Starting up, new challenges and (maybe) a farewell

I titled this post like one of those book chapters that try to summarize the diverse happenings in a concrete timeframe. It's been some months since the last post, always having things to say and never finding how to do it.

Today it has been much easier.

It is the end of a long period (10 years) devoted to academic R&D and the start of a new professional life in my own (shared) start-up: Symplio.

I have been for some years now trying to figure out new ways of using the Internet through physical objects, sometimes called the "Internet of Things" (although for me there isn't a separate Internet for the Things, as there is no "Internet of People", just the Internet, ubiquitous and public like air).

Through Symplio we intend to bring to the world some new fresh product concepts as others did in the past and be part of the paradigm change produced by the merging of the Internet with the physical reality.

I don't know if I will ever continue writing on this blog, probably I will, but now I will try to focus on changing the world.

PS: my former research position as Smart Environments Research Leader is available and open for candidates. Find more info at MoreLab (position description is here).

Architectures for the Internet of Things: Presentation at Web of Things 2010 (PerCom 2010)

I have just had my presentation at Web of Things 2010 (Percom 2010) where I explored the different architectures for the Internet of Things and analyzed them under certain key factors. In this way, an Internet of Things designer can have a small guidance about which architecture fits better for his/her project depending on:

• where to place the intelligence (at the object or at the cloud)
• the infrastructure required
• the busines model flexibility
• ...

In fact, the exploration of business models for the Internet of Things is a new topic of interest for me, a to-be-discovered world that resembles the Web in the mid-90s. My paper can be downloaded here and the slides are below.

Rafi Haladjian at Deusto

Some weeks ago I invited Rafi Haladjian, founder of Violet, and now at sen.se to give a speech at the Spanish national RFID Conference we were hosting at Deusto. Talking with him was very "epiphanic" in the sense that he explained the process behind the conceptualization and marketing of Nabaztag, as well as the final situation where Violet was acquired by Mindscape.

Funny enough, I think that the current position of Rafi about the Internet of Things can be summarized in two sentences:

The problem with the Internet of Things are the things.

I don't know what the Internet of Things is... but it is not a rabbit.

David Rose on "Enchanted Objects"

I have just found a pill of knowledge by David Rose, founder of Ambient Devices and now CEO of Vitality, the company that created the GlowCaps. It was a talk at Lift 09 on "Enchanted Objects - How fiction foreshadows innovation".

He describes his past work in Ambient Devices, from the early prototypes to the final designs, presenting the audience with some of the challenges and decisions they were facing. Liked it a lot!

From the Internet of Things to the Internet of Hearts

Could you imagine all our hearts connected to the Internet?. Instantly and wirelessly transmitting our heartbeats to a central server, or maybe tweeting or pachubing? The first step has been taken through an innovative pacemaker that has been implanted to Carol Kasyjanski, becoming the first person to be monitored remotely.

It is a tremendous convenience for the patient from even interacting with a telephone to call the doctor.

On a larger scale it enhances our ability to pick up and evaluate any problems with their pacemaker and certain other rhythm disorders that could be potentially dangerous or life threatening in ways we really could not do before.

Via: Network World

New books on the Internet of Things

A new book about the Internet of Things has been recently added to Scribd. The title says "Internet of Things. From RFID to Next-Generation Pervasive Networked Systems", and provides a good introduction to RFID-based solutions for IoT.

The only con is that it is too RFID-focused, scarcely mentioning the other side of the Internet of Things: embedded-connectivity mechanisms and protocols. In order to balance this aspect, a new book on 6LoWPAN (Amazon pre-order) "6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet" is expected by the beginning of 2010:

And now... the tweeting house

After the tweeting plants, the tweeting home has arrived. It seems that the owner of the house, inventor Andy Stanford-Clarke, is using the Crossbow family of motes (maybe MicaZ from the images) to report tweets of information about windows, electricity meters and even... a mouse trap!

As so geek as this may seem, I am sure that we will witness in the next 2-3 years more and more things that tweet. In fact, Twitter has become a convenient communication channel for the Internet of Things: public information can be posted by objects, while other fellow followers may react accordingly. The only problem behind this is the limited amount of data in each tweet, moreover if some metadata has to be added in order to add structure or give meaning to he information.

Other alternatives may be provided by XMPP, the open protocol used by some Instant Messaging systems, which is also a good candidate to create dialogs between connected objects. 

In the meantime, enjoy the video of the tweeting house:

Via: ReadWriteWeb.com