Web of Things

In a keynote address this week at EMC World, VMware CEO Paul Maritz talked about the growing monitoring challenge as system pools and the sheer amount of information these systems generate grows ever larger.

To put it another way, monitoring has become a big data problem.

He claimed that the number of devices connected to the Internet is going up by a factor of 10, and the growth is not just being fueled by humans, but also by an increasing number of internet-enabled devices feeding more and more data into the system.

This ‘Internet of Things’ will interact with the virtual world in a fundamentally different way than we do and they will be feeding us vast quantities of information, which we in turn have to process to build a better understanding of our world. These tools could be even baked into the systems we need to monitor.

Electric Imp is about to make your wireless control / monitoring fantasies a reality with its soon-to-be-released, $25 web interface. It works much like an Eye-Fi card, and communicates with cloud services as well as other connected devices like your Android or iPhone via WiFi. The company is working hard to get the slots that work with the cards into many of the machines that we usually don't link up to the good ol' www -- but have often wanted to -- and it hopes to have everything in place later this year.

In another scenario, where we can recognize a seamless network “of things” (Rob Van Kranenbrug, Internet of Things) – of cars, of cities, of washing machines communicating – the idea is to leave this network open, and not enclosed in the hands of one middleman, one government, or one or two states (and Moglen will use examples of USA and China), that can choose to act in their un-wisdom. Moglen argues, in a dooming scenario where big data is collected about each citizen, that “we need to reposses the web away from the man in the middle.” Otherwise, our memories will become inferior to this “big data” because what is collected will not be forgotten. “Media consumes us”, he concludes, “watching us watching it,” and the freedom of thought may be lost forever if there wasn't anyone left running free software, securing free (un-surveilled) media, leaving the seamless network – open.

In my view, the central question was revolving around the ways of securing our own autonomy[...]

Plastic solar cells are tough, flexible, bendable and cheap. They have a wide-range of potential applications, but their biggest downfall is that they're much less efficient than conventional silicon cells. A team at UCLA was recently able to achieve an efficiency of 10.6 percent, which put the cells into the 10 - 15 percent efficiency range considered necessary for commercialization. The Princeton teams expects that their leaf-mimicking design could push that efficiency even further because the method can be applied to almost any plastic material.

Davor Sutija, CEO of Thin Film said ThinFilm is in the business of printed electronics. The company is working towards creating a low-power, printable, rewritable memory that uses a non-toxic polymer and can be attached to virtually anything. "Your stuff will talk to you in three to five years," he said.

Like the Kopin and Motorola Solutions headset, ThinFilm's product is the culmination of multiple efforts. PARC built the logic, ThinFilm specialized in memory, another company created the display, the batteries are being developed in Berkeley. The initiative started by identifying a potentially growing consumer need for easily reproduced technology. "The 'Internet of Things' will involve hundreds of billions of items," Sutija offered.

After dreaming up ThinFilm's concept, it was then a matter of sharing that idea with others and determining where their expertise could fit in. Sutija believes that "printed electronics will be as disruptive as search was ten years ago," and while the company's products are still getting off the ground, ThinFilm would certainly not be what it is today without the benefit of an open innovation approach.

Researchers at MIT and the University of Pittsburgh have successfully resuscitated non-oscillating Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) gel by exerting a mechanical force: a process akin to the resuscitation of a human heart. By exhibiting a chemical response to a mechanical stimulus (a rare feat for non-living matter), it's thought the material could lead to the development of artificial skin that would enable robots to feel and self-repair.

"Think of it like human skin, which can provide signals to the brain that something on the body is deformed or hurt," said Anna Balazs, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering at Pittsburgh. "This gel has numerous far-reaching applications, such as artificial skin that could be sensory - a holy grail in robotics."

Libelium, a - wireless sensor networks platform provider - has released the document “50 Sensor Applications for a Smarter World. Get Inspired!” covering the most disruptive sensor and Internet of Things applications.

The list is grouped in 12 different verticals, showing how the Internet of Things is becoming the next technological revolution. It includes the most trendy scenarios, like Smart Cities where sensors can offer us services like Smart Parking – to find free parking spots in the streets– or managing the intensity of the luminosity in street lights to save energy. Climate change, environmental protection, water quality or CO2 emissions are also addressed by sensor networks and are just some of the examples included in the Smart Water and Smart Environment sections included in the document.

Other sections such as Industrial Control, Logistics or Retail cover applications more focused in process efficiency like providing information for restocking the shelves and even product placement for marketing purposes. The list is completed with applications in the verticals of Smart Metering, Security and Emergencies, Smart Agriculture, Animal Farming, Domotic and Home Automation and eHealth.

Full document is available for download at: http://www.libelium.com/top_50_iot_sensor_applications_ranking.

Things are getting a “voice,” says Ric Asselstine, chief executive officer of Terepac Corp., a Waterloo company that makes tiny electronics to put into objects to make them “smart” and compatible with the Internet of Things.

“At the end of the day, what we’re creating is information,” Asselstine said in a phone interview from Terepac’s headquarters on Colby Drive.

There is the potential for “trillions” of devices to be connected to the Internet of Things, he said, noting all of the objects in his office alone.

“The potential is literally boundless.”

Consumer products, medical devices and agricultural methods, such as managing crop moisture with sensors, can be a part of the Internet of Things.

Data about locations and conditions can be transmitted through these objects, Asselstine said.

[...]

ABI Research analyst Sam Lucero said privacy is already an issue.

“We’re already seeing tremendous privacy concerns around, for instance, smart meter data,” said Lucero, practice director of machine-to-machine connectivity for the New York-based tech trends firm.

“How is the owner of those devices and that data assured that the data is being used in agreed upon ways and that security is assured?”

This is going to be multiplied as different applications and devices become interconnected, he said.

TheRecord.com by LuAnn LaSalle

Imagine a refrigerated cabinet or vending machine able to communicate its state, announcing if it is powered on, at the right temperature, well stocked, with the right product mix, at the right location, how shoppers interact with it, if it is due for routine maintenance and so on.

Now imagine millions of such machines worldwide, adding up to a sizeable business for a company. Imagine each machine offering shoppers the ability to pay for the product in multiple smart ways through other devices (smart phones, smart cards, touch screen, etc). Imagine the enterprise being able to remotely and dynamically tune the machine with advertising, pricing, promotions, bundling, language and currency. Imagine the machine tailoring an offer to a shopper that it recognizes as a loyal customer (if the shopper allows it).