Here are our picks for the top 10 Internet of Things developments of 2010. On Page 1 of this post we detail 5 large scale developments (3 specific trends and 2 IoT platforms). On Page 2, we select the 5 best consumer products for IoT. These include a product that connects your car to the Internet, an internet-connected shoe and a self-described "Cisco for small things."

HP's CENSE Network

One of the leading IoT projects is being built by HP, in the form of a platform called CeNSE - which stands for "Central Nervous System for the Earth." The goal is to create a worldwide network of sensors, which will create a feedback loop for objects and people. These sensors will measure data such as vibration, rotation, sound, air flow, light, temperature, pressure and much more.

Earlier this year ReadWriteWeb visited HP Labs and spoke to several of their leading scientists. Parthasarathy Ranganathan, a Distinguished Technologist at HP Labs, told us in May that there will soon be millions of sensors working in real-time, with data sampled every second. He said there'll be lots of different applications for this data; including retail, defense, traffic, seismic, oil, wildlife, weather and climate modeling.

Hewlett Packard is at heart a computer hardware and IT services company. It's building this platform because it sees that the coming data explosion will lead to huge demand for more powerful computers and better processing of all that data. Or, in the words of CeNSE lead Peter Hartwell, "one trillion nanoscale sensors and actuators will need the equivalent of 1000 internets: the next huge demand for computing!"

IBM's Smarter Planet

IBM's Smarter Planet campaign is about connecting objects to the Internet and applying intelligence and services on top of that. Like HP, IBM uses the central nervous system analogy. "The planet has grown a central nervous system," it states on the Smarter Planet overview page.

In January of this year, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano gave a speech in London which shed light on Big Blue's sensor platform. He said that IBM had developed 1,200 "smarter solutions" up till that time.

Due to its scale, IBM has the ability to provide sensor systems to support city infrastructures. Palmisano talked about "four cities where IBM has helped deploy congestion management solutions, traffic volume during peak periods has been reduced by up to 18 percent, CO2 emissions from motor vehicles were reduced by up to 14 percent, and public transit use increased by up to 7 percent." Big Blue is also working with organizations in healthcare, banking, power metering, retailing, manufacturers and goods suppliers.

In May IBM announced the free open-sourced Mote Runner Software Developer Kit. It's software that runs sensor-communications devices, like the Crossbow Iris.

Government IoT: China, EU

The Internet of Things was a key strategic concern for both the European Parliament and the Chinese government this year. Our Parliament of Things post covered the EU's resolution to endorse the development of the sector, as long as there is an exhaustive survey of the effects of this technology on "health, privacy and data protection."

In the middle of the year, China announced a plan that will "fix a clear positioning, development goals, timetable and roadmap of the IoT industry." China plans to strengthen policy support of IoT, including financial and taxation measures. This was closely aligned with an IoT conference in China that was impressively covered by Florian Michahelles.

Maturation of RFID, Thanks to DASH7

The amount of electricity it takes to power a trillion nodes, or things, that communicate with the Web is significant. Yet battery life and battery production costs have not declined at the same pace as processing power. RFID is well positioned to address this. Thing Magic's 100 uses of RFID campaign was an an effective awareness raising tool in the second half of 2010.

Even more notable this year was DASH7, a networking technology that uses the ISO/IEC 18000-7 standard for RFID - an open standard for license-free use in 433 MHz wireless bandwidth. This networking system has rapidly advanced. It's used for supply chain tracking by the US Department of Defense, which paid nearly a half-billion dollars for its deployment 2 years ago.

In April, we wrote about the implications of DASH7 in the next generation of cellphones, as well as specific use cases. In December, Google's Nexus S became the first phone that made use of the Dash7 standard. This month we reported that Google is testing this technology in Portland, by giving store fronts Google Places window stickers that you can touch your phone to - which automatically directs your phone browser to the store's website.

Also worth mentioning is Novitaz, makers of Dash7-based smart cards that reside in your wallet and automatically perform many of the location-based tasks we currently manually do on our phones.

The Emergence of the Smart Grid

In 2010 the more practical uses of IoT began to take shape, in particular conserving energy - a.k.a. the Smart Grid. This year we took a tour of an Internet of Things home, where we discovered that half of the software in it was related to home energy conservation.

Also notable was the USNAP alliance, a group of companies including GE and Google which are attempting to standardize the meter-to-device in-home monitoring stage of the smart grid. "This is the equivalent of USB for consumer products," Barry Haaser of the USNAP Alliance said. USNAP is an acronym for Utility Smart Network Access Port and the consortium has been developing its technical specifications for three years.

Consumer products aside, the greatest challenge to building a smart grid is the energy companies themselves - many of whom who are reluctant to invest in unproven technologies. Marshall Kirkpatrick touched on this issue in his Summer post called, Why Smart Grids Could Be Slow to Beat Web 2.0.

Next Page: The best Internet of Things consumer products...

Nike + shoes

Nike+ running shoes are possibly the most well-known example of sensors in a non computing device. The shoes come with a sensor that tracks your run and sends the data to your iPod. It even has its own social network and can automatically tweet and post a status report on Facebook. Later in the year, we also discovered that Nike + can be set up to automatically post to Foursquare.

Nike + showed that the Internet of Things is already part of our everyday life, at least for those people who are motivated to track their running!

AutoBot

While the Nike + shoes have already arrived, a product that is still in private beta impressed us enough this year to also be included in our annual top 10.The winner of the Consumer Electronics Association's i-Stage competition (where I was a judge) was AutoBot. Developed by Louisville, Kentucky company Mavizon Technologies, AutoBot is a car appliance that allows you to control aspects of your car with your smart phone. It also connects to the Web and offers integration with services like online mapping and instant messaging.

The AutoBot device plugs into the OBD-II connector in your car. It then syncs to a web service, accessible via a smart phone app or a web browser. Features include locking and unlocking doors, controlling window settings, locating your car if you forget where you parked or it gets stolen, doing diagnostic checks on your car, and messaging friends and family when the driver has been in an accident.

The appliance will become available next year, but already it's a great example of smartly connecting an object millions of people use every day (a car) to the Internet.

Pachube

Pachube (pronounced "PATCH-bay") was on our Top 10 list last year and this open IoT platform continued to progress in 2010. Pachube lets you tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments both physical and virtual. The goal is for it to become a platform that is responsive to and influences your environment - for example your home.

A glimpse of what products may look like built on an Internet of Things platform is the partnership Pachube announced in June this year. It's with Current Cost, a producer of real-time energy monitors. Current Cost is using Pachube's Internet of Things platform for the Bridge, an ethernet device that connects Current Cost electricity monitors to the Internet. Pachube is being used for data management on the Bridge, enabling the device to deliver tracking, notifications, comparison tools and more.

Arduino

In 2010 the clear leader in capturing the IoT hobbyist's imagination was Arduino. In recent months the company's blog feed has seen a steady increase in posts about interesting things people are doing with their Arduinos.

Not only is it the first company to have a popular documentary with a trailer that earned 75,000 views in one day, but they are also designing with an eye to the future by educating the next generation of programmers. ReadWriteWeb's Audrey Waters explained what Arduino is in a recent post:

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform with both a hardware and software component. Arduino's hardware is programmed with a language similar to C++, and although it may not be the easiest of entry points for learning programming, there's something about building things that actually move that can be pretty compelling. Projects that use Arduino to introduce children to programming include a modification of Scratch to support simple programming on the Arduino hardware

Arrayent

Arrayent is a new Internet of Things company that came across our radar early this year. It bills itself as the "Cisco of small things." It is basically middleware for companies wanting to connect their products to the Internet. In particular it's targeting smartphones. Arrayent made its first public appearance in January at CES.

Arrayent offers a "turnkey communication system" called the Internet-Connect System, which enables product companies to connect their products to smartphones and computers via the Internet. It counts toy company Mattel and audio/video components supplier Monster Cable among its early customers.

We think Arrayent is a great example of a startup seeing a commercial opportunity in the type of Internet of Things experimentation that Arduino exemplifies. As more and more objects become connected to the Internet, it will need the likes of Arrayent to be enablers.

There you have it, our pick of the top 10 Internet of Things developments or products in 2010. Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Green Home photo by Svilen Milev.

Understanding that kids are excellent innovators, Latitude Research in conjunction with ReadWriteWeb recently conducted a study asking children to ideate concepts for new computer and Web technologies - and the results are in.

While it's not too surprising that kids today think about digital technologies (and the experiences they enable) as a given, the study found that kids desire increasingly immersive content experiences, better integration of digital technology into physical objects, spaces and activities, and more intuitive interfaces - 37% of participants' creations didn't even bother with the traditional keyboard/mouse interface.

What's more, our participants' ideas weren't just forward-thinking; they were also surprisingly down-to-earth, with only 4% of kids' "future requests" being impossible demands for today's developers (e.g. time-travel, teleportation, etc.).

"We chose to use kids for this study because they're closer to the problem at hand - closer to their core desires," said Jessica Reinis, an analyst at Latitude who headed up the study.

"They're not thinking within the confines of current market offerings or in terms of routine life situations; they're thinking about what they'd like to do right now, without regard to what's possible or what would be popular with other people. Those are questions that we explore more in adult innovation studies like The New Sharing Economy, but kids are able to tap into a more basic creativity that's great for ideating on really broad questions like this."

Kids today have different experiences with technology during a critical learning period than present adults did, which means they also have different understandings about what it can and should do. "Kids will figure out how to use whatever they get in front of, and that will become the framework inside of which they experience, critique, and create everything else," said Geoff Barnes, Director of User Experience at Elliance. "I think that kids' visions into what the future of technology will look like are highly collaborative with present-day, actual paradigm shifts, like the interaction paradigm shift of multi-touch."

Study Background

The study was comprised of 126 children, aged 12 and under, from across the globe. Here's what we asked them:

"What would be really interesting or fun to do on your computer or the Internet that your computer can't do right now? Please draw a picture of what this activity looks like."

Parents told us some basic facts about their child's Internet usage and technology exposure, along with household demographic information, and submitted their child's drawing.

Screenshot of participant drawings in a Web application (part of Latitude's Lumière Suite) that allows users to contribute and interact with visual input in a behavioral environment.

Latitude coded each of these images (future technology ideas) for common themes, then analyzed them in aggregate. Some examples of broad themes included: interest area, interface characteristics, degree of interactivity, physical-digital convergence, user's desired end-goal, social connectivity, etc.

Next page: "I'd like it if my computer could convert images or food and make them real."

Study Findings: Digitize the Offline World

Thirty eight percent of children's innovations called for more immersive content experiences than are commonly available now, with features like 3D effects (10% of all submissions incorporated 3D) or seamless integration of digital technology into the physical world. In many cases, devices could create physical objects such as food or facilitate physical activities such as playing a sport.

"I'd like it if my computer could convert images or food and make them real." - Joanna, Age 10

These requests don't seem too radical if you've ever encountered MIT's SixthSense technology, which transposes digital information onto everyday, physical surroundings, and relies on more instinctive, gestural interactions:

For kids today, true synchrony between physical and digital worlds is becoming an expectation rather than a novelty. And the demand for it is expanding beyond the realm of visual media.

"Currently, we have the 'iGeneration' understanding of device as simply an extension of oneself - and we still think that's pretty novel," said Reinis. "But kids are showing us that the next step will be exactly the converse of that. It'll be a shift from smartphones that can go anywhere to The Internet of Things which is everywhere."

There may be openings to apply mobile RFID/sensors, or even something like Stickybits (which allow people to attach digital content to real-world objects) to register and socialize offline activities through smarter device interactions. HopeLab is currently developing gDitty, a wearable device for kids that records and converts physical activity to points which can be redeemed for "virtual goods and real-world rewards, including customizable avatars, gift cards, even the opportunity to make a donation to a cause."

Regardless of physical world integration, the vast majority of participants, 83%, desired technologies capable of highly intuitive interaction. They requested responsive virtual environments, 3D games, "homework help" computers, telepathy as a form of device input (4% of all submissions), etc.

"Virtual mind-reading games" - Mark, Age 12

Future Request: Content Interaction (As Opposed to Device Interaction)

Kids are already thinking about 3D effects for in-home gaming and media viewing, an offering which is just beginning to hit the market as 3D-enabled TVs. This anticipation of the near-future suggests that visually immersive features alone won't satisfy any audience for long. "We've been investigating a number of emergent media trends and this big idea always comes through; essentially, that users are, more and more, desiring additional ways and means to interact with content - to interact with it and to personalize it," said Reinis, who has worked on 3D studies recently and specializes in interactive advertising research at Latitude.

Kids today approach technology with matter-of-course acceptance - and greater expectations. "It took my 7 year-old son, Alex, under 10 seconds to figure out how to turn it on and unlock the iPad's screen, and no time whatsoever to understand that touching icons launched apps. Or that swiping the screen controlled pagination. Or that pivoting the screen revealed different data presentations," wrote Barnes in a recent blog post.

"I'm hard-pressed to envision his generation entering college and enrolling in required courses with names like 'Introduction to Computing,' to learn about file systems, Microsoft Office, the worldwide web, and email. As I watch Alex, in fact, the idea is as nonsensical to me as offering college courses on how to read an arrow. It's become that obvious," he wrote.

So what might next-generation interaction be like? Based on study findings, it seems that, eventually, each user will crave the ability to architect his or her own content experience: to step into it, to interact with characters, to add and remove plot constraints - ultimately, to alter the course of future events. It would mean the difference between interacting peripherally with a technology, and interacting with the actual story being told through the device.

Download a PDF of the study summary. Part two of the results will be published tomorrow, July 8.

*The names of some of the children have been changed to protect the participants' privacy.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how new information and communications technologies can enhance human experiences. Latitude's user-centered research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify concrete opportunities for Web-based innovation. "Children's 'Future Requests' for Computers and the Internet" is one installment of Latitude 42s, an ongoing series of open innovation research studies which Latitude publishes in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and opportunity discovery. For more information on this study and its applications to your business, email Neela Sakaria.

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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.

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 systems, 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.

A new report on airport satisfaction points to opportunities for more sensors. RFID to track interactions between prisoners and guards? It's happening now. And a hospital that will use sensors to alert staff of the location and medical histories of patients in crisis, on a big electronic whiteboard centrally located. Those are our three top stories for today. (Editorial selection assisted by OneSpot.)

IBM's Steve Hamm discusses J.D. Power's newest report on customer satisfaction with airports. "There have been some important technology advances in airports, such as near-ubiquitous wi-fi access and plenty of check-in kiosks, but it seems like two of the biggest headaches could use some more technology help. Those frustrations, of course, are baggage handling and security checkpoints."

I feel an iPhone app or two coming along in the future, don't you?

RFID wristbands used to monitor guard, prisoner interactions
RFID News

RFID News reports on a system to be implemented by an Illinois prison that will interface between "read/write technology" for "real-time, electronic recordkeeping, tracking, and reporting."

Accountability for guards sounds good. Lossless RFID tags in prisons sounds like the end of believable jail-break movies though, doesn't it?

Versus RTLS to Support Ministry of Health Performance Goals at Rouge Valley
rfid-ready

Rfid-ready reports on a Canadian hospital's use of an innovative "Real-time Locating System" to reduce the time patients wait for care, to respond to emergencies and to maintain continuity of care. The hospital was chosen by the Canadian government as one of more than 20 to focus on reducing Emergency Room wait times.

Sounds like something that could bring some sanity to an insane situation - the emergency room.

For a broad overview of this sector, see: Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Internet of Things and 5 Companies Building the Internet of Things.

Now prepare yourself for POGS' return - POGS 2.0, if you will. Except this time around, the chips have been wired for the digital age. And today, the "game" is a social network called FaceChipz instead of a old-fashioned variation on marbles.

FaceChipz is a new social networking site designed just for kids. Intended primarily for the "tween" set who's outgrown children's websites but hasn't quite aged into Facebook yet, FaceChipz merges real-world networking with an online component. After purchasing a starter set of five chips, the child has their parent register an account for them on the FaceChipz website. Then the game begins.

The child registers all their chips online using the unique identification code found on the back of each token. When all the chips have been registered, they can be distributed to friends. In return, the child's friends will hand them their FaceChipz. When the exchange is complete, the child returns to the computer to register the new codes from the chips they've collected. The end result is a social network of friends with a physical counterpart in the real world - a brightly colored collection of FaceChipz that can be toted around just like POGS were decades ago.

Social Networking Training Wheels

Parents will appreciate the fact that the FaceChipz network offers a more secure and private environment for their kids than traditional social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. No strangers can solicit friendship requests here - the child's only online friends are those they've connected with in real life. There isn't even a search mechanism for friends to find each other without first trading chips. While that design decision is obviously meant to keep FaceChipz sales steady, the company claims it has another goal as well: to prepare children for the online world of social networking. Reads the company website, "FaceChipz wants to help kids stay safe, but also enable them to communicate using today's technology platforms...If your kids are savvy enough to make appropriate real world friendships, we believe that those relationships will be suitable and appropriate for the digital network they create."

Other privacy protections are offered too. For example, the code on the back is only valid upon first entry. Afterwards, if a lost chip ended up in a stranger's possession, they couldn't use the code to connect to the child. Also, FaceChipz profiles are designed so kids are only permitted to post a limited amount of information and their email address is not stored. FaceChipz makes sure that none of their site's pages are indexed by search engines. Finally, when the child is ready to graduate to a more adult network, their account can be permanently deleted.

Will FaceChipz Become the New POGS?

All the elements are there that could make FaceChipz a success: collectible tokens, an online element and parent-friendly company ethics. There's another bonus, too: the chips are cheap. A five-pack is just $4.99 at ToysRUs and the one-time site registration fee is only $1.00. If anything, the fee is only there so mom or dad get involved and are made aware of the child's online activities.

However, in this day and age, FaceChipz may be too innocent a portal to attract tweens. On a web filled with insane YouTube videos and the (often disturbing and occasionally pornographic) webcam-hopping service, Chatroulette, will a "your first social network" site even have a chance? Will today's youngest generation take to a modern equivalent of POGS or have they seen too much already? Only time (and sales figures) will tell.

Thanks to Springwise for spotting this.

On the panel were Ulla-Maaria Engeström (Thinglink), Doug Krugman (Personal Commerce), Michael Silverman (ThingD). Dyson began by noting that people have always had identities and there are countless services for that, but things don't have that yet. So, she asked, will there be networks for things?

Engeström said that Thinglink began in 2005 by giving things identities via their product codes, a.k.a. Unique Identifiers. "People and things, they're not too different," said Engeström, "they all connect." Thinglink is in private beta, it currently has 4000 beta users and launches later this Spring.

ThingD is creating a registry of things, according to Esther Dyson. Michael Silverman from ThingD explained that his company is building "a database around all of the things in the world." Things like consumer products, horticulture, even pets.

ThingD also has a platform built on top of the database, which connects people to the things in their lives. What interests you, what you like, own, or want to sell. It's about how people identify themselves with things. Silverman said that the database currently has about 50 million things, maybe "north of 60 million." There are a few thousand early adopter users right now.

Dyson then introduced the company REZZ.IT as "what eBay did for selling, [REZZ.IT does] for renting." Doug Krugman from REZZ.IT explained that "things have a network and their own audience." His company is about managing stuff: scheduling, classifying, content management, pricing, and more. Seeing what other people have, sharing things.

Business Models for Networks of Things

Dyson asked how REZZ.IT makes money off this. He responded that vacation rentals is their biggest market right now. REZZ.IT wants to provide people with the tools to manage those vacation rental assets, plus add a "transactional engine" to them. Other 'things' coming soon to REZZ.IT include apartment rentals, boats, planes.

ThingD's business model is linking people to things. They have signed up product retailers to beta test this.

Thinglink's business models are twofold. Firstly affiliates, for example people purchasing objects in photos. Their second business model is lifestyle brand communities - connecting people who like a company's products, already own them, etc.

Conclusion

Overall, a very interesting discussion about the evolving networks for things. If web 2.0 was largely about social networks for people (which you can certainly argue it was), then the new generation of the web will add things to those networks and create new networks.

Arrayent offers a "turnkey communication system" called the Internet-Connect System, which enables product companies to connect their products to smartphones and computers via the Internet. It counts toy company Mattel and audio/video components supplier Monster Cable among its early customers.

The first was "greener home / home automation suppliers in the z-wave / zigbee camp," who are looking for ways to connect their customers' home LANs to remote diagnosis and repair suppliers.

The second use case Arrayent saw at CES was companies in the home health monitoring space, who were looking for a way to "connect their products to web based applications such as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault or [their] health provider's system."

A big part of Arrayent's marketing pitch is that it is a lower cost alternative to connecting products to the Internet. According to the company, it is "1/3 to 1/10 the cost of alternative (piece part) solutions."

Arrayent hangs its marketing hat on the emerging trend of Internet-connected consumer appliances. As other examples of this trend, Arrayent notes Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iTouch, Nordic Track's iFit and Schlage's home automation product LiNK (mentioned in this August 2009 post).

The company has identified the following applications as potential markets for it to pursue:

• Energy and water monitoring and control from a smartphone or web browser.
• Home control (door locks, home security, window shades, smoke alarms, pipe freeze alarm, flood alarms, power strips, thermostats, appliances.)
• Toys and entertainment devices such as e-book readers, personalized radio, and connected physical toys.
• Home health and presence monitoring that connect patients to doctors and family members.
• Automobile location services, remote control access, and engine monitoring.

Arrayent is an interesting company, because it has correctly identified a gap in the massive consumer products market. According to the company, most consumer product companies "lack Internet-connect expertise." I agree with that assessment and think that Arrayent is positioning itself well to provide that expertise.

Given the potential of Internet of Things to revolutionize consumer products - because a great many more products will become Internet-connected in the coming years - we're picking Arrayent as one to watch.

When you consider that trillions of sensors will be deployed worldwide in the coming decade and the interest in Internet of Things from such high-ranking officials as China's Premier, IBM's use cases so far and its evolving strategy is definitely worth taking note of.

Palmisano noted one of the key points about Internet of Things early in his speech - it puts computational power into "things no one would recognize as computers." Things like "cars, appliances, roadways and rail lines, power grids, clothes." He also mentioned processes and global supply chains, non-sexy markets that have proven to be early commercial successes for the company in Internet of Things. Finally, Palmisano pointed to implementation in "natural systems, such as agriculture and waterways."

He explained that "intelligence" can be gleaned off all of this data, "because we now have the processing power and advanced analytics to make sense of it all."

IBM claims to have developed 1,200 "smarter solutions" so far. Palmisano said that "in four cities where IBM has helped deploy congestion management solutions, traffic volume during peak periods has been reduced by up to 18 percent, CO2 emissions from motor vehicles were reduced by up to 14 percent, and public transit use increased by up to 7 percent." He listed other examples from healthcare, banking, power metering and retailing.

However, Palmisano cautioned that while the "technology may be ready, [...] your culture may not be." He talked about one of IBM's customers, Rosenau Transport in Canada. That company took over two years to implement a new 'smart' trucking system.

Another key thing to note about Internet of Things is the sheer volume of data that will flow through the Internet in the coming years. Palmisano remarked that "we are amassing an unimaginable amount of data in the world." He claimed that in three years time, IP traffic "is expected to total more than half a zettabyte" (which equals a trillion gigabytes).

He also said that "all this data is far more real-time than ever before" - which of course is another trend that ReadWriteWeb has been tracking closely.

Palmisano didn't neglect to mention the "disquieting implications" of the Internet of Things. In particular, privacy and security. However, he didn't give any reassurances on this front - other than to say that IBM is part of several coalitions, such as the Global Intelligent Utility Network Coalition and the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative. He rather blandly added, "they [privacy and security] will require serious consideration and collaborative decision making across all the stakeholders of civil society."

Overall, we continue to be impressed by IBM's commitment to Internet of Things. It is leading the way in technology and implementation. The privacy implications (in particular) will potentially be a roadblock in some areas, together with the continuing difficulties of implementing technology such as RFID. So it will be interesting to see how IBM deals with those two issues over 2010.

When was the last time you heard President Obama talking about Internet of Things? The Chinese Premier has made it a regular part of his speeches and interviews.

Here's an excerpt from an interview Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao did with the Xinhua News Agency at the end of December:

"This concept [of Internet of Things] first came to my mind when I talked with a group of young researchers who returned to China after their overseas studies," Wen said, referring to those he met during his inspection tour to east China's Jiangsu Province in November.

"I learned Internet of Things is a network that can be applied to infrastructure and services. The program will have a rosy prospect," Wen said.

According to Internet of Things, when objects ranging from books to airplanes are equipped with minuscule identifying devices, they can be identified and managed through computer networks.

Internet of Things was one example Premier Wen cited while outlining the country's initiatives to foster new growth areas, especially in emerging strategic industries."

This would be the equivalent of President Obama talking directly about the Internet of Things to the Washington Post or New York Times. It's significant that China is putting such high level emphasis on a set of technologies that many techies in the Western world still consider very early stage.

What then can we expect from China this year in Internet of Things? According to Chinese consulting firm CCID Consulting, in 2010 China will push forward with major policy initiatives. Chinese government departments will introduce "relevant industry support policies to speed up the development of China's Internet of Things industry." At the same time, Chinese provinces, municipalities and industrial parks will release supporting policies. Jiangsu Province and Beijing will be the pacesetters, according to CCID Consulting.

In a follow-up post, we'll explore some practical examples of China's current focus on Internet of Things.

Another key technology in the Internet of Things - where everyday objects are endowed with Internet connectivity - is sensors. In fact we've seen the most activity so far in the Internet of Things from sensor data. So in this post we explore how mobile phones and sensors are mixing; and what to expect in 2010.

Last year we wrote a lot about sensors and discovered that there are two common scenarios for sensors + mobile phones:

1) Everyday objects with sensors pumping out data on things like temperature, noise and activity; the mobile phone reads and analyzes this data.

2) The phone is used as a sensor itself. For example the iPhone has a built-in accelerometer, which is basically a motion detector. This is used for game control and also for re-sizing your iPhone display from portrait to landscape. The iPhone also has a microphone (which can be used as a noise sensor), a proximity sensor, and an ambient light sensor.

iPhone as Sensor

A good example of scenario 2 is WideNoise, an iPhone application that samples decibel noise levels and displays the data on an interactive map. WideNoise is essentially a sound sensor, using the iPhone's microphone.

You can take a sound reading on WideNoise and, if you so desire, share that with the community. I must admit that I haven't found too much practical use for this app yet. However one of the use cases cited is checking it when house-hunting, to assess the average noise levels of the neighborhood. It's one of those apps that will become more useful the more data is added to it by the community - but we all know that's a hard thing to achieve for a young startup.

Mobile Phones Reading Sensor Data

Sensors are rapidly growing as a source of data on the Web. A corollary is that sensor networks are an enormous opportunity for some of the big tech companies. In November we wrote about HP's CeNSE project, which aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth." CeNSE is a research and development program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of what HP calls "tiny, cheap, tough and exquisitely sensitive detectors."

According to HP Labs, CeNSE sensors will enable real-time data collection, analysis and better decision making. And what will be a key tool for doing all of that? You guessed it, the mobile phone. Imagine for example getting a real-time update of traffic conditions on your mobile phone, via sensors on a major stretch of highway.

Those are the two main ways that sensors and mobile phones are mixing currently. Let us know in the comments if you have a favorite mobile phone app that outputs or inputs sensor data. Also please share other use cases.

Image credits: seizethedave; raneko

Internet of Things is when everyday objects become connected to the Internet, via technologies such as RFID tags, sensors and barcodes. One trend we saw expanding in 2008-09 was mobile phones being deployed as readers for barcodes.

The Technology

Barcodes are similar to RFID tags, in that they both hold data. RFID tags are generally more functional and flexible than barcodes. Also RFID tags can be read/write, whereas barcodes cannot. However the big advantage for barcodes is that they're cheaper, therefore we're more likely to see scanning as a consumer activity ramp up in the U.S. via barcodes.

The most popular form of 2D barcode is the QR Code (the QR stands for "Quick Response"), which became popular in Japan and is now gaining traction in the U.S. and other markets.

The Products

In a series of posts written over September 2008, Sarah Perez analyzed the then burgeoning "scannable world." As Sarah explained, barcode scanning is not a new technology on the Web. One of the first examples was :CueCat, a cat-shaped barcode reader from the late 1990s. It linked a user to a website by scanning a barcode in an article or other printed matter. CueCat never took off because it required a separate piece of hardware, but now in 2010 smartphones are the hardware.

There's also no shortage of software circa 2010, such as ScanLife and the NeoReader app described in Part 2 of Sarah's Scannable World series. Other barcode reading apps are listed in Part 3 of that series.

There are a variety of use cases for barcodes on the Web. They include Semapedia.org (a non-profit project that aims to augment the physical world with Wikipedia data), QRContact (contact management via barcodes), and barcode wearables such as p8tch ("Think of it as a TinyURL you can wear"). But none of these is likely to become widely used in the mainstream, at least in the near future.

What Will be The Tipping Point?

In Japan, barcode scanning is already a popular activity thanks to the culture of using mobile phones for just about everything. In the U.S., where the Mobile Web took longer to ramp up, barcodes are yet to catch on. However there's one market where barcode scanning could become a mainstream activity in the U.S. and other countries. No, not magazine publishing - although there are valid advertising use cases there. We're talking about scanning retail products using your mobile phone.

By the end of 2009, a lot of barcode scanning apps had gained popularity in the iPhone and Android, in particular. In November we listed our picks for scanning and other mobile shopping apps to test over Black Friday.

There is no clear winner yet in the shopping barcodes market, but here are some applications you may want to try:

• RedLaser (iPhone app getting rave reviews)
• ShopSavvy (popular on Android)
• The Amazon Mobile app; see also SnapTell, owned by Amazon
• StoreXperience
• CardStar
• pic2shop
• Point Inside (good review on CNET)
• CompareEverywhere (Android)
• ZXing Barcode Reader (Android)

Thanks to followers of @rww on Twitter, who suggested some of those.

Will Consumers Adopt Barcode Scanning?

As well as adoption by retailers, another big question is: will consumers want to interact with real world products using their mobile phones? I suspect they will, once they begin to see compelling reasons for doing so - which will probably involve getting the best deals and being able to do advanced shopping comparison very easily.

Finally, it's worth noting that Google is active in barcodes. Google's Favorite Places program allows local businesses to put a sticker on their products which features Google's logo, a scannable barcode and a message reading "We're a favorite place on Google."

Barcode scanning and its applications will grow during 2010, meaning more and more real world data will be connected to the Internet and accessed on your mobile phone. There are many apps trying to entice consumers to wave their mobile phone in front of products, so let us know your favorites in the comments.

Image credits: clevercupcakes; Stan; ScanLife

We've now compiled the main points into a single presentation, available on Slideshare and embedded below. You can view the presentation in full screen by clicking the "full" button at the bottom of the presentation. You can also download the presentation as a Powerpoint file. All of the links in the presentation are clickable, should you wish to explore a certain topic more.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

1. Structured Data
2. The Real-Time Web
3. Personalization
4. Mobile Web & Augmented Reality
5. Internet of Things

In this post we'll see how companies as big as IBM and as small as Pachube are building up this new world of Internet data and services.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

What is The Internet of Things?

The Internet of Things is a network of Internet-enabled objects, together with web services that interact with these objects. Underlying the Internet of Things are technologies such as RFID (radio frequency identification), sensors, and smartphones.

The Internet fridge is probably the most oft-quoted example of what the Internet of Things will enable. Imagine a refrigerator that monitors the food inside it and notifies you when you're low on milk. It also perhaps monitors all of the best food websites, gathering recipes for your dinners and adding the ingredients automatically to your shopping list. This fridge knows what kinds of foods you like to eat, based on the ratings you have given to your dinners. Indeed the fridge helps you take care of your health, because it knows which foods are good for you.

However, we're not quite at that level of sophistication yet in the Internet of Things. As we discovered in our Internet Fridges State of the Market in July, current Internet fridges are more about entertainment than utility.

IBM and The Internet of Things

One of the leading big companies in Internet of Things is IBM, which offers a range of RFID and sensor technology solutions. IBM has been busy working with various manufacturers and goods suppliers in recent months, to introduce those solutions to the world.

For example IBM announced a deal at the end of June with Danish transportation company Container Centralen. By February 2010, Container Centralen undertakes to use IBM sensor technology "to allow participants in the horticultural supply chain to track the progress of shipments as they move from growers to wholesalers and retailers across 40 countries in Europe." Specifically this refers to transportation of things like flowers and pot plants, which are very sensitive to the environment they travel in. Having sensors as part of the entire travel chain will allow participants to monitor conditions and climate during travel. Essentially it makes the travel process very transparent.

Pachube: Building a Platform for Internet-Enabled Environments

IBM is a leading bigco active in the Internet of Things. At the other end of the spectrum is a small UK startup which has impressed us a lot this year: Pachube. It was one of 5 Internet of Things services that we profiled in February and we followed up with an in-depth look at the service in May.

Pachube, (pronounced "PATCH-bay") lets you tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments both physical and virtual. In a blog post by Tish Shute, Pachube founder Usman Haque explained that Pachube is about "environments" moreso than "sensors." In other words, Pachube aims to be responsive to and influence your environment - for example your home.

Conclusion

What's the point of all this new object data from the Internet of Things? As well as the new types of functionalities it will enable, such as health monitoring by Internet fridges, the sheer amount of new data about an object should lead to better quality goods and better decision-making by consumers. For example when you buy a loaf of bread from the grocery store, it will have its own RFID tag - which theoretically can tell you when it was produced, when it was packaged, how long it traveled to get to the store, whether the temperature during its travel was optimal, the pricing history of the product, what the precise ingredients are and associated health benefits (or dangers), and much more information.

That ends our look at the 5 biggest trends of the Web in 2009. First thing next week we will post a round-up, along with a downloadable presentation.

ReadWriteWeb's Top 5 Web Trends of 2009:

1. Structured Data
2. The Real-Time Web
3. Personalization
4. Mobile Web & Augmented Reality
5. Internet of Things

Underlying the Internet of Things are technologies such as RFID (radio frequency identification), sensors and smartphones. Now let's look at the 10 products that stood out this year.

Pachube

A small UK startup particularly impressed us this year: Pachube. Pronounced "PATCH-bay," Pachube lets you tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments both physical and virtual. According to founder Usman Haque, Pachube is about "environments" more so than "sensors." In other words, Pachube aims to be responsive to and influence your environment, for example your home.

For more on this innovative company, see ReadWriteWeb's three-part analysis of Pachube:

1. Pachube Adds Real-Time Notifications - More Power to The Internet of Things
2. Applications From The Internet of Things - An Analysis of Pachube
3. Business Models of The Internet of Things - An Analysis of Pachube's Open Source Platform

IBM's sensor solutions

One of the leading big companies in the Internet of Things is IBM, which offers a range of RFID and sensor technology solutions. IBM has been busy working with various manufacturers and goods suppliers this year to introduce those solutions to the world. For example, IBM announced a deal at the end of June with Danish transportation company Container Centralen. By February 2010, Container Centralen will begin using IBM sensor technology to enable companies in the horticultural supply chain to track the progress of shipments as they move from growers to wholesalers and retailers across Europe. It makes the travel process very transparent and data centric.

Arduino

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform made up of open source hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. For an example of the type of internet-connected object you can build with Arduino, check out this presentation where the author configured a child's toy ray gun to react when anyone posted the #barcampliverpool hash tag on Twitter.

Fedex SenseAware

International courier giant Fedex released a new tracking device and web service for packages in December. Called SenseAware, it keeps tabs on the temperature, location and other vital signs of a package - including when it's opened and whether it was tampered with along the way. Fedex is running a trial period of about a year with 50 health care and life science companies, for tracking delivery of surgery kits, medical equipment - and even live organs.

HP CeNSE

HP Labs has joined the race to build an infrastructure for the Internet of Things. The giant computing and IT services company recently announced a project that aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth" (CeNSE). It's a research and development program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of "tiny, cheap, tough and exquisitely sensitive detectors." The technology behind this is based on nano-sensing research done by HP Labs. The sensors are similar to RFID chips, but in this case they are tiny accelerometers which detect motion and vibrations.

Next page: Top Internet of Things Products 6-10

Japan's Suica Card and Hong Kong's Octopus Card

Earlier this year we looked at three of the world's leading RFID-powered Smart Cards: Japan's cutting edge Suica Card, London's Oyster Card and Hong Kong's long-running Octopus Card. In Japan and Hong Kong, the cards (and other devices, such as phones and watches) may be used to purchase goods from selected shops.

It's more pervasive in Hong Kong, where the Octopus can be used at more than 1,000 merchants. Furthermore, in Hong Kong the card can be used as an access device for places like apartment buildings and schools.

Mir:ror

Mir:ror is a device from French company Violet that detects the objects you show it and gives them powers. As you wave a device over the USB-attached mirror, you can trigger applications and multimedia content automatically. The "magic" mirror isn't actually sensing the object itself, but is reacting to an RFID tag placed on the object which then tells your computer what to do.

Those tags are embedded in the company's Ztamps, colorful RFID stamps that you stick on the objects you want to connect. They also work with the company's other more well-known internet-connected object: the Nabaztag, an adorable rabbit that can deliver anything from ambient information through lights and sounds to verbal information - like when he reads your email or RSS feeds to you.

Unfortunately, in August Violet filed for bankruptcy. However, in October it was saved by videogame publisher Mindscape.

WideNoise

The iPhone is a fertile ground for Internet of Things, as a product called WideNoise shows. WideNoise is an iPhone application that samples decibel noise levels, displaying them on an interactive map.

With the app you can take a sound reading, and if you so wish share that with the WideNoise community. You can check the average sound level of the area around you, which might be handy if you're house-hunting or simply looking for a quiet spot to relax in.

ioBridge

ioBridge is a web platform for remote control and monitoring, which bills itself (with tongue in cheek) as "one step closer to Skynet." It's a company based in Gainesville, Florida, born because the founders saw "a demand for interfacing real world devices with the web." Their first beta release was in November 2008 and since then the company has been busy building out its product line and watching what developers like Matt Morey do with them.

Morey, who by day is an engineer for Texas Instruments, has developed a two-way, home automation application using Twitter and ioBridge.

Citysense

Sense Networks is a company aiming to index the real world "using real-time and historical location data for predictive analytics across multiple industries." It has a platform called Macrosense that "receives streaming location data in real-time, analyzes and processes the data in the context of billions of historical data points, and stores it in a way that can be easily queried to better understand aggregate human activity."

The company has so far built one consumer product on top of this platform: Citysense, an iPhone and Blackberry app that allows people in San Francisco to see the most-happening nightlife in real time. Citysense currently accesses cell-phone and taxi GPS data from about four million GPS sensors, to see where the local hot spots are. It then links to Yelp and Google to show what venues are operating at popular locations.

Those are our picks for the top 10 Internet of Things applications of 2009. Let us know your thoughts.

We spoke with FedEx head of innovation, Mark Hamm, about SenseAware and how Fedex is tapping into the emerging trend called Internet of Things.

Fedex's Mark Hamm described the SenseAware device as a "quad-band world phone." As well as the device, there is a browser-based collaboration platform allowing businesses to actively track the progress of a package. Users can set up triggers, alerts and notices - for example using geo sensors to alert others when a package arrives at a destination. Users can set these triggers and decide who they go to. Essentially, the SenseAware events trigger business processes for the users.

For the web service, businesses pay a single monthly fee of $120 - for that they get the devices and the browser-based web service. Hamm noted that Fedex worked with the FAA to get permission to use the product on their freight planes; the only such device to have permission from the FAA, he told us. Fedex assembled components for SenseAware from a collection of partners, using Fedex's design specifications.

Real-Time Decisions Based on Sensor Data

Hamm said that SenseAware will enable companies to make real-time decisions much more easily. For example if a perishable goods package sets off on a 2 day journey, but the sensor data shows that the shelf life suddenly decreases - then the package can be instantly diverted to another location, where the product can still be used rather than becoming useless if it sticks to original delivery schedule.

The initial trial period targets life science and medical companies (for example biotech firms), where things like security and knowing the vital signs of a package are very important. Also Hamm highlighted that these companies can collaborate on the sensor data, with precise data and records of delivery.

The trial with the life sciences companies is designed to help Fedex make the "last 20%" of the product more efficient. After about a year of this trial, Fedex will then launch the product globally, as a generally available platform. Hamm expects it will be used by any company or organization dealing with perishable goods, high value goods - such as jewelery, dangerous goods, expensive equipment, and goods that are high value because they're unique (art work, music tapes, etc.).

Hamm told us that he expects this type of sensor product to be "mainstreaming over time as people become used to interacting with shipments."