Android@Home is a new Google framework, announced today, that will allow you to control everything in your home from an Android device. It's an exciting development from Google, which up till now has been on the periphery of the Internet of Things - the fast-evolving trend where real world objects are connected to the Internet.
Microsoft has been active in Internet of Things, with its various 'smart home' initiatives over the years along with more recent success with its Kinect sensor system. IBM, Cisco and HP all have sensor development and service platforms. But Google has been oddly absent from this activity. That all changed today, when Android@Home was showcased at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.
Microsoft's motion sensing technology for Xbox, Kinect, has experienced rapid take-up and interest. Last week Microsoft announced a non-commercial Kinect software development kit for Windows, given widespread interest in using the technology outside of the Xbox. But an open source community had already sprung up in November, to enable non-gaming Kinect projects. OpenKinect is working on "free, open source libraries that will enable the Kinect to be used with Windows, Linux, and Mac." Below we check out some of the latest projects developed using Kinect.
Today at the Microsoft Mix event, an annual showcase of its latest web and mobile technologies, Microsoft announced an SDK (software development kit) for its motion-controlled gaming system Kinect. After launching in November 2010 on the Xbox, Kinect became the fastest selling electronics device ever - eclipsing the iPad in units sold. News of the Kinect SDK for Windows first came out in January and today Microsoft announced that it will be released in spring. The SDK will enable third party software to hook into Kinect. In other words, Kinect becomes a platform.
Nobody can accurately predict what apps will successfully use Kinect technology, but Microsoft showed a glimpse of the possibilities today with a Kinect-controlled armchair. What's most intriguing though is the probability that Kinect will become integrated into Microsoft's Windows OS and lead to the Next Big Thing in web user experience.
Over the weekend there was a hackathon held to promote the Internet of Things (IoT), when real world objects get connected to the Internet. The event was run by London-based IoT platform company Pachube. So what got created at this hackathon and what does it tell us about how the Internet of Things is progressing?
I took a look at a number of the projects that were worked on. In this post I'll highlight three, two from the U.K. and one from NYC. What all 3 projects show is that development around the Internet of Things is still very experimental. Perhaps too experimental. While there was lots of creativity on display, in all honesty I was hoping to see more projects that showed commercial potential. So I have to ask, as an open question at the end of this post: is there enough commercial activity currently happening in IoT?
The executive body of the European Union signed an agreement today titled Privacy and Data Protection Impact Assessment (PIA) Framework for RFID Applications (PDF), intended to safeguard consumer privacy and offer assurances to citizens that RFID [Radio Frequency Identification] and connected devices are safe for industry to develop. The agreement creates a four-step process for assessment of new tracking applications, basically requiring that risks, mitigation strategies and remaining costs in terms of privacy all be articulated explicitly whenever a new system that tracks a previously unconnected object or device is brought to market.
ReadWriteWeb has covered developments in the Internet of Things space for several years, in the belief that sensors and connected devices will join the tidal wave of data produced by online social networks to create a large pool of information resources available for development of new software, services and analysis. Perhaps even more than with social networks, however, tracking of objects and devices will require serious consideration of user, consumer and citizen privacy.
Pioneering Internet of Things startup, Pachube, is running a global hackathon starting on April 8, 2011 at 2pm U.K. time. Internet of Things (IoT) is a term for when real world objects and environments get connected to the Internet. The hackathon runs for 24 hours and will bring together over 100 developers working on IoT apps.
The main hackathon event is in Pachube's home city of London, but there are also events in New York City, Tokyo, Zurich, Eindhoven (Netherlands) and Lancaster (U.K.). Pachube is encouraging "developers, designers, makers, mixers, mashers, tinkerers, philosopher-mechanics and sales engineers" worldwide to meet up and tinker with IoT technologies.
For online radio service Pandora, the car was a logical place to take their web app. At a SXSW Interactive panel on connected cars, Jessica Steel of Pandora noted that radio is already a well established experience inside a car. "50% of all radio listening happens in the car," she said, so it was "a really important strategic destination" to bring Pandora into the vehicle.
This is the fourth post in our series looking at how the user experience (UX) of consuming media has changed with the increasing popularity of devices other than the PC. So far we've looked at music on smartphones, news apps on the iPad and RSS Readers on smartphones. Today we go well outside the traditional PC world, where the Web has only just begun to make inroads: the car.
We've written before about the Quantified Self, the movement to track our own behavior and biology online in order to know where we're at and how well we're taking care of ourselves. This week I learned about what is undoubtedly the most sophisticated self-tracker I've seen yet: Basis. Now available for pre-order ($199), this bundle of sensors in a wrist band includes an Optical Blood Flow Sensor (heart rate), 3D Accelerometer (movement, including sleep patterns), temperature and Galvanic Skin Response (sweat). All in one device. Data captured can be analyzed on the web or on mobile devices.
The company promises a super-simple setup, a watch-like design (and default function), attractive charts and graphs, social sharing, a little pet persona to encourage and inform you and more. There's an API in the works and the company is already beta testing its service with some users. No release date has been announced.
Several years ago, before the Web had become as ever-present as it is now, Wal-Mart was the shining example of a future where inanimate objects communicated, aka the Internet of Things. The company had a plan to implement RFID tags to better optimize its supply chain. The problem? The RFID technology could not be programmed to exchange data.
In the past few years, we've seen the emergence of the application programming interface, or API. APIs have become very popular. It's evident when you look at the directory from Programmable Web, which has 3,000 APIs.
