My favorite startup in the fast emerging Internet of Things market, London-based Pachube, has been acquired by Woburn, Massachusetts-based LogMeIn. The deal is worth "approximately $15 million in cash," some of it dependent on performance. LogMeIn provides provides cloud-based remote access solutions, such as the remote PC control app Ignition that we wrote about earlier this month. Pachube (pronounced Patch-Bay) is a platform for connecting people and devices to the Internet. The acquisition allows LogMeIn to extend its reach beyond computers, smartphones and tablets to "potentially all Internet-connectable devices." For Pachube, it allows them to scale up its operations.
I'm rather surprised that Pachube sold itself so early. Since its founding in 2008, Pachube has aimed to be the leading open development platform for the Internet of Things - and it appeared to be building that out quite nicely. So why didn't it continue to ramp up independently, potentially becoming a much more valuable platform in a few years?
The Internet of Things, when real world objects are connected to the Internet, is a trend that we've been actively tracking since early 2009. So far a lot of big technology infrastructure and solutions companies have gotten behind the trend, for the simple reason that they see a huge market opportunity. As more and more 'things' go on the Net, it creates more demand for network infrastructure like sensors and routers. Enter the likes of Cisco and Verizon Wireless. Likewise, more technology solutions will be developed to upload and manage data from real world objects. Enter the likes of IBM and HP.
Cisco has designed an infographic that offers a simple example of how Internet of Things will affect you in your everyday life. It also states that by 2020, there will be 50 billion 'things' connected to the Internet - everything from your body, car, alarm clock and even cows.
Designer consumer electronics company Jawbone announced this week a new product called UP, a wristband built using vibration and motion sensors. UP will track data about your eating, sleeping and activity patterns. The main point of interaction with that data will be a smartphone app, on iPhone or Android.
Health is one of the big emerging markets for the Internet of Things (IoT -- when everyday things are connected to the Internet). While it may be a stretch to call people 'things,' there is a lot of benefit to be had in connecting the human body to the Web. Sensors, tiny computer chips that connect to the Internet, are the driver for much of the innovation happening around IoT. If this product by Jawbone takes off, it could join the smartphone and iPod as popular tech accessories that people carry around with them.
During my recent visit to Seattle I visited the Bellevue offices of Verizon Wireless, the largest mobile network and wireless phone provider in the U.S., to talk about the Internet of Things. There I met with Bobby Morrison, president of the Pacific Northwest region. The term that Verizon Wireless uses is M2M, machine-to-machine, which means connecting objects together. It is both a subset of the Internet of Things and (in the case where the Internet isn't used) a separate technology. Either way, M2M is big business for Verizon Wireless and other operators like AT&T, Sprint and Vodafone.
Today the Web, including the rapidly growing mobile Web, is all about connecting people together. But the market for connecting things will likely be much larger. Morrison told me that Verizon Wireless has already seen significant growth in M2M; and it's still in the very early phase. In this post we explore what Verizon Wireless is working on in the increasingly important field of M2M - and ask whether it's compelling or maybe just a bit too creepy...
It seemed inevitable that geeks were going to do some geeky magic with Google voice search for the desktop and in less than two weeks after the technology was launched at Google's big search event mid-June - the geekery has begun. A New York City developer lab called Breakfast has released an open source project called Verbalizer that anyone can use to as a microphone for performing Google voice searches while standing in a room away from your computer.
Breakfast says that, out of the box, touching any spot on the Verbalizer device will trigger a Google voice search from up to 10 meters away. So, imagine a computer monitor hanging on a wall in your living room. A Verbalizer could be placed by the door so that when you walk into a room, you can ask it to search for anything on the Internet, without sitting down at a keyboard.
China's inland and maritime rivers and canals are now part of the Internet of Things. The Chinese maritime authority has outfitted cargo and passenger ships with RFID chips and has placed RFID readers at strategic locations.
Now, keeping track of the identify of ships, their speed and what they carry is automated, at least for a segment of the populous country's water traffic. Almost all waterways Grade IV and higher have been equipped, according to the People's Daily.
Back in the salad days of ecommerce, I worked for a website that sold cars. Sounds a little odd but it worked, though not well enough to best its competitors, one of whom absorbed it. As the only marcom guy there, I was approached often for the inevitable side-projects my co-workers were launching. One gentleman was leaving in order to start his own company and wanted to hire me to edit his web copy. To this day, I am proud that I was able to master my expression as I looked over his draft. His company was an online dry-cleaning service. Go ahead and re-read that last sentence. It was the dumbest idea I had ever heard and it remains my hallmark for dumb ideas to this day.
Now we are in a new era, that of the Social Web. But just as we take our positive qualities with us through time - intellect, compassion, inventiveness - we also take our dumbness. Today I came across two ideas - one a process, the other a product - that shot me back in time to the moment I first read about online dry-cleaning. Both, horribly enough, are food-related; and both are profoundly dumb.
Photo by Ed Schipul
Machine to machine (M2M) communication, from automobile monitoring systems to card-swiping dongles to Web-connected home appliances, something many people have been excited about for years, is finally hitting mainstream markets in a big way. But connected devices could be surpassed in importance by passive tracking of connected objects, due to cost and scaling constraints.
Mark Roberti, founding editor of the publication RFID Journal, writes in an editorial this month that while M2M communication has great potential, the "real value" for sensor technology lies in machine-to-object communication. The costs associated with requiring machine devices to actively transmit data about their status back to another machine (power, broadcast, etc.) will likely limit the deployment of that type of communication to contexts where fluctuations in data are extremely valuable in-and-of themselves. Using low-cost transponders to passively monitor changes in the status of objects will become far more common and important, Roberti argues.
Can 'things' be social? That's been one of the most contentious questions around the Internet of Things (when real world objects are connected to the Internet). Several startups have tried to do this, including StickyBits, TalesofThings and Itizen. I've been skeptical of these efforts in the past, but a new product called ThingLink is taking a slightly different tack - and they may just be onto something.
ThingLink allows you to tag and link things in images. For example: tagging a chair inside an image, giving some information about its design, and linking the chair to the store that sold it. ThingLink calls this an "interactive hotspot." While the concept of tagging things in photos isn't new - Facebook, Flickr and others have been doing this for some time now - ThingLink's tagging is richer and offers a lot more information and linking possibilities.
Bonnaroo, one of the music festivals that have helped to move rock music from the club to the Garden of Earthly Delights, has announced it will be using RFID chips in the entrance wristbands to prevent counterfeiting.
Like all RFID tech, it requires readers to scan. Those readers will be at all entrance points to the festival. If a band lacks a working RFID chip, the wearer will not be allowed in. The festival is also allowing festival-goers to use the bracelet for a lot more, however.
Updated after the jump.
