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IBM's Smarter Planet team has created a great 5 minute video explaining the emerging trend of Internet of Things, an exciting topic ReadWriteWeb has and will continue to cover frequently and in depth . Internet of Things is about, as the video explains, the coming future when there are more "things" on the Internet (sensors especially) than there are people. The result of that will be "a kind of global data field" the video says. "If we can actually begin to see the patterns in the data, then we have a much better chance of getting our arms around this. That's where societies become more efficient, that's where more innovation is sparked." Check out this artistic, succinct, optimistic and inspiring video explaining what could well become a big factor in how the future unfolds. Sponsor This is heavy stuff, clearly aimed to fostering positive and substantial cultural change through technology - by opening up a new plane of options for humanity. Of course there's little critique of this movement in videos like this; that's something we're still exploring but we imagine surveillance is one down side. There's also some risk of paying so much attention to our machines that we lose track of the joy of engaging directly with the world around us . The upside as described in the video is big, though. "When we talk about a smarter planet, you can say that it has two dimensions. One is to be more efficient, be less destructive, to connect different aspects of life which do affect each other in more conscience and deliberate and intelligent ways. But the other is also to generate fundamentally new insights, new activity, new forms of social relations. So you could look at the planet as an information, creation and transmission system, and the universe was hearing its information but we werent. But increasingly now we can, early days, baby steps days, but we can actually begin to hear the planet talking to us." To track this trend across multiple vendors, check out ReadWriteWeb's Internet of Things archive . Photo by Svilen Milev . Discuss
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Internet of Things Explained (Video)
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What if we took the leading sensor-based products currently being developed or already on the market, put them all under one roof, and added a typical American family? Would they just be the techiest family on the block, or would it have a significant impact on their lives? Here are six ways this Internet of Things family can see their lives change. They exercise more, save energy and water, budget better, know where their kids are at any moment, and they'll always have the right lighting for activities in the house. Sponsor Bank Account-based Motivation We
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6 Ways to Better Living: Inside an Internet of Things Home
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Seth Goldstein comes up with a lot of ideas. Some of them work and some of them don't. He was one of the original backers of Del.icio.us (bought by Yahoo), Etherpad (bought by Google) and Bit.ly (huge via Twitter). He was also President of the short-lived Attention Trust and built a browser plug-in that allowed people to track, manage and sell on the Chicago Board of Trade futures in their browsing history and other online attention data. That didn't work out so well, though it was a very interesting idea. Two years ago he raised $10m, built an advertising network called SocialMedia.com and then sold it off a big chunk of it in November . Goldstein's latest idea may be one of his most interesting yet. He's co-founded a company called Stickybits . It's a service that uses vinyl barcode stickers and a mobile scanning app to layer social media content on top of physical objects. Sponsor You scan a Stickybits barcode that you place or find on some thing or some place (perhaps on someone) and you can see all the multimedia that's been associated with that barcode before and add your own. Erick Schonfeld covered Stickybits this morning on TechCrunch and called it a way to unlock "the secret lives of objects." Commenters on that post brought up far more questions than Stickybits has answered so far. Someone is going to nail this, though. I've long fantasized about being able to use my mobile phone while around town to find out the news, demographic and property ownership history of various locations. Stickybits isn't doing anything that ambitious yet; it's mostly just tweets, photos and audio messages. It's hard to know if a temporary sticker from one particular company will be the way forward into a world of places and objects with social histories made easy to unlock. Stickybits is selling packs of 20 attractive vinyl stickers for $10, a steep price if you ask me, but perhaps calculated to maximize the significance of each one and minimize the annoyance of property owners about to get annotated. How that price point and the need to download a free mobile app will impact the spread of the program remains to be seen. Whether the messages attached to the stickers end up looking more like Foursquare, Gowalla, Wikipedia or ChatRoulette is another one of the many questions that come to mind. In a location-aware world, the primary role of the barcode stickers may simply be in letting people know that there is data associated with a particular location, something that other services that let you "tag your world" have struggled with. There will likely be other user experience subtleties, sublime and profane, that users start to notice after a few Stickybits scanning experiences. Expect to find these things stuck around various places in Austin this weekend. Perhaps on cats, dogs, planes, trains, automobiles and street light poles all around the country soon. Will it work? We'd love to hear your thoughts in comments below. Discuss
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Stickybits: Portal to Another Dimension or Graffiti for Nerds?
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Consulting firm McKinsey has just released a report on the Internet of Things , one of ReadWriteWeb's top 5 trends of last year . The report, available for free if you sign up as a member of McKinsey Quarterly, focuses on the "new sensor-driven business models" that Internet of Things brings. McKinsey sees two categories for emerging applications: "information and analysis" and "automation and control." Many of the applications listed are for large companies or specialized industries (for example automobile manufacturers). But consumers should take note too, because there will be a lot more data about us flowing onto the Internet. Sponsor McKinsey defines Internet of Things as "sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects linked through wired and wireless networks, often using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that connects the Internet." In the "information and analysis" category, McKinsey firstly lists tracking behavior . An example is insurance companies installing location sensors in customers' cars, allowing them to base the price of policies on "how a car is driven as well as where it travels." Another example is Tesco's use of sensors to capture shoppers' profile data via membership cards. According to McKinsey, this "can help close purchases by providing additional information or offering discounts at the point of sale." On the B2B side, McKinsey points to companies using sensors to track RFID tags placed on products moving through supply chains. We've written before about IBM's activities in this market. The next information and analysis application is enhanced situational awareness . This is when large numbers of sensors are deployed in infrastructure such as roads and buildings, in order to report on real-time environmental conditions such as weather or temperature. Sensor-driven decision analytics shows how revolutionary sensor technologies could be, without most consumers even realizing it! The report explains that some retailers are presently studying ways to gather and process data from shoppers as they flow through stores. Sensor readings and videos will be able to "note how long they linger at individual displays and record what they ultimately buy," data which McKinsey says "will help to increase revenues by optimizing retail layouts." The second major category for Internet of Things apps in this report is "automation and control." By this McKinsey means "converting the data and analysis collected through the Internet of Things into instructions that feed back through the network to actuators that in turn modify processes." The first class of apps listed under this category is process optimization , for example for chemical production and assembly lines. Next is optimized resource consumption , for example power companies that provide so-called 'smart meters' so that customers can better manage their power expenditure. This is particularly useful for companies that use a lot of power every day, because they can "shift energy-intensive processes and production away from high-priced periods of peak energy demand to low-priced off-peak hours." The third and final automation and control use case is complex autonomous system s, which McKinsey calls "the most demanding use of the Internet of Things" because it involves rapid, real-time sensing of unpredictable conditions. For example the automobile industry is developing systems that can detect imminent collisions and take evasive action. The report ends by saying that the Internet of Things holds great promise, but there are many issues to resolve - including privacy, legal and cost of sensors and actuators. However McKinsey thinks that energy consumption efficiency and process optimization are "good early targets" for businesses using Internet of Things. Overall, this is an informative, useful report for companies who want to get their heads around the potential business opportunities of the Internet of Things. For ReadWriteWeb's ongoing coverage and analysis of this important trend, check out our Internet of Things archive and subscribe to our RSS feed . Discuss
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McKinsey: Get Ready For Sensor-Driven Business Models
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While geolocation based services have been in the forefront of our minds lately, with websites like PleaseRobMe making us second guess announcing our whereabouts, another industry has been quietly ramping up its data collection practices. The Center for Democracy & Technology issued a report yesterday addressing the growing "digital signage" industry, suggesting a number of privacy practices it might adopt. Sponsor For the uninitiated, digital signage is just that - digital advertisements displayed in the real world on a screen. The name, however, does not give away the full capabilities of these devices, as they can also contain RFID scanners, video cameras and processing abilities to do a number of interesting tasks, such as facial recognition. They can be fully Internet-connected, meaning they can not only store data but compare it to online databases to customize ad displays according to any number of criteria, from the iPhone in your pocket to the type of car you are driving. One somewhat eerie scene in Minority Report that the digital signage industry is surely tired of shows the potential of digital signage. Two years ago, this type of technology, which identifies passers-by individually and tailors ads with data it has collected about them, was predicted to be five to 10 years away. We spoke with Harvey Geiger, the author of the CDT's report , and he said that, "for now digital signage does not quite identify people on an individual basis" but that the "CDT argues that the industry will one day routinely identify individuals for the simple reason that it will be profitable to do so." Some companies, Geiger says, are already storing information such as phone numbers and usernames, as it would get from an smartphone. Even if they do not store this information, other data, such as a MAC address, which is a unique number assigned to a piece of hardware, is only a step away from being connected to an individual's unique identity. "While it is encouraging that companies say they are committed to maintaining the anonymity of individuals right now," Geiger wrote in an email, "the technology and infrastructure is not yet poised for widespread individual identification... so the pressure to identify individuals will come." According to a blog post on the CDT website, this report includes "a set of recommendations for safeguarding privacy as the DOOH industry increasingly adopts identification and tracking technologies, such as facial recognition, mobile marketing, social networking, RFID tracking and license plate scanners." "Right now, however, the more worrying trend is with transparency," wrote Geiger. He says that, while some "Digital Out Of Home" companies offer privacy policies on the Internet, many others do not have anything online nor at the location of the digital signage itself. "Technology vendors are the most likely to have privacy policies up on the Web - but how are consumers in a department store supposed to know who the technology vendor for a particular sign is?" Geiger asks. The report does not call for an end to digital signage. Instead, Geiger says that the CDT feels that "the industry must weave transparency, consumer privacy and security controls into its business model." "Unless the industry adopts strong self-regulatory guidelines, it is likely to face consumer backlash and reactive government regulation that may stifle innovation," Geiger writes in his blog post. "It will only take a few bad apples that flout consumer privacy expectations to spoil the image of the whole industry." The digital signage industry may be tired of the scene in Minority Report, where holograms and digital signs address Tom Cruise's character by name, but that's because it's a future we hope to never live in. If we wanted everyone to know exactly who we were everywhere we went, then we'd all be wearing name tags and t-shirts with our CV screen printed on them. But we don't, because despite the rather public age of the Internet we've entered, we still like to entertain even the smallest semblance of privacy. We hope that the CDT's recommendations do something to keep these technologies useful, but in check. For more information on what the Center for Democracy & Technology is doing to ensure our privacy in this realm, read Harley Geiger's blog post on his experience at last week's Digital Signage Expo 2010 . Discuss
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Ads with Eyes: Keeping Digital Signage in Check
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