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The "Internet of Things" has officially extended beyond our lives and into the lives of our pets.Everything has to be smart and connected these days, and that now includes pet toys as well. But the Petcube Interactive Wi-Fi Pet Camera isn't just a pet toy, it's also an interactive wireless home camera. The device latches onto your home Wi-Fi network and lets you connect from anywhere using the free iOS or Android app. You can watch your pet, listen in on what's going on at home, talk using the integrated speaker, and control the built-in laser toy that your dog or cat will go nuts over.It's an awesome product and best of all, it's the same price as most single-purpose home cameras....
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Rescooped by
Jeff Domansky
from snow
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FITNESS TRACKERS ARE getting a whole lot more stylish. The latest batch of wearables lets you have your fitness tracking and your fashion, too. They’re ditching neutral monochrome and sporty, almost utilitarian, styling for a rainbow of colors, faux gems, and other flair that make them suitable for any time of day, and any occasion. The change reflects the maturation of the market and the growing sophistication of consumer tastes. “When the first activity trackers started coming out, that sporty look was what people wanted. Now we’re moving away from that,” Garmin media relations associate Amy Noury said. The company just launched its first smartwatch, the $250 Vivoactive. It’s a handsome, sleek gadget that resembles the Pebble smartwatch and builds on its general purpose activity trackers, the Vivofit and Vivosmart. It’s GPS enabled and can track activities like cycling, running, swimming, or golf. Garmin also updated its Vivofit fitness tracker with additional features and a host of bright silicon strap colors and styles, including ones patterned with designs by Jonathan Adler. We started seeing more attractive fitness trackers from the likes of Withings last year, but the trend has firmly established itself here at CES....
Via lundí
What sounds like a simple idea was actually the foundational design challenge, since e-paper is rarely used this way. "E-paper is usually used for flat, unbending displays, but it is very important to wear a watch comfortably," Sugiue says. "The whole surface of the FES Watch’s strap is also made of e-paper, but the wearer can still open the buckle, put their hand through with ease and close the buckle, fitting the watch around their wrist comfortably. It is quite a natural thing for a watch, but this is not so easy to achieve for digital devices." While Sony would not disclose specifically how it achieved the bendability, Sugiue says it was through careful study of the e-paper's characteristics and learning how to manipulate it. The watch conforms to the classic shape of a conventional watch—a round face and band—but it's covered with an e-paper display, which has 24 different face patterns that wearers can engage at will by pressing a button on the watch's side. "It’s something like a brand-new canvas, and is able to change its own skin to show a number of different chraracteristics," Satoshi Yoshiizumi, Takt Project's principal, says. "Therefore, it is like the 'material of watch' which has a silhouette of a watch, but stimulates your imagination and curiosity through trying various textures." Shaking the watch activates the display, which goes "dark" if there's no movement, conserving battery life....
Imagine this: you wake up in the morning and your coffee machine, as it pours you your first cup, tells you it’s almost out of your favourite blend. Rather than making a mental note to yourself to remember to buy some more on your next store visit, your machine instantly does the ordering for you – adding it to your shopping basket, along with the detergent that needs replacing, the toothpaste you’re running low on, and the mascara that is just about to dry out.
When you leave for work, you get an update that the order will be delivered to the trunk of your car that afternoon. You then get a notification that it’s your friend’s birthday, and based on social media data that your digital assistant has pulled, you are recommended an ideal present to buy. You automatically add that to the checkout also.
Welcome to the age of programmatic commerce: a world where mundane repeat purchases and those easily solved by data insights, are automatically done for you....
Fashion designers like to look ahead, predicting the colors, prints, and silhouettes that will be in demand a year or two later. Becca McCharen aims much farther into the future, conceiving of designs that question how apparel can do more than simply "clothe" a person. She calls her fashion brand Chromat "structural experiments for the body."
"Coming from an architectural background, I see clothing as doing work for the body—an additional tool to enhance performance," she says.
For her AW16 collection—dubbed Lumina—the self-described "mad scientist" used Intel's Curie module (a button-sized wearable) and StretchSense's flexible sensors—which she likens to "rubber bands as Bluetooth"—to create a tech-infused collection that glows in response to movement....
Fossil Group, whose portfolio of brands includes Adidas Originals, Burberry and Diesel, on Tuesday announced at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that it would launch more than 100 connected devices in 2016.
Fossil’s new wearables will include activity trackers and smartwatches for many brands including Misfit, the wearable technology brand that Fossil acquired in November 2015. Fossil Group will launch new products throughout 2016 and all 100 styles will be available by the year-end holidays.
"We successfully launched wearables with one brand and 10 styles in 2015 and quickly ramped up to launch wearables for several brands in more than 100 styles in 2016," said Greg McKelvey, chief strategy and digital officer, Fossil Group. "Bringing Fossil Q to market helped us identify additional opportunity, and based on the positive consumer response, we are going big this year. Our retail partners will see the power of Fossil Group's scale and consumers will see the variety of functionality, style, colors and brands they desire."...
Wearable technology, like the under-performing Google Glass, might still be a tough sell for humans. But it seems to be catching on with farm animals.
More accurately, farmers are embracing wearable devices that help them monitor their livestock, such as GPS collars that track animals out in the pasture or e-pills that sit in animals' stomachs to measure their digestion.
Other wearables allow farmers to take advantage of high-tech innovations like increased automation. For example, robotic milking pens that automatically milk cows that walk into them are quickly taking hold at family farms. Such robots operate with the help of an e-tag clipped to the animal's ear or an e-collar snapped around an animal's neck. The wearables help the robot identify the animals and give each one personalized care, without the help of humans....
Usage of wearables, like smart watches, will grow by nearly two-thirds this year, per an eMarketer forecast. Still, cost is holding many consumers back from purchasing a device, according to December 2015 research.
Kentico surveyed 1,000 internet users, ages 18 and older. More than two-thirds of internet users worldwide said that cost was one of the top reasons for not purchasing a smart watch.
Additionally, 38% of respondents said that another reason for not purchasing a smart watch was because there was not enough reasons to use it. This is likely because many smart watch capabilities, like sending and receiving emails or texts, as well as placing and receiving phone and video calls, can be done via a smartphone. In fact, 14% of internet users said they were dependent on their smartphone, and that was a reason for not purchasing a smart watch....
CES is a bit like the auto shows of yesteryear, back when carmakers simply came to flex their muscles and show what they were capable of, as opposed to unveiling products that are destined for dealership parking lots. In the same spirit, Samsung has unveiled three products that will be on the showroom floor at CES 2016 next week.
The first, and the strangest, is a ‘smart wearable healthcare belt’ called the WELT.
Called the WELT.
(long pause)
This smart health belt looks perfectly normal but is able to measure the user’s waist size (I should hope so), eating habits, the number of steps taken in a day, and time spent seated. From there, the information is digested through an app that makes recommendations for better health....
Many corporate investors and smart money VCs have placed significant bets on the Internet of Things industry, which is expected to see nearly $2B in funding through the end of 2015.
Which firms are most active? We used CB Insights data to rank VCs by their unique IoT investments over the past 5 years.
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Intel Capital tops the list as the most active investor in IoT startups, followed by Qualcomm Ventures. Both small-chip companies’ venture arms have been active investors in wearables startups and sensor companies. Since Intel and Qualcomm are involved in designing and/or manufacturing ever-smaller chips to power mobile devices, this area likely offers them strategic value....
Many consumers plan to purchase a health or fitness device in the next 12 months, according to a 2015 survey. Smart watches and fitness trackers are among the wearables they plan to buy.
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), formerly the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), surveyed 1,001 US internet users. Almost three-quarters of respondents said they plan to purchase a health or fitness tracker within the next year.
More than one-third of that group said they plan to buy a smart watch and 30% said they intend to purchase fitness apps in the next 12 months. Some 27% of health and fitness device buyers said they expect to buy wearable fitness devices, and the same percentage said they plan to purchase smart apparel. Sleep trackers were also on the list; 23% of respondents said they intended to buy one....
Two months after Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) announced a platform to connect appliances to the internet, Amazon Web Services’ Internet of Things is out of beta and available to customers.
The platform – similar to offerings from Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and IBM – can command smoke alarms and fitness trackers from computers.
Moreover, it extends far beyond the home; it can monitor and manage critical infrastructure such as wastewater treatment facilities and wind turbines.
The Internet of Things, as it is known, is big industry for tech companies working to connect devices to the cloud. Microsoft – which estimates there will be 30 billion connected devices by 2020 – launched in the space last year with its Azure platform. Google-owned home automation company Nest, which makes smart thermostats and other connect devices, announced earlier this year plans to open a Seattle-area engineering center and hire 100 employees....
Breitling, maker of fine watches for people who fly airplanes (or would like to fly airplanes), has just released the Exospace B55, a smartwatch that can relay messages from your phone and includes a high-end quartz movement with advanced timing features. This isn’t a smart watch per se so I’m calling it a “notification” watch or notiwatch. Go ahead and laugh.
Anyway, the B55 is a “multifunction electronic chronograph also receives notifications of the smartphone’s incoming emails, messages (SMS, WhatsApp) or phone calls (with caller’s name or number) as well as reminders of upcoming appointments.” This means the small LCD screen will display names and info when you get a message.
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The Internet of Things and the Internet might seem inextricably linked, but, increasingly, there are questions centered around how IoT devices should work with one another — and what happens when the Internet connection goes down?
Users also are concerned with the privacy implications of having their data stored on a corporation’s servers, and they don’t like having an Internet connection as a potential point of failure. These reactions are rational, but reminiscent of online shopping circa 2000, which, ironically, might now be more secure than shopping in physical retail stores.
To understand why device makers are relying on an Internet connection and cloud services, we need to look at how our IoT devices work. We need to understand data sources, processing, device to device communication and, ultimately, how one device can leverage another device....
Here are some key points from the report: In total, we project there will be 34 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020, up from 10 billion in 2015. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.) will comprise 10 bifllion. Nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years. Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions. They see three ways the IoT can improve their bottom line by 1) lowering operating costs; 2) increasing productivity; and 3) expanding to new markets or developing new product offerings....
From a purely technical perspective, adding mobile payment hardware (NFC) to a device is easy, which is why major tech companies have been doing it since 2007.
The challenge, however, was creating safe services, at scale, that could make payments as digital as the people who will use them.
MasterCard has answered the call through with a variety of mobile payment innovations, from its digital wallet service MasterPass, to contactless technologies that make transactions faster, to commerce platforms like Android PayTM, Apple PayTM and Samsung Pay, even advanced tokenization services.
The future of payments doesn't just live on a smartphone, though....
Wearable Internet-connected devices are shipping by the millions, with a focus on fitness leading the way. More global year-end numbers just came out showing that the wearables market grew 127% in the last quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. And the numbers are impressive. During the holiday quarter, 27 million wearables shipped, according to the Worldwide Quarterly Device Tracker by IDC, which I consider to be one of the best and most accurate research and tracking companies. For the full year, suppliers shipped 78 million wearable devices, an increase of 172% from the year before....
The wearables market is just starting to explode, but we're already taking it for granted. And it's hard not to wonder where it will go next – especially considering where we've been....
The Wi-Fi Alliance recently announced the long-awaited Wi-Fi HaLow standard for products incorporating IEEE 802.11ah wireless networking technology (HaLow is pronounced just like the title of the popular video game from Microsoft).
HaLow extends a flavor of Wi-Fi into the 900 MHz band, which provides greater range than the pre-existing 2.4 GHz standard, provides better connectivity through barriers such as walls and promises extensibility in the development of low-power Internet of Things (IoT) applications, such as Smart Home sensors and wearables.
The next several years will continue to see double-digit growth in the number of Americans using wearable devices, according to eMarketer's first wearables forecast. In 2015, 39.5 million US adults 18 and over will use wearables, including smartwatches and fitness trackers. That's a jump of 57.7% over 2014. While penetration among US adults is just 16.0% this year,
eMarketer expects that to double by 2018, to 81.7 million users.eMarketer defines wearable users as those who wear accessories or clothing at least once per month that are embedded with internet-connected electronics and exchange data with a manufacturer or other connected device....
Wearables are one of the most exciting developments in technology, and have inspired the fashion industry in some intriguing ways. But there’s still plenty of skepticism about everything from battery life to appearance. Some even wonder if computers strapped to our bodies 24/7 could have adverse health effects (although, to be fair, it’s hard to see how wearables would be any different from an iPhone in that regard).
TO PUT IT BLUNTLY, WEARABLES ARE STILL UGLY.
Wearables are taking time to gather momentum. Google Glass was disbanded, and Apple hasn't disclosed how many watches it is selling. Even if sales are stronger than analysts estimate, the Watch hasn't exactly gotten glowing reviews. Even the most favorable reviews suggest it is not a device for "tech novices." Walt Mossberg at Re/Code went further, dubbing one wearable a "celibacy band."
If the people who test gadgets for a living are having trouble adapting, it’s safe to say we still have a few years before wearables will be relevant to typical consumers, much less those who care about looking stylish....
Wearables had a varied year in 2015, with a lot of hype and a few big winners streaking ahead of the field, leaving plenty of also-rans struggling to stand out.
It’s fair to say that the entire category is yet to prove whether it offers lasting utility or mere faddish novelty. The success of the smartphone is such than any supplementary technology inevitably lives in its shadow — and wearables are all about offering some kind of add-on functionality. Mobile undoubtedly still wears tech’s crown, and will do for the foreseeable future....
One of the more fascinating aspects of The Internet of Things is the unlimited potential for transformational innovation.
From a consumer perspective, IoT conversations tend to focus on personal devices, such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, or smart home gadgets, like thermostats and TVs.
While all of those are moving to mass adoption, they are the relatively early iterations of Internet-connected objects.
Even though we’ve been hearing many predictions of what The Internet of Things may bring next year (2016 IoT Predictions: Big Data, Beacons, Wearables, Security), the reality is that no one really knows beyond the somewhat obvious.
'The year of...' is a much-derided term among many in the digital industry. But statistics published recently by enterprise software giant Adobe indicate 2016 will be the year wearables become a mainstream concern for marketers, as over half of all smartphone owners have already used a household device connected to the internet.
Adobe Digital Index (ADI) Digital Trends Report examines the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and consumer attitudes towards 'wearables', such as the Apple iWatch, and the knock-on effect on how users will access the internet.
The report claims 51 per cent of existing smartphone owners have already interacted with a home-based IoT device - such as a thermostat that can be controlled via a smartphone app.
Adobe also examined user sentiment towards such trends by analysing attitudes expressed in over 20 billion social media interactions, finding that 33 per cent of those analysed had used a digital personal assistant service, such as Apple's Siri, in the last 30 days. ...
But since we’re nearing the year end, there are many (and I mean many) predictions of what will happen next year that have been sent to me over the last several weeks.
These are not necessarily based on new research, but rather are the viewpoints of a person or organization self-perceived to be in a position to make some educated guesses.
I’ve aggregated some of these predictions to give you at least an IoT snapshot of what some see in store for the next year.
So here are IoT-related predictions for 2016, in no particular order, with the source of each prediction at the end....
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