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Our blog focuses on sharing our experience and knowledge across a wide range of technologies and industries including hardware and software design, audio, video, internet of things, mobile application and signal processing technologies.

MAC vs HMAC: Differences Explained Hash-based message authentication code, or HMAC, is an important building block for proving that data transmitted between the components of a system has not been tampered with. It is a widely used cryptographic technology. I recently came across its use in an RFID system. Details
Howdy Pierce How to Find the Right CTO I’ve got a new article up at Xconomy, sharing some thoughts about how to find the right Chief Technology Officer for your startup: I’ve got a strong bias that you are likely to need at least one member of your founding team who is a strong technology visionary and evangelist. Assuming you’re an entrepreneur with… View Article Details
Boulder Tech Job Fair Redux: February 25 Based on the success of our last job fair, Cardinal Peak will once again be co-hosting the Boulder Tech Job Fair with the Boulder Chamber. We were thrilled by our experience at the last fair in September, so we will be joining 13 other tech companies offering more than 200 open positions ranging from entry-level… View Article Details
A Great CES Launch for Skydrop We’d like to congratulate our client Skydrop for a spectacular launch at CES this week. The Skydrop Sprinkler Controller is a great example of a next-generation Internet-of-Things product. Details
“Who Am I” in the Internet of Things? Out of the box, Chromecast has no idea who I am, or what my available content is. In a few simple steps I’m up and running with my content. I didn’t even enter my username and password! How did Google do that? The answer involves a protocol called oAuth. Details
Howdy Pierce Thoughts on Streaming Video Securely The kind folks at EDN have asked Cardinal Peak to author an occasional blog about streaming video. The first post went live this morning and discusses streaming video securely: Until recently, the accepted wisdom in the industry was that end users didn’t care about encrypting this type of video, as long as it was a… View Article Details
More Thoughts on Security and the Internet of Things Attacks that are initially restricted to the realm of esoteric, government-backed spooks become accessible over time to run-of-the-mill cybercriminals. Take, for example, the Linux.Darlloz worm, which attacks embedded devices and is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it propagates by exploiting a vulnerability that was patched in May 2012. But the firmware images on many embedded devices are much older than that. The second reason I find it particularly interesting is it targets PHP, a scripting language largely used for web development. Details
The Value of New Technologies When I was a freshman in college, we had an engineering seminar where the Dean told us that we should expect to re-educate ourselves many times throughout our career. This has certainly been true in my career. In the Web and Mobile development world it seems like if you blink your skills are out of… View Article Details
Howdy Pierce Five Software Tips for Securing IoT Devices I’ve got a new blog post up today at EE Times, discussing how to secure devices on the Internet of Things: It used to be academically interesting, perhaps, that an attacker could compromise an unconnected home thermostat. Today, it’s another thing entirely that an attacker can potentially target thousands of home thermostats from afar, determine… View Article Details
Mike Perkins Using Butterworth Filter C++ Class to Implement a Band-Pass Filter, Low Pass Filter & High Pass Filter in C We needed a simple C++ class for linear phase FIR filtering, so our expert offers a how-to and a download to help others implement a FIR filter. Details
Howdy Pierce An Ode to Simplicity Originally this was going to be a blog post ranting about remote controls for home entertainment systems. For the most part, they have way too many buttons! I don’t think I have a particularly high-end setup at home — but I still had to type up instructions so that the rest of the family could… View Article Details
Some Programming Gems From the Health Care Website One of my partners pointed this Slate article out to me about healthcare.gov. It is clear at this point that there have been a ton of embarrassing problems with the rollout of this site. I don’t want to get into the politics of health care, but I do find it interesting to look at what… View Article Details
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