach a child — will still get through, though other callers are advised that you’re driving and to leave a message. A final point to consider about driver distraction: R.A.C., a car organization in the United Kingdom with seven million members, says studies show that the radio and the CD player pose a bigger risk of diversion than cell phones.

I don’t know whether to think recent calculations for mobile video consumption (or lack thereof) via the four top wireless carriers in America are just a little bit Halloween spooky, a big point of concern, or perhaps a good omen.

It’s come to be a common refrain that most of the country’s residents are mobile phone users. But what they do with their devices is, particularly in media consumption, very unlike the advanced markets of Asia and places elsewhere. Less than 3% of American subscribers bother to consume on-demand video in any form. “Woe is US?”

That number, released by Comscore yesterday, is certainly not an attractive one for any carrier to next to its name, especially given the activities made possible by new(ish) strides in mobile broadband penetration across the country by various networks. Whether it is a 4.4% usership that AT&T managed to serve circa June-August 2008, the 4.2% tallied for Sprint, or the the 2.4% figures each given to T-Mobile and Verizon, none shine very brightly.

To get specific for a moment, so-called amateur video clips (a la YouTube) ranked #1 among those who did use the carrier’s video services, followed by music videos, comedy clips, and film trailers. Each segment managed to net over 1 million users. (Alternatively, Web browsing, email transfers, and photo and video sharing are all working double-digit percentiles themselves, totaling over 100,000,000 users.)

As anyone with a good perception on data rates demanded of video downloads knows, the “packaged” experience delivered by carriers is 1) nowhere near like using a desktop-sized Web browser, and 2) costly. These factors, compounded with unavailability of many media options and television channels and whatnot, do much to make media services somewhat unappealing to many people. New software breaches that barrier, no doubt, but such developments are young and far from a common convenience.

What’s more, present platforms used to deliver streaming and on-demand video to handsets (only few of which manage to interface with online services really well) should really be taken for what they are: mobile broadband and Internet use. It’s entirely reasonable to think, then, that consumers wish to consider mobile broadband and Internet use very much the same way they do their land-based residential and at-work broadband connections. Which is to say, “give me access for a fee and let me do what I want to do and see what I want to see.”

Wireless carriers of course don’t appreciate this sensibility very much, since it essentially designates their task as a dumb ISP, so to speak. No value added. Just build the towers, sell the handsets and monthly connections and allow the user to do what the user wants to do from there on out. (How very libertarian and Ron Paul-like of the user. And we all know how wigs in the major parties regard independent thinkers.)

All said, I would think that an average of 2.8% penetration for the on-demand mobile video market is just a notch or two above crumb-sized. So I can only imagine that the figure is directly attributable to the age-old law of supply and demand. If the product isn’t adequate, nor will demand be. Time for carriers to be a little more free-thinking (philosophically, if not financially) with their mobile media delivery models, it seems.

Graspr, the instructional video syndication network run by an ex-Yahoo exec, has released an advanced video player with a featured called the “gCard” that carries the identity of a video creator wherever his or her video gets embedded across the net.

If you create an instructional video and upload it to YouTube, you may lose credit for your work when it gets embedded off-site since many of your viewers won’t bother to click through to your YouTube profile. And worse, you could miss opportunities to sell related merchandise (such as the supplies needed to build whatever you’ve instructed) and premium videos to your viewers.

Graspr wants to help producers connect with their distributed viewers with the gCard, which is essentially a video overlay that can be accessed by clicking a little tab on the side of the video player. Once accessed, the viewer shows a portrait of the instructor and details such as their contact information, location, professional background, and a link to their profile on Graspr. Another tab of the gCard provides a gallery of other videos from the same instructor, and a third presents the viewer with a simple contact form that can be used to send a note to the instructor using Graspr’s messaging system.

In the future, viewers will also be able to buy items directly from the video player using a simple ecommerce interface. And later, real time chat or instant messaging will be added as well so viewers can ask instructors follow up questions to their videos.

By David Chartier | Published: October 07, 2008 – 10:25PM CT

In the fourth quarter of 2007, American cellphone subscribers for the first time sent text messages more than they phoned, according to Nielsen Mobile. Since then, the average subscriber’s volume of text messages has shot upward by 64 percent, while the average number of calls has dropped slightly.

Nicholas Covey, director of insights for Nielsen Mobile, attributed the spike in messaging to the spread of QWERTY-style keypads, whose users send 54 percent more text messages than those with ordinary keypads. He also said that phone companies had encouraged users to text by offering large or unlimited text-messaging bundles.

Teenagers ages 13 to 17 are by far the most prolific texters, sending or receiving 1,742 messages a month, according to Nielsen Mobile. By contrast, 18-to-24-year-olds average 790 messages. A separate study of teenagers with cellphones by Harris Interactive found that 42 percent of them claim that they can write text messages while blindfolded.

Globalive is aiming for 1.5 million subscribers in its first three years.Globalive is aiming for 1.5 million subscribers in its first three years. (Manu Fernandez/Associated Press)

More cellphone competition is on the way as Globalive Communications Inc. is aiming to have Canada’s fourth national wireless service up and running in the second half of 2009.

The Toronto-based company made the announcement on Thursday after spending $442 million on wireless spectrum licences across the country — except Quebec — in a government auction earlier this summer. Auction participants had been under a gag order since bidding ended in late July and were prohibited from speaking to each other or from sharing their plans with the public until Thursday.

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