It’s easy to focus on the low hanging fruit in the Internet of Things revolution – the Internet-connected thermostats, connected vehicles and lawn sprinklers that you can manage from the Web. But the biggest changes are yet to come – as powerful, wearable technology, remote sensors and powerful data analytics combine to map and record our every waking (and sleeping) moment. I got a glimpse of that reading this article over at the blog StreetFightMag.com, a site that concentrates on the hyperlocal marketing sector. Hyperlocal was a big thing about six or seven years ago, as online media outfit (and their advertisers) decided that consumers were losing interest in the thin gruel that online mass-media provided, but remained intensely interested in local news and affairs. Alas, capitalizing on the relatively small-scale opportunities in ‘hyperlocal’ proved harder than anyone thought, as this week’s decision to shutter AOL’s remaining Patch web […]
Technology
Cisco Combines Linux, IOS For Internet of Things
Networking equipment giant Cisco Systems said that it is combining elements of the open source Linux operating system to its IOS firmware, launching a new architecture it calls “IOx” that will connect the billions of intelligent devices that will make up the Internet of Things. The new architecture was announced at Distributech in San Antonio – a trade show for the utility industry, on Wednesday. The company said IOx will make it easier for its customers to connect Internet of Things devices to back-end resources and the larger Internet. As it stands, the Internet of Things ecosystem is fragmented. Intelligent devices like the Nest Thermostat typically communicate back to proprietary cloud resources and might communicate with their surroundings using any one of a number of wireless protocols, including Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and so on. That balkanization has made it hard to create IoT solutions that span different families […]
Parsing Google’s Internet of Things Acquisitions
Google has gone on an acquisition tear in the last six weeks that has many tech industry watchers wondering about the company’s future direction – particularly when it comes to the Internet of Things. Since the beginning of the fourth quarter, 2013, Google has acquired 14 companies with the latest, a $650 million buy of UK-based artificial intelligence software firm DeepMind Technologies hitting the wires yesterday. In addition to the DeepMind buy, Google spent $40 million on Flutter, a maker of gesture recognition technology and $23 million on FlexyCore, maker of the DroidBooster App for Android. Earlier this month, it plunked $3.2 billion down for super hot smart home gear maker Nest. Google’s size makes the exact amount spent on the other acquisitions is something of a matter of speculation. Google only has to disclose transactions that are deemed ‘material’ to the company’s finances – a number somewhere between $10m […]
US Allows More Talk About Surveillance Orders
The U.S. Department of Justice has acceded to requests from some large, technology firms, allowing them to post more specific information about government requests for data on their users, according to a report by The New York Times. In a statement released on Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder and James R. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, the new rules allowing some declassification followed a speech by President Obama calling for intelligence reform. “The administration is acting to allow more detailed disclosures about the number of national security orders and requests issued to communications providers, and the number of customer accounts targeted under those orders and requests including the underlying legal authorities,” the joint statement reads. “Through these new reporting methods, communications providers will be permitted to disclose more information than ever before to their customers.” [Read more Security Ledger coverage of the NSA surveillance story.] Previously, companies were prohibited from […]
You Can Build An Open Source NEST Clone In One Day? Uh Oh!
I’ve been amazed at the herds of Johnny Come Lately’s who have glom’d onto the amazing Nest thermostat since Google purchased the company that makes it, Nest Labs, for a whopping $3.2 billion last week. Nest – and even its sister Protect smoke alarm – were hardly new, but that didn’t stop CNN from posting a ‘gee whiz’ video in the days that followed that had all the ‘we were here first’ excitement of a hand-held broadcast from the floor of CES. That – even though Nest is coming up on its third birthday and its cousin, the Protect, was released to considerable fanfare in October. The question for Google, of course, is ‘how is Nest really worth?’ I use one at my house, and I think it’s gorgeous and smart – but $3.2 billion? That’s why I was interested to check out this article over at Postscapes.com about an open source […]
