Applied AI Weekly News

Justin Grammens

Greetings! As usual, lots of different articles and topics on the Internet of Things bubbled to the top in my research this week. I've typically been trying to condense them down into small number of categories. I decided however this week to throw that out the window and cover the firehose that IoT is!

A few gems: You might find the video of Arlen Nipper from TEDx, the Internet of Making Things article and the announcement of Parse for IoT by Facebook of particular interest.

Hope you enjoy this issue and please tweet it to your followers!

News

Breaking down Google's Strategy for the Internet of Things

The article sums it up well at the with the statement, "Data, at least, is Google's sweet spot. Hardware, however, is far from it." In the near term, Google will need to invest in hardware to get this data.

Image: Andrew Doyle/CNET

Caterpillar and Uptake to Create Analytics Solutions

The interesting part of this story is not about Caterpillar, but more the predictive analysis that they are building into their machinery. The smarter the devices and machines are around us the more business and consumers will benefit in the long run.

Lori's Blog: The Internet of Things

An overview article on what the Internet of Things is and some examples in the marketplace.

Security

FTC Sets Watch on the Internet of Things

Hopefully this is going to start a step in the right direction by which manufacturers will need to follow certain guidelines in the area of safety and security for the IoT devices that are hitting the market today and in coming years.

Business

Hardware by the Numbers (Part 1: Team + Prototyping)

First post in a four part series. This is more on entrepreneurship and startups than the Internet of Things in particular, but since we are all doing prototyping and building or dreaming of that next startup idea, I found this article to be a great resource.

Improve Efficiency and Work Smarter by Lighting up Dark Assets

Some things to consider when looking at your business and figuring out where to spend your resources and budget. From the article, "The challenge is to know which dark assets (unconnected things) to light up (connect) and then capture, analyze, and use the data generated to improve efficiency while working smarter."

Big Data

The Wolfram Data Drop Is Live!

More details on the Wolfram Data Drop from the Wolfram blog itself. Lots of cool charts, graphs and concepts around the data being collected and its potential.

Why the Internet of Things Is Big Data's Latest Killer App — If You Do It Right

It's all about the data. In particular data around healthcare I believe is going to be big business here in the coming year. The healthcare industry is ripe for cost savings and there's a number of angles where the Internet of Things will help track, analyze and adjust behaviors to save time and money

Industrial

The Internet of Making Things

The IoT is its roots in M2M technologies. It's not surprising than that this is where we are seeing the largest growth and most obvious applications hitting the market today.

Photo: The IP torque wrench. COURTESY OF PLEX SYSTEMS

Consumer

Connected Home Products Need To Shift From Nerds To Normals

To gain adoption, the "smart device" that you install must be better than the one that is there. Otherwise, what is the use? I've had many of these same thoughts around people touting solutions where they aren't even needed.

Video

The Internet of Things is Just Getting Started: Arlen Nipper at TEDx

Awesome high level talk at TEDx. Is the Internet of Things here? What value does it bring? Will it do everything it's promising? Great insights into how we need to make this happen with Open Source and breaking down silos.

Development

Facebook’s Parse Launches New IoT Service, Debugging Tool And More

It's all about the data with Facebook. Not surprisingly, they want to make it as easy as possible for developers to store their data with them. Having used Parse myself, I can say it is quite easy and useful for prototyping, however Facebook is now entering a market where many other providers have built business models and system around IoT specific data.

Arduino vs. Arduino: What We Know About The Open-Source Hardware Fork

This will be interesting to watch play out. In some ways it's not surprising because of all the interest that Arduino is gaining now in the market. There's big money to be made and the since the source code is all open source anyone has the right to fork it.

Network

IoT Standardization: Why The Network Matters

From the article, "The LoRaWAN technology, according to IBM, is based on new specifications and protocols for low-power wide-area networks that tap unlicensed wireless spectrum and can connect sensors over long distances, while offering optimal battery life and requiring minimal infrastructure."

Image: Geralt via Pixabay

Events

Your IoT | Connected World Contest

Competitions are always fun and can help people get their ideas out and possibly provide a launchpad to bring them to market. I saw this with the first IoTHackDay we did this past fall. If you have an idea, check it out and consider registering!

Survey

Hardware Trends in 2015

Useful and interesting slide deck on where the trends are showing hardware around the Internet of Things going this year. Covers a broad range of the ecosystem and is easy to flip through.

What Exactly Is the Internet of Things?

Infographic showing the various pieces of the IoT and future concepts.