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To most people, cattle rustling is a crime that happens only in old movies. But to cattlemen and ranchers in the United States, it is has always been part of real life. With an enduring economic recession, and cattle going for about $1,000 a head, rustling has experienced a renaissance. From Arkansas to Missouri to Oklahoma to Oregon , rustling is on the increase and the criminals involved are rarely caught. Brands can be manipulated and back roads are poorly patrolled by law enforcement. One possible deterrent is tagging. Sponsor Stealing cattle is not like shoving a handful of gold coins in your pocket. But knowledgeable thieves can put together a horse, dog and trailer and walk away with $10,000 or more at a time. Overtaxed local law enforcement, whose ranks have all too often been depleted by decreases in the taxes that fund them, can only do so much. Technology can do more. But only if it is used, and it will only be used if it is accepted by the men and women who are losing the cattle. Tagging and Tracking A vet can inject an RFID, or radio frequency identification, tag about the size of a grain of rice into an animal in seconds. When the tagged cow is shipped out, an inspector can use a hand-held scanner to retrieve the cow's information. If the registered owner and the brand diverge, the inspector knows something is wrong. Not only could tracking technology help against theft, but it could also streamline inventory control for ranchers, and restrict health-related recalls to meat that is likely to have been infected. But adoption of technology in ranching is slow. Cattle have not been turned into nodes in an information network for a reason. That reason is not technical. The technology is there and it works. It's behavioral, both on the federal side and on the ranchers'. Federal Indifference and Rancher's Suspicions In order to be of any real use, the information attached to a tag must be uploaded to some kind of central database. There is no such database nor any plans to create one. Even when the U.S. government was flush, it was not a priority. The more rural and the more Western a concern is, the less importance it has to those who control the disbursement of federal funds. Ranchers are also highly suspicious of centralized federal authority over their business. Federal directives that saved a lot of land for future generations also wound up limiting feeding areas for livestock. Sometimes that's been good, but many times it has turned a remote location that only ever saw cowboys into a small city, with concrete, powerlines and plumbing to serve the city-bred visitors. There have been many changes in the livestock industry in the preceding decades. To many of the remaining independent ranchers, the ones most likely to get rustled, those changes have been bad ones. Factory-raised beef defies both the historical spirit of ranching and makes it harder to make a living. Why should they agree to use a new technology, something that stinks of big ag? Entrepreneurs are the Ranchers of Tech I believe the key to any future adoption of tag-based livestock control, the kind of control that would have rustlers where they belong - running in place at the end of a spar - will require the participation of independent entrepreneurs and developers. A rancher is a lot more likely to trust an indie dev than a government rep, a federal investigator or a salesman from some software chaebol . Perhaps kids that were raised in the sticks and still have an affection for it, who do not want to see this way of life dead and who don't want to see either the rustlers or the agricultural conglomerates determine how we eat, will apply some of their unique technological know-how - and a little of their grandparents' elbow grease to the problem and come up with a way to read, record and retrieve information that ranchers could get behind. Maybe they could create a nation-wide, but decentralized and privately-held national cattle ID database, utilizing cloud computing and available to law enforcement as a tool that the ranchers themselves, and their indie tech partners, hold and control. Anything that doesn't have their brand on it, they won't touch. Amen to that. In the coming week I will be working with Kin Lane , a Web application and database programmer, to create a blueprint for the implementation of just such a system as I advocate here. We will post the blueprint in ReadWriteWeb next Friday. Further steps may include a survey of ranchers, to ascertain whether our plan would be accepted by the people it is designed for, and a case study using a set of half a dozen small ranches in southeastern Oregon. Discuss
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As Cattle Rustling Increases, So Does the Need for RFID
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I first began writing regularly about the Internet of Things about a year ago. Now it's bubbling up in the mainstream press and we're also beginning to see web apps that are attempting to reach, if not quite a mainstream audience yet, then certainly the iPhone and Android-toting geek community. We've moved beyond the cutesy Internet-connected bunny rabbits and we're now onto barcodes to stick on everyday objects . A new web service called tales of things just launched, which aims to attach stories to objects. It follows on from a similar service that got a good amount of press at SXSW this year, StickyBits . Both services want to get people to 'tag' real world objects, by sticking barcodes onto them and adding information about the object onto the Web (often via mobile phone). The idea is that this will make the objects 'social.' However, I think this is doomed to fail and here's why... Sponsor Tales of things asks on its homepage: "Wouldn't it be great to link any object directly to a 'video memory' or an article of text describing its history or background? Tales of Things allows just that with a quick and easy way to link any media to any object via small printable tags known as QR codes." Both Tales of Things and StickyBits are going to struggle to get mainstream adoption. And it's not because people just won't stick barcodes onto objects - although that is a short-term pain point that both of these companies will likely fail to overcome. No, they won't get mainstream adoption simply because the Internet of Things isn't going to be just another social network platform . What's unique about the Internet of Things is that it adds a huge amount of new data to the Web and allows real-world objects to become part of the cloud network. For example, sensors on a busy road communicate with your car to tell you of impending heavy traffic. Or when you walk into a shop, the store messages your phone to tell you that an item you've been looking for is in stock and on special. I met StickyBits founder Seth Goldstein at SXSW and he told me that his company aims to create a "social object network." Trouble is, I just don't think that Internet-connected everyday objects have much social value. Say I tag a book that I bought and attach the following 'memory' to it: "I read this book in the summer of 2010, it was a great read. I'd give it a 4/5." Even if I wrote a much more in-depth review, what value does that have on a single object? If I uploaded that review to Amazon.com, then it's put into context and gets aggregated with other reviews to form ratings and other 'wisdom of the crowd' intelligence. But on the object itself - my copy of the book - the review has limited value. If a friend of mine happened to scan my book with their phone, they'd see my review...and then probably head straight to Amazon.com to see what other people thought. Or perhaps check out what their own social network thought, via an app like Glue (a social network based on the media you consume - see our most recent review ). Objects aren't social, they never were and they never will be. The real value of Internet-connected objects is that they can become part of the network, which means they can connect to one another and they add more data to the giant computer we call The Cloud. But social networks aren't going to form around single objects, other than perhaps public ones - like the Eiffel Tower, for example. But then you are just talking about a location, which the likes of FourSquare and BrightKite can take care of. The Internet of Things is about utility, not social networking. Neither Tales of Things nor StickyBits offers much in the way of utility, that we can't already get from sites like Amazon.com or existing social networks. Let me know if you agree, or not! Discuss
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Op-Ed: Objects Aren't Social
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The Internet of Things is the idea of a web of data provided by things like real-world devices and sensors. It's something we've covered in great detail here at ReadWriteWeb because where there is data, there is a platform for services and mashups. When that data is intimately tied to our real lives off-line, that's exciting. The Internet of Things offers a whole new world of opportunities for improved decision making, innovative services and (unfortunately) social surveillance. It's loaded with implications to consider. Whether you've got 5 or 30 minutes to spare, check out the two following videos (one short, one long) that both do a great job of explaining where the Internet of Things is at and why it's so exciting. Sponsor Last week industry thought leader Tim O'Reilly, the man widely credited with popularizing the term Web 2.0, gave an opening keynote talk about the Internet of Things at his organization's MYSQL conference . Some readers here might assume that a MYSQL talk is too technical for them, but this was a speech that anyone could appreciate. We've embedded below two videos. The first is a great 5 minute explanation of the Internet of Things from IBM. The next is O'Reilly's 36 minute keynote. We highly recommend you check both out for a great picture of where the future is headed. Above, from IBM's Smarter Planet . Below, Tim O'Reilly at the O'Reilly MYSQL conference . Of course it's not all peachy keen. As O'Reilly explains at the 18 minute mark, there is a battle over control of all this data the web is being flooded with. "You see increasingly the giants of the internet are trading for their own account, they are building a platform in which all roads lead back to themselves. Now there is a contervailing force for openess, but we have to wary, we have to be aware of that, we have to work for openess in that web." What do you think about the Internet of Things? Caption image from the Internet of Things 2010 Conference coming up in Tokyo this November. Discuss
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Tim O'Reilly Explains the Internet of Things
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You know that a trend is ramping up when big companies begin to namecheck it. It's happening now with the Internet of Things , a term for when real-world objects connect to the Internet. Senior executives from two major U.S. broadband and telecommunications companies - Verizon and AT&T - plus the CTO of the world's biggest network systems provider Cisco, have recently discussed the Internet of Things. As part of a patriotic statement about how the U.S. leads the world in Internet innovation, Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg said today that the "'Internet of Things' will infuse intelligence into all our systems and present us with a whole new way to run a home, an enterprise, a community or an economy." Sponsor Seidenberg said that "in a 4G world, wireless will connect everything" and that "there's really no limit to the number of connections that can be part of the mobile grid: vehicles, appliances, buildings, roads, medical monitors." AT&T have also been making noises about the Internet of Things. At the recent CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, AT&T announced a partnership with a company called American Security Logistics (ASL), to "wirelessly connect a series of location based tracking devices that can be used to help keep tabs on an array of valuables - from people to pets to pallets." The first product will be a cargo shipping tracking and monitoring application. Other products in the pipeline include pet tracking, child safety and Alzheimer's patient monitoring. Both Verizon and AT&T are positioning their wireless networks as key parts of the emerging Internet of Things. Cisco is another company getting in on the trend. At CTIA, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior said that by 2013, the number of devices connected to the Internet will reach 1 trillion - up from 500 million in 2007. According to Warrior, "we're heading into the Internet of Things." Warrior sees high growth in the Internet of Things. "With more machine-to-machine connections and wireless sensors everywhere," she said, "the Internet is no longer just an information superhighway [but] a platform that will transform many industries." These bigco utterings remind me of when the term 'web 2.0' first began to creep into corporate speak, about 2005. It's still early days for the Internet of Things, but prepare yourself to hear a lot more of this new term. ReadWriteWeb has been at the cutting edge of defining and explaining the nascent Internet of Things - see our extensive archives for more information. If you're new to the topic, check out Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Internet of Things and Top 10 Internet of Things Products of 2009 . Discuss
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Verizon, AT&T & Cisco Talk Up Internet of Things
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The world's second Internet of Things Conference is scheduled to take place at the end of November in Tokyo. The deadline for papers was just extended to June 1 - which gave us an idea. Conference planners have put together a list of suggested topics for papers . We took that list and then rounded up our ongoing reporting and analysis for each of the eight topics as a way to help you understand how vast and far reaching IoT will end up being. Sponsor 'Green by Internet of Things / Green of Internet of Things Technology' Our recent list of 6 Ways to Better Living: Inside an Internet of Things Home , looked at the IoT from a domestic standpoint. From handling toxic waste, to watershed management, to building design, to transportation, to the smart energy grid, a whole new green way of thinking is going to be made possible by IoT. 'Future sustainable technologies linking the physical and virtual world' Different industries have have already been able to increase the efficiency of freight shipping by using sensors to tell them the location and condition of their product in real-time. This includes FedEx's SenseAware , which is designed to constantly keep track of the vital signs of all its packages. In future posts we'll be covering IoT-driven growth in the fields of virtual factories, digital cities, agriculture and forest management. 'Novel services and applications to facilitate environmental responsibility' Did you hear about the guy who wired his house up to a Twitter account so that it alerted him whenever an appliance was used? Following that experiment, Matt Morey figured out a way to use iobridge to turn that one-way Twitter alert system into a two-way system that makes it possible to turn appliances on and off via Twitter. These ideas, which may seem novel at first, signal the direction towards the development of whole new industries. 'Emerging Internet of Things business models and process changes' Companies as large as IBM have invested heavily in IoT. It has a website called Smarter Planet , which is dedicated to "smarter solutions," of which they say they've already developed 12,00 hundred. We've also written about ThingD, which is creating a registry of things, as well as REZZ.IT, which is building a business based on the idea that "things have a network and their own audience." 'Communication systems and network architectures for the IoT' Pachube is the IotT business that has earned the most coverage and analysis from us. Pachube is a service that stores and shares real-time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments. MQTT , which stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport, is also noteworthy. It is "a platform-agnostic system which can connect almost any networked object to the wider world." More recently, Google launched an API for PowerMeter , which allows device manufacturers to create PowerMeter-compatible devices. Also worth mention is our article on Arrayent that aims to be the "Cisco of small things" - which is basically middleware for companies wanting to connect their products to the Internet. In particular it's targeting smartphones. 'Experience reports from the introduction and operation of networked things in areas such as healthcare, logistics & transport' IoT is still so new that we have only just begun to see the results of research. But with RFID, for example (which is one of the more mature IoT technologies), we've reported on how there have been challenges that limit predicted growth. There's also still impediment to to the viable use of IofT-like location-based services . 'Emerging applications and interaction paradigms for everyday citizens' From preventing lost luggage , to the latest IoT gadgets , telling the story of what a person's everyday daily life is an integral part of IoT. Most notable is the presentation by Carnegie Mellon professor and ex-imagineer Jesse Schell, who describes how sensors in everything may one day mean the sensor in your toothbrush gives you online gaming points if you brush for the full three minutes. He also envisions sensors that track if you are watching TV commercials and again rewards you with online gaming points. Core to Schell's ideas is the belief that these incentives may seem a bit creepy, but they have potential to help us create a less corrupted, more accountable and ethical world. 'Social impacts and consequences: security, privacy, opportunities and risks' In our What The Internet of Things Means For You series we covered privacy issues related to the use of RFID and barcode readers. The latest reports show how advertisement, RFID and geolocation have combined to raise serious privacy concerns. Additionally, location-based data can be a threat to personal privacy in the context of how the U.S. congress has started to draft location-based privacy protection laws. Are you going to the Tokyo for Internet of Things Conference? What do you hope to learn there? Let us know in the comments, or by emailing tips@readwriteweb.com , what we should be discussing in the months leading up to the event. Discuss
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8 Ways to Better Understand the Internet of Things
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