Kolibree is announcing what it calls the world’s first connected electric toothbrush today. It sounds pretty weird, but Kolibree says it can analyze your brushing habits and display them on a mobile dashboard that you can access from your phone. The idea is to motivate you, or shame you, into brushing better.

For $99, it better be good.

Unlike a basic $35 baby-monitor, the $250 Owlet bootie and accompanying app can alert parents if anything serious has gone wrong, like if a kid stops breathing, or if his heart stops beating. That means no more unnecessary freakouts for the over-protective and inexperienced dad like Bruce, which leaves more time for him to do other dad things.

via Fast Company http://goo.gl/iv4Ivf

Learn More & Purchase At: http://www.owletcare.com The worlds first baby monitor that sends a babies heart rate, oxygen levels, skin temperature, sleep quali...

Executives at Robert Bosch and McKinsey experts discuss the technology-driven changes that promise to trigger a new industrial revolution. A McKinsey & Company article.

In manufacturing, the potential for cyber-physical systems to improve productivity in the production process and the supply chain is vast. Consider processes that govern themselves, where smart products can take corrective action to avoid damages and where individual parts are automatically replenished. Such technologies already exist and could drive what some German industry leaders call the fourth industrial revolution—following the steam engine, the conveyor belt, and the first phase of IT and automation technology. What opportunities and challenges lie ahead for manufacturers—and what will it take to win? To discuss the future of manufacturing, McKinsey’s Markus Löffler and Andreas Tschiesner recently sat down for a conversation with Siegfried Dais, deputy chairman of the board of management at German engineering company Robert Bosch GmbH, and Heinz Derenbach, CEO of Bosch Software Innovations GmbH.

Barry Eggers, an investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners, is trying to piece together growth opportunities in the emerging Internet of things, and while he can't be sure, he's got some ideas.

Data scientists, entrepreneurs, and IT analysts have great hopes for the Internet of things. One analyst recently declared 2014 to be the year when IT buyers focus more on the Internet of things.

In line with the much parroted software-is-eating-the-world logic, Eggers is betting that the control point will turn out to be in a person’s phone rather than on a separate, wholly new device for the home.

“The penetration of smartphones is pretty high,” he said. “… Why isn’t the control point just your mobile phone? It has all the radios in it that you need. It has all of the software you need.” It’s reasonable to think of them as a solid landing pad for all the data and analytics from the Internet of things devices a person owns or uses.

About half of all medication prescribed in the United States is not taken as directed. Some have proposed stomach acid-activated microchips. CleverCap is a less sci-fi fix: a cap that fits on standard pill bottles.

It includes an alarm that tells patients when it’s time to take their medications and it only dispenses the prescribed amount. The device connects to the Internet to allow doctors and pharmaceuticals to monitor patients’ compliance. It connects via a mobile device or a Qualcomm Life hub called 2Net.

“[M]edication adherence information is more valuable for clinical and research purposes when analyzed in the context of synchronized remote-monitored vital signs,” said Moses Zonana, CEO of Compliance Meds.

While connected medical devices are popping up nearly by the day, no one knows how they will end up communicating with one another and with doctors and patients. That’s why 2Net scoops up with Wi-Fi and cellular data and offers a home hub and a mobile app software development kit, or SDK.

The Carbon War Room report asserts that “across many industries M2M technologies will reduce the amount of energy or fuel required to get the job done, lowering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions without constricting production, consumption or economic growth.” 

The Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) agrees with Carbon War Room that ICT-enabled solutions could save 9.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) yearly by 2020.

GeSI estimates that automation of manufacturing plants could reduce GHG emissions by 0.72 GtCO2e. This would involve decreasing the use of human labor and increasing the use of machines controlled by M2M and related technologies. Such systems will be able to monitor and control equipment to reduce and optimize energy usage, and can even be used in maintenance and upkeep.

The group estimates that variable-speed motor systems can abate 0.53 GtCO2e globally, with particular focus on developing economies such as China. “Motor systems,” the report points out, “are at the heart of the industrial activity and consume the majority of electricity used by manufacturers worldwide.” Traditional motor systems operate at a continuous rate, even if the load varies. This creates inefficiencies that could be mitigated with technologies that sense a motor’s strain and adjust its speed dynamically. Such technologies will also provide a data stream that can give managers more information and control over use of energy in their operations.

A string of moves to add increasing levels of Bluetooth Smart Ready and Bluetooth Smart technology integration by leading OS providers like Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, and most recently, Google, sets the stage for an extraordinary increase in Bluetooth Smart devices.  According to Bluetooth SIG, there was a year on year growth of more than 186% in the first half of 2013 alone.

A Kickstarter project is trying to marry home automation and the Internet of Things. You'll want one.

Ninja Sphere acts as an intelligent "hub" that connects to the separate devices you already own and helps them communicate with your other home automation gadgets without asking you to pull out your phone unless absolutely necessary. It does this in part by knowing where objects like your phone or your pets are located in relation to you. When a sensor notices some activity--the dog's Internet-connected collar sends an alert, for example--the Ninja Sphere tries to determine what action to take next.

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Since the sphere can keep tabs on virtually any object that you attached a smart tag to, the possibilities become quite intriguing. Place a Bluetooth-enabled smart tag on your jewelry box, for instance. The Ninja Sphere could then detect that the box of valuables is moving, while also sensing that none of the owners' smartphones are nearby. It would then alert you to a potential theft in progress (or at least that the five-year-old is playing dress up with mom's best baubles).

The underlying trick is indoor location sensing, a technology that is quietly being installed in places like the Apple Store because it's useful to know where its shoppers are located and how they navigate around products. Indoor GPS, as it's sometimes called, could also help you as a smartphone owner navigate an office building you've never visited before.

Iotera expects businesses to use its technology to track everything from tools on construction sites to workers in dangerous places like oil rigs. Or people might use it to keep an eye on their pets. Iotera’s founders say two companies (which it won’t name) are trying it out. One is using it to help parents monitor their children’s whereabouts, and the other is tracking company-owned devices.

[idea cofounder Ben Wild] handed me a sensor tag in a 3-D-printed case about the size of a small matchbox. If you clipped one to your dog’s collar, it would occasionally log Fido’s location and report it back to a small access point connected to the Internet. From there, it would be punted to Iotera’s servers, and then to a website or mobile app. Under what Wild calls “typical operating conditions,” the tag’s battery would last up to five months.

The former director of Apple's Siri is taking Samsung's version of the artificial intelligence system to the next level. Luc Julia, vice president and innovation fellow at Samsung's Open Innovation Center in Menlo Park, Calif., demonstrated SAMI (Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions), the Siri-like system central to Samsung's Internet of Things (IoT) strategy, at the MEMS Executive Congress 2013 in Napa, Calif., Nov. 7-8. 

SAMI is an interactive artificial intelligence (AI) similar to Apple's Siri that Julia helped develop when at Apple. Samsung's SAMI, however, goes far beyond Apple's Siri by aggregating sensor data from all types and brands of IoT devices in the cloud. The open system will then allow Samsung ecosystem partners -- some financed by a $100 million accelerator fund -- to perform deep analytics on that data before sending smart advice back to users. 

According to Cisco, there are an estimated 1.5 trillion things in the world (no mention of exactly how they counted those things, but let’s go with it) and approximately 8.7 billion, or 0.6%, were connected in 2012. The firm expects a 25% annualized decrease in price to connect between 2012 and 2020 and a matching 25% annualized increase in connectivity. That means we can expect 50 billion connected things by 2020, with 50% of those connections happening in the final three years of the decade.