Author: Christine

Categories
Business Strategy Internet of Things

WideTag too?

With the dust settling around the Pachube acquisition, it's important to consider other companies that might be out there in the same category and impacted by the change in the landscape. One of these companies is WideTag. Although it is technically based in Redwood City, California, the company was founded by three Italians and I believe that the "heart" of the project was in Northern Italy.

WideTag's angle on the sensor data aggregation problem was to provide a software platform that has a social media component. Aside from the emphasis on social media, WideTag and Pachube are very similar. Compare with the Pachube mission, this text:

"The WideSpime framework for massive data collection applications allows for the rapid development of highly scalable, and robust vertical applications in the areas of energy, environment, industrial monitoring, and others.

The OpenSpime development libraries have been put in open-source in order to spur the growth of a healthy community sharing the spime-based vision of the forthcoming Internet Of Things. In addition to this, Roberto Ostinelli, WideTag’s CTO, released in open-source Misultin >-|-|-|<>, a high-performance http server."

The major differences between Pachube and WideTag today are that WideTag is no longer an active business, while Pachube has a major sponsor and deep pockets from which to draw.

It was clear from the declining level of newsworthy activity and developments throughout 2010 that the company was not growing. In March 2011, a post by WideTag CEO, Leandro Agrò, on the site announced that the three co-founders had gone their separate ways but were thankful for the opportunity they had to work in the exciting field of the Internet of Things. What was the difference? Was it a resource limitation?

So now, with the Pachube property valuation in mind, is there an opportunity to pour a little cash in and revive WideTag? Is there a WideTag Phase 2? Or is there a fresh, new company, like Open Sen.se, coming in to fill the void?

Categories
Internet of Things News

Pachube Acquired by LogMeIn

The news broke earlier today that Wobrun, Mass-based LogMeIn, a provider of software to remotely access computers and mobile devices, acquired Connected Environments, the provider of Pachube for approximately $15M cash. In its press release, and the investor relations conference call that followed, LogMeIn said that it intends to leverage the acquisition to expand its Gravity platform while leaving the existing team in place. Usman Hague, the founder of Connected Environments and the individual most closely identified with the company's vision, wrote a sincere post about his hope for the future on his blog.

Pachube (pronounced Patch Bay) has been around for nearly 4 years (the service was launched in 2008) and has had a tremendous impact on the development of concrete Internet of Things projects.  I hope that this continues and, with the resources of the parent company, expands in the future.

A few words from the LogMeIn press release:

"The Pachube Service and User Community

Pachube is an Internet of Things pioneer.  Their service offers real-time monitoring and management of any type of connected device. Pachube makes it easy for people to connect their devices and sensors to its service, to publish data, and to receive data and instructions from other devices. The Pachube service also collects and stores the published datastreams for further analysis and visualization. Using the Pachube service, individuals, developers and businesses can create applications, services and products that leverage the data created by these connected devices. In doing so, Pachube empowers people to share, collaborate and make use of the information generated by the world around them.  Currently, Pachube users send more than seven million datapoints to the service each day."

The Pachube community is, in my mind, the most valuable asset of the company which cannot quickly be rebuilt. I wonder if LogMeIn will be able to nurture and to grow the community which is composed largely of people who are very firmly devoted to open source.

What do you think?

Categories
Innovation Research & Development

3D City Models and AR

Google StreetView was certainly a trail-blazing concept and it has entered the mainstream. But it was not the first service and Google isn’t the first company that had the concept to collect data about the physical world by driving a specially equipped vehicle (with one or more cameras, high performance GPS and other sensors) through space. Decades earlier, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked on this concept in order to permit the vehicles landing on the moon (or other spatial bodies) to record their immediate environment. Earthmine is a pioneer not only in the capture of the real world (using designs developed by the JPL) but also to explore business models based on this data sets. What do these have in common? They proved that the ambitious goal of digitally “capturing” the real world in a form that supports navigation through the data afterwards, was possible.

As the technologies developed in these projects have evolved and become more powerful–in every dimension–and competitors have emerged based on other maturing technologies, systems are detecting the physical world at higher and higher resolutions, and the data gathered produce increasingly more accurate models at lower costs.

Instead of “manually” building up a 3D model from a 2D map and/or analog data, urban environments are being scanned, measured and modeled at an amazing speed, and at lower cost than ever before. Fascinating, but to what end?

In the AR-4-Basel project, we seek to make available to AR developers accurate 3D models in order for the digital representation of the real world to serve as the basis for higher performance AR experiences. The concept is that if a developer were able to use the model when designing experiences, or the placement of content, they would have a virtual reality in which to experiment. Then, when in the real world the user’s device with a camera would automatically extract features, such as edges of buildings, roofs, and other stationary attributes of the world, and match those with the features “seen” earlier in the digital model. The digital data would be aligned more accurately and the process of augmenting the world with the desired content would be faster.

In order to determine if this is more than just a concept, I need to find and receive the assistance of 3D city model experts. Here are a few of the sites to which I’ve been in search of such knowledge:

This process is proving to be time consuming but it might yield some results before another solution to improve AR experience quality emerges!

Categories
2020 Internet of Things

The Singularity

Ray Kurzweil is one of the pundits I like to follow when I want to look into the distant future. I first became aware of his work in mid-2001 when I skimmed the Age of Spiritual Machines and then, for reasons that escape me, it just rest on my bookshelf amongst the many other thought-provoking works. It wasn't until I discovered the heavy volume for which he is better known today that I took in the magnitude of Kurzweil's vision: that technological advancement will be central to unlocking the enduring mysteries of brain function.

I got the hard copy and read the Singularity is Near in mid-2006, as soon as it came out. It was an excellent sequel, of sorts, to an extremely well-written work by Washington Post writer Joel Garreau, Radical Evolution. I highly recommend that anyone who wants to examine the future begin with Garreau's work because it offers a greater variety of perspectives than Kurzweil.

In late 2008, the Singularity University was born. It's great that there is a working think tank with "real world" laboratory examining the scenarios he (and now others) propose. Ever since the establishment of the Singularity U, it seems that Kurzweil's "properties" have gained a lot of momentum. But they are not without detractors.

This blog post entitled "The Singularity is Far" on the Kurzweil site caught my attention because it so directly questions some of the Singularity theory's basic premises about the human brain and future technologies. And it is featured on the Kurzweil site! While a neuroscientist's view seems one to which we should listen on the topic of brain enhancing technologies, and he raises many excellent points in his essay, I find the nanobots scenario very attractive, regardless of when it may finally be possible!

It would be fantastic to have the opportunity to study or attend some sessions at the Singularity U. I'd really like to learn how they address obstacles, to apply their techniques to the projects on which I work. Ideally, such an investment would be something from which I would benefit long before we have nanobots flowing in our bloodstreams!

Categories
Internet of Things Policy, Legal, Regulatory Social and Societal

Smart Cities and Big Citizens

The AR-4-Basel project is a framework by which public data about a city, the city of Basel more specifically, can be put in the hands of Augmented Reality developers using a variety of tools and platforms and to encourage the development community to be creative. Many scenarios for AR in urban environments are for consumers. The end goal being that if we knew more about our immediate environments, we might make different decisions.

The departments of the city of Basel with whom I'm in communications are primarily thinking of the Internet of Things, and AR in particular, as a professional tool, enabling people to do their job more efficiently when in the field, perhaps to save on resources/reduce waste (increase efficiency) and to make better decisions which might impact their lives or those of others.

So, in the context of this project, I'm spending a lot of time speaking with experts and reading the opinions of those much more informed in these matters of "smart cities" than I. Martijn de Waal is one of those that has invested highly of himself in this topic and clearly "gets it."

One of the posts that I found particularly enlightening is a "dialog" of sorts between Ed Borden of Pachube and Adam Greenfield of Urbanscale. Rather than read my paraphrasing, please read it.

At this point, the jury is out on if these are really different positions and if different, which of these positions best characterizes the situation. It is early enough that cities (BigGov) and their managers (politicians) could "wake up" and take a more active role in their own technology use. But not all citizens want or should be participating in the decisions that require having all (and some of it sensitive) data. And, it is definitely true that citizens can and should be involved in some of these services which primarily benefit them.

I look forward to seeing this dialog continue and to learning more from the experts in this field. Maybe as a small citizen of a small urban area in a small country, I will be able to make a difference in how others live.

Categories
2020 Social and Societal

Back to the Future

It's difficult to get the right mixture of technology, philosophy, sociology and history into a 10 minute talk about the future. It takes a lot of preparation and the results vary with the audience to whom you are speaking.

Gerd Leonhard, a futurist who lives in Basel but works around the world, is a master at pulling together concepts from a wide variety of sources and using examples that are meaningful to his audience. I've just watched the first episode of GerdTube about Free and Freemium. This topic is particular appropriate for him to be speaking about in a free video series because Gerd seems to be an expert at giving away his knowlwedge (via Twitter– he has 19,000+ followers, via Facebook, G+ and lots of other channels, including, via YouTube). At the same time, Gerd exudes a sense of being highly successful from a consulting point of view.

I look forward to watching more episodes of GerdTube!

In her presentation (available on YouTube here) at the Future Internet week in Budapest Hungary, Lara Srivastava, also balanced these forces remarkably well, identifying the key issues for the future as well as the opportunities for the Internet of Things, without neglecting the past. It's difficult to say where, precisely, we are in the evolution that, for Srivastava and others, began six years ago but still has a long ways to go before becoming mainstream.  One of her predictions is that we must envisage a day when the public can edit and publish directly into and with the Internet of Things, as we do with our social media on the Web today. That, she predicts will lead to chaos. But chaos is not all bad. Random genetic recombinations are at the very heart evolution, in fact. So celebrate chaos? That requires balance, lots of it! 

Categories
Internet of Things Standards

Can We Define IoT?

The Internet of Things can be understood, at its simplest, as the phenomenon whereby more things or objects are inter-connected to the Internet than people. I feel this statement is useful for a lay person but insufficient for business or technical purposes.

How do we define the Internet of Things in a way that is concise, yet clear, general, yet specific enough to be meaningful?

The question of the precise definition of the Internet of Things has commanded considerable intellectual debate in recent years. Getting the definition perfect is important for regulatory, legal, legislative and, lets not forget, funding purposes.

Several presentations explored this question at the European Commission-backed IoT day in Budapest in May 2011. Exchanges on a mailing list continue a debate among members of the IoT Joint Coordination Activity.

The definition proposed by Monique Morrow of Cisco, suggests:

"The Internet of Things consists of networks of sensors attached to
objects and communications devices, providing data that can be analyzed
and used to initiate automated actions. The data also generates vital
intelligence for planning, management, policy and decision-making."

Olivier Dubuisson of Orange FT Group defines Internet of Things as:

"A global ICT infrastructure linking physical objects and virtual objects
(as the informational counterparts of physical objects) through the
exploitation of sensor & actuator data capture, processing and transmission
capabilities. As such, the IoT is an overlay above the 'generic' Internet,
offering federated physical-object-related services (including, if relevant,
identification, monitoring and control of these objects) to all kinds of applications."

In my opinion, the IoT definition should not specify the purpose. It must describe only what the IoT IS and it probably will need to be a living definition, frequently updated to reflect the evolution of the state of the art.

As with the definition of Augmented Reality, however, there should and will be a day when the definition of the Internet of Things or AR no longer matter because the "thing itself" is so ubiquitous and easily understood that a definition is unnecessary. Between now and that day, expect these debates to continue. At least outside the events which I am responsible for organizing!