2009

One year ago we reported that music-based social networking site Imeem was experiencing strong growth and making key deals with record labels. Our conclusion at the time was that “Imeem’s growth rate and buzz is reminiscent of that of YouTube just before it got huge.” Big words indeed. To see if that You Tube comparison … Read more

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we analyze the deal to bring Microsoft’s Bing search engine to Yahoo, check out the latest social media and Twitter statistics, investigate the state of RFID tags and Internet fridges, look at Apple’s “interactive album” concept, and … Read more

In this latest installment of our ongoing series on the Internet of Things, we look at one of the big advantages of Internet-connected objects: trackability. In other words, knowing precisely where an object is at all times – and even better, its condition. This is important particularly for goods that are perishable, such as food. … Read more

RFID is an emerging standard for identification and tracking of goods. It’s one of the key underlying technologies for the Internet of Things. Yesterday we looked at the market for Internet fridges. Our conclusion was that until RFID tags become more common place on food items, Internet fridges will continue to be novelty appliances. In … Read more

The Internet fridge is probably the most oft-quoted example of what the Internet of Things – when everyday objects are connected to the Internet – will enable. Imagine a refrigerator (so the story goes) that monitors the food inside it and notifies you when you’re low on, for example, milk. It also perhaps monitors all … Read more

During my recent visit to MIT I met up with Henry Holtzman, Chief Knowledge Officer of the MIT Media Lab. We discussed the Internet of Things, which Holtzman has been actively involved in since the 90s. Holtzman said that consumer apps for Web-connected objects are becoming more common; he refers to this as an emerging … Read more

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we analyze why Amazon spent nearly a billion dollars to purchase online shoe shop Zappos, explain why IBM is an early leader in the Internet of Things, investigate whether the Google Chrome OS will finally deliver us … Read more

Earlier this week we brought you the story of the house that twitters. In this post we explore another experimental system that uses Twitter to automate tasks. Matt Morey, by day an engineer for Texas Instruments, has developed a two-way, home automation application using Twitter and ioBridge. We all know about Twitter, the now massively … Read more

MQTT is an IBM-developed protocol for real-time messaging that could become a keystone of the emerging Internet of Things. As the BBC explained recently, MQTT (which stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is “a platform-agnostic system which can connect almost any networked object to the wider world.” MQTT is used as a messaging protocol for … Read more

In the Web world, you know that a trend has major traction when IBM is all over it. Like any large Internet company, Big Blue is careful about which trends it latches onto. It was a good couple of years before they were spotted at the Web 2.0 conference, for example. However in the case … Read more

I recently spoke to Andy Stanford-Clark, a Master Inventor and Distinguished Engineer at IBM. He’s been working on a number of Twitter and real-time monitoring projects, many of them at the intersection of two big trends we’ve been tracking in 2009: The Real-time Web and Internet of Things. Stanford-Clark has set up various systems for … Read more

Earlier this year at the TED conference, Pattie Maes from the MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group showcased a wearable computing system that allows users to display and interact with the Web on any surface – including the human body. The video shows the system’s main developer, Pranav Mistry, taking photographs with his hand, summoning … Read more

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we analyze the continuing popularity of Apple’s App store, question the longevity of AIR apps, investigate the waves of changes happening in the book publishing industry, review one 19 year old’s innovative and successful news website, tell … Read more

During my recent trip to MIT I met with Andrew Lippman, an Associate Director at the MIT Media Lab and a Senior Research Scientist. Lippman heads up the Lab’s Viral Communications program, which “examines scalable, real-time networks whose capacity increases with the number of members.” Among other things, we discussed an interesting new product his … Read more

As the Internet of Things continues to slowly but surely ramp up, we’re beginning to see more everyday ‘objects’ being connected to the Internet. One which caught our eye is a new web-connected bathroom scale. The company behind it is called BodyTrace and the product has been labeled ‘eScale.’ It wirelessly and automatically uploads a … Read more