See how data from sensors can revamp a city’s sewer system
Xively Actually Connects Things In The Internet Of Things – ReadWrite
The Internet of Things isn’t really an Internet of anything, at least not yet. Sure, devices are connected to the Internet, but they don’t communicate with other devices — just with their own home servers. But that may be about to change.
A new common cloud platform dubbed Xively Cloud Services aims to provide a common ground through which any device connected to the Internet could actually communicate with any other device. Xively is an old fixture within the Internet of Things ecosystem, as it’s actually a new commercial version of the older non-commercial Cosm platform, which in turn used to be known as Pachube until Xively’s current owner LogMeIn purchased Pachube in 2011.
Like Cosm before it, Xively will offer a way for disparate devices to connect with each other, though now with commercial terms of service for commercial users and freely available services for projects in development. Whatever you call it, the availability of a platform like Xively is a key component in building a true Internet of Things instead of what we actually have now.
How Will Adding Intelligence to Everyday Things Change Your World? Big Think
On a global level, we are adding connected intelligence to both machines and objects using chips, micro sensors, and both wired and wireless networks to create a rapidly growing “Internet of things” sharing real-time data, performing diagnostics, and even making remote repairs. Many jobs will be created as we add intelligent connected sensors to bridges, roads, buildings, homes, and much more. By 2020, there will be well over a billion machines talking to each other and performing tasks without human intervention.
Think of it this way: from phones to cars to bridges, embedded technologies are increasingly making the things we use smarter every day. For example, some of the newest cars use cameras mounted in the rear to see if something is in the way when you are backing up. If there is something in the way, the car will apply the brake even if you don’t or you are slow to react. Likewise, the concrete in new bridges has embedded chips that can let engineers know when the concrete is cracking, stressed, and in need of repair before the bridge collapses. In addition, sensors on the surface of the road going over the bridge will detect ice and wirelessly communicate the information to your car. If you don’t slow down, the car will slow down to a safe speed for you.
iPhone-Operated Digital Lock Makes House Keys a Thing of the Past | Wired.com
Kwikset’s new Kevo door lock turns your iPhone into the simplest of digital keys. Just have your phone in your pocket or purse, tap the Kevo lock, and you’re in.
We first saw the Kevo on ABC’s Shark Tank when UniKey CEO Phil Dumas pitched the idea to the program’s investors. He convinced Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary to hand over $500,000, then parlayed his 15 minutes of reality TV fame to raise another truckload of cash. Dumas eventually caught the attention of Kwikset, which partnered with him to make his dream a reality.
This thing is incredibly cool. The Kevo looks like an ordinary lock, but the halo of light surrounding the keyhole gives it a vaguely futuristic look. An app links your iPhone (sorry – no Android) to the lock using Bluetooth and the miracle of location services, eliminating the need to fumble through your pockets or purse for your keys. Just tap the lock with your finger and the halo flashes green, letting you know the door is unlocked. You don’t even need to take your iPhone out of your pocket.
Emerging protocol can help manage the Internet of Things — GCN
The ever-expanding networks of sensors and other machine-to-machine devices on the “Internet of Things” are creating huge stores of data for everything from traffic and weather monitoring to health care and finance.
And there will only going be more of them. Sensors, for example, will play a key role in the Obama Administration’s recently released National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations, a plan to increase the efficiency and effectiveness Earth-observations. Along with other steps toward streamlining the efforts of the 11 agencies involved in the observations, it calls for extensive use of sensors in gathering the data.
Of course, having all that data is one thing. Making sense of it — quickly — is another. One key is the emerging Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol, a lightweight messaging transport for machine-to-machine communications that recently was proposed as an OASIS standard.
OASIS in March began the process “to define an open publish/subscribe protocol for telemetry messaging designed to be open, simple, lightweight and suited for use in constrained networks and multi-platform environments.” The protocol, which consumes little power, is designed to help sensors and other devices — which tend to be low-power and low-bandwidth — communicate reliably.
How The Internet Of Things Will Revolutionize Search – ReadWrite
As mobile devices dictate the terms of search and how results are being conveyed to end users, there’s another phenomenon that will greatly influence the future of search - very soon, we’re going to be swimming in more data than we will know what to do with.
The rise of the Internet of Things means billions of physical objects will soon generate massive amounts of data 24 hours a day. Not only will this make traditional search methods nearly impossible to use, it will also create an environment where instead of looking for things in the world, those things will be seeking us out to give us all sorts of information that will help us fix, use or buy them.
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The technological advances transforming “Edison’s 130-year-old industry” promise to revolutionize the way light is integrated in our homes, workplaces, and cities.
As “the last industrial-age analog technology” is digitized, Felicity Barringer looks at “the fundamental rethinking of lighting now under way in research labs, executive offices and investor conferences.”
“Innovations on the horizon range from smart lampposts that can sense gas hazards to lights harnessed for office productivity or even to cure jet lag. Digital lighting based on light-emitting diodes — LEDs — offers the opportunity to flit beams delicately across stages like the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge — creating a light sculpture more elegant than the garish marketers’ light shows on display in Times Square, Piccadilly Circus and the Shibuya district in Tokyo.”
She explains other possible applications, such as lampposts that function as “nodes in a smart network that illuminate spaces, visually monitor them, sense heat and communicate with other nodes and human monitors.”
“James Highgate, an expert on the new technology who runs an annual LED industry conference, sees a transition period ahead ‘for the next three to five years, until the eight billion sockets in the U.S. get filled’ with LEDs. ‘Some people will never change,’ he added. ‘They’ll be in the alleys buying 100-watt incandescents.’”
”Lighting Revolution Produces Radiant Visions of Our Future | Planetizen
Full Story: New Technology Inspires a Rethinking of Light
Published on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 in The New York Times
The Internet of Things: Coming to a network near you - Network World
Network When people talk about the Internet of Things (IoT), the most common examples are smart cars, IP-addressable washing machines and Internet-connected nanny cams.
But IoT is coming to the enterprise as well, and IT execs should already be thinking about the ways that IoT will shake up the corporate network.
[DEFINED: What is the Internet of Things?]
SLIDESHOW: 25 of the weirdest things in the ‘Internet of Things’]
“Products and services which were previously outside their domain will increasingly be under their jurisdiction,” says Daniel Castro, senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based research and educational institute.
So, what are these devices?
Castro says that companies increasingly will be operating in “smart buildings” with advanced HVAC systems that are connected to the rest of the corporate network.
Many utility companies will be deploying Web-connected smart meters at customers’ facilities to allow for remote monitoring.
Companies are tying their physical security to their network security, so that data from security cameras and authentication readers are coming under the purview of enterprise IT.
Retailers such as WalMart, Target and Best Buy already use RFID and other tracking technologies to manage supply chain logistics, says IDC’s Michael Fauscette. IoT is a natural next step.
Then there’s “operational technology,” where enterprise assets such as manufacturing equipment, fleet trucks, rail cars, even patient monitoring equipment in hospitals, become networked devices, says Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner.
LED lights could become network devices, too | CNET News
Fraunhofer Institute has demonstrated how conventional LED lighting could be used to send and receive data to laptops or smartphones, with speeds up to 3Gbps.
Today, you’ve got wireless networks that use radio waves and you’ve got optical networks that use light traveling in tiny glass fibers. Tomorrow, if Fraunhofer Institute research comes to fruition, a combination of the two could turn living-room lights into network devices.
The German applied-research lab has developed wireless networking that uses rapidly blinking LEDs to transmit data through the air. The technology can send data at speeds up to 1 gigabit per second — and by using three colors of light, triple that data rate is possible, Fraunhofer said.
Unless you’re reading this while using an inhaler, this fact may surprise you: According to the CDC, 26 million Americans currently have the chronic respiratory disease we know as asthma. Not only that, but the CDC tells us that the disease costs the U.S. $3,300 per person annually, and medical expenses associated with asthma have increased to about $56 billion (thanks to hospitalizations, emergency room visits and missed work), while over 10 percent of insured Americans are unable to afford their prescription medicines.
Asthmapolis launched in 2010 to help find a solution by leveraging the advances in sensor technology (and the reduced costs of producing said sensors) and mobile data monitoring to help people manage their asthma more effectively, in turn reducing the costs both for those suffering from asthma and for the U.S. healthcare system itself. And, today, the Wisconsin-based startup has announced that it has raised $5 million in Series A financing from The Social+Capital Partnership to build out a comprehensive solution and support system for those with the chronic respiratory disease.
Asthmapolis is one of a new generation of digital health startups attempting to hack the old software, devices and care systems that continue to prevail in today’s healthcare landscape. We recently wrote about Intersect ENT, for example, which is hacking stents (yes, stents) to help doctors more effectively treat the 31 million-plus people suffering from sinusitis.
What the internet of things can learn from Minecraft and Lemmings — GigaOM
Once we have a home full of connected devices do we really want to individually manage all of them? Mike Kuniavsky, a principal in the Innovation Services Group at PARC, explains in this weeks podcast how we’re going to have to think differently about programming devices for the internet of things. Devices will need to know what they contain and how those elements might contribute to a certain scenario in the home.
For example when you want to watch a movie, you shouldn’t have to program 6 different devices in your home to tell them what they should do when you toggle on your movie setting, your devices should have some sense of what they are capable of and how to enter a set mode. As he did in his chat in February at our San Francisco Internet of Things meetup, Kuniavsky, likened this device behavior to video games like Minecraft or Lemmings, where preset general behaviors determines how the game unfolded as opposed to rigid and specific actions. He explains all this and more in the podcast. Check it out.
How the Internet of Things will transform building management | GreenBiz.com
When it comes to managing energy consumption, safety conditions and other building processes across your company’s real estate portfolio, which scenario sounds more efficient?
Option A: responding to alarms and maintenance crises reactively after they happen. Or Option B: monitoring systems continuously in real time to anticipate and address potential problems or incidents.
Yes, the question is largely rhetorical, but the reality is most facility managers currently operate somewhere in between these two extremes. Many have access to building systems that collect data about operating conditions, but far fewer have the tools to parse that information for insights into future conditions or inefficiencies.
That’s about to change. Intelligent, machine-to-machine, or M2M, applications that use sensors to collect information about operating conditions combined with cloud-hosted analytics software that makes sense of disparate data points will help facility managers become far more proactive about managing buildings at peak efficiency, said experts participating in the GreenBiz webcast, “Sensors, Buildings and the Coming Internet of Things.”
AT&T to launch Digital Life in 15 markets, hopes to enter home automation field
AT&T is finally set to launch its Digital Life home automation service, and it’s ready to do so in a big way. Initially planned for just eight markets, the telephony giant has expanded its coverage to 15 starting this spring, with the hope of 50 by the end of the year. Essentially a way to monitor your home, Digital Life packages may include live video, the ability to remotely toggle the light on and off, change the thermostat, unlock the door and more. Customers are able to set up programs and alerts via smartphone or tablet applications or the web. AT&T should bring some heavy clout to the home automation party, though it won’t be the first big-name communications company to do so. For more information on Digital Life and what it offers, have a peek at the source below.
The real breakthrough of Google Glass: controlling the internet of things — GigaOM
Many of the first apps for Google Glass will be about consuming and sharing content on the go. But what if Google Glass could unlock control over the world of the Internet of Things both inside and outside the home?
Panasonic 2013 Smart TVs wield Nuance Dragon TV for voice control, text-to-speech
Panasonic and Nuance have been close partners on TV voice recognition in the past; we now know that they’re getting a bit cozier for Panasonic’s 2013 Smart TVs. The company’s newer LCDs and plasmas with voice recognition use Nuance’s Dragon TV for voice-only control of basics like volume as well as content and web searches. The engine will also speak out content and menus if you need more than just visual confirmation of where you’re going. Panasonic’s refreshed TV line is gradually rolling out over the spring, so those who see a plastic remote control as so very 2010 won’t have long to wait.
