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8 Ways to Better Understand the Internet of Things

The world’s second Internet of Things Conference is scheduled to take place at the end of November in Tokyo. The deadline for papers was just extended to June 1 – which gave us an idea. Conference planners have put together a list of suggested topics for papers. We took that list and then rounded up our ongoing reporting and analysis for each of the eight topics as a way to help you understand how vast and far reaching IoT will end up being.

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‘Green by Internet of Things / Green of Internet of Things Technology’

Our recent list of 6 Ways to Better Living: Inside an Internet of Things Home, looked at the IoT from a domestic standpoint. From handling toxic waste, to watershed management, to building design, to transportation, to the smart energy grid, a whole new green way of thinking is going to be made possible by IoT.

‘Future sustainable technologies linking the physical and virtual world’

Different industries have have already been able to increase the efficiency of freight shipping by using sensors to tell them the location and condition of their product in real-time. This includes FedEx’s SenseAware, which is designed to constantly keep track of the vital signs of all its packages. In future posts we’ll be covering IoT-driven growth in the fields of virtual factories, digital cities, agriculture and forest management.

‘Novel services and applications to facilitate environmental responsibility’

Did you hear about the guy who wired his house up to a Twitter account so that it alerted him whenever an appliance was used? Following that experiment, Matt Morey figured out a way to use iobridge to turn that one-way Twitter alert system into a two-way system that makes it possible to turn appliances on and off via Twitter. These ideas, which may seem novel at first, signal the direction towards the development of whole new industries.

‘Emerging Internet of Things business models and process changes’

Companies as large as IBM have invested heavily in IoT. It has a website called Smarter Planet, which is dedicated to “smarter solutions,” of which they say they’ve already developed 12,00 hundred. We’ve also written about ThingD, which is creating a registry of things, as well as REZZ.IT, which is building a business based on the idea that “things have a network and their own audience.”

‘Communication systems and network architectures for the IoT’

Pachube is the IotT business that has earned the most coverage and analysis from us. Pachube is a service that stores and shares real-time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments. MQTT, which stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport, is also noteworthy. It is “a platform-agnostic system which can connect almost any networked object to the wider world.” More recently, Google launched an API for PowerMeter, which allows device manufacturers to create PowerMeter-compatible devices. Also worth mention is our article on Arrayent that aims to be the “Cisco of small things” – which is basically middleware for companies wanting to connect their products to the Internet. In particular it’s targeting smartphones.

‘Experience reports from the introduction and operation of networked things in areas such as healthcare, logistics & transport’

IoT is still so new that we have only just begun to see the results of research. But with RFID, for example (which is one of the more mature IoT technologies), we’ve reported on how there have been challenges that limit predicted growth. There’s also still impediment to to the viable use of IofT-like location-based services.

‘Emerging applications and interaction paradigms for everyday citizens’

From preventing lost luggage, to the latest IoT gadgets, telling the story of what a person’s everyday daily life is an integral part of IoT. Most notable is the presentation by Carnegie Mellon professor and ex-imagineer Jesse Schell, who describes how sensors in everything may one day mean the sensor in your toothbrush gives you online gaming points if you brush for the full three minutes. He also envisions sensors that track if you are watching TV commercials and again rewards you with online gaming points. Core to Schell’s ideas is the belief that these incentives may seem a bit creepy, but they have potential to help us create a less corrupted, more accountable and ethical world.

‘Social impacts and consequences: security, privacy, opportunities and risks’

In our What The Internet of Things Means For You series we covered privacy issues related to the use of RFID and barcode readers. The latest reports show how advertisement, RFID and geolocation have combined to raise serious privacy concerns. Additionally, location-based data can be a threat to personal privacy in the context of how the U.S. congress has started to draft location-based privacy protection laws.

Are you going to the Tokyo for Internet of Things Conference? What do you hope to learn there? Let us know in the comments, or by emailing tips@readwriteweb.com, what we should be discussing in the months leading up to the event.

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Pew: readers prefer ad-supported news to pay walls

Advertising remains the primary means of support for online news outlets, and there’s a long uphill battle facing anyone trying to forge new business models, at least according to a report produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The extensive report on the State of the Media examines numerous aspects of the media world, but emphasizes that, when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons.”

First things first: Pew notes that last year, online advertising saw its first decline since 2002. Numbers from eMarketer said that revenues fell by a total of $1 billion between 2008 and 2009. Still, a full 81 percent of Internet surfers say they’re cool with online ads if it means the content remains free, although “much of that is because they find them easy to ignore.”

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SXSW 2010 for Cloud Lovers

Fascinated by the cloud and what it means for the future of Web apps, social gaming, open-source and the after life? Then you have plenty to keep you busy if you are heading to SXSW this year.

This is part of a series of ReadWriteWeb guides to SXSW Interactive 2010. If this guide isn’t your cup of tea, be sure to check back for more information soon!

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Can You Run a ‘Serverless’ Business?

This discussion looks like one of the better cloud panels at SXSW. It features panelists such as Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, who is there to discuss how cloud computing platforms have evolved so that it is possible to run a ‘’serverless” business with confidence.

Accessibility: What It Is For and Where It is Going

How does the cloud affect accessibility? Will cloud-computing allow for a metaphorical curb cut out, allowing access to rich Internet applications? Ahhh – another example of how cloud computing is affecting all aspects of our word.

From the SXSW guide:

“Could a Software as a Service (SaaS) model deliver assistive technologies as a cloud-based service? The National Public Inclusive Infrastructure (NPII) is trying to do just that. As a facilitator for more rapid deployment of assistive technologies and a means to prototype new business models for emerging assistive technologies, AT could become part of an extensive infrastructure of readily available, electronic curb cuts that allow for seeamless access for a broader range of users than have been included to date.”

Drupal in the Cloud!
Pantheon is an open-source cloud hosting initiative for the Drupal development community. Josh Koenig will examine “The Cloud” as a concept, look at the marketplace for cloud services, and dig into what it takes to build an application on a cloud-based platform.

Our Interactive Culture Clouds

Were not sure about this one. Looks like it’s made for SXSW with its discussions about how business and love meet. We’re uncertain how the cloud plays into this one but just about everything does these days, doesn’t it? Next!

You Developed the Content — Now Build The Hardware

The cloud is sending developers back to the labs to rethink and build new hardware that fits the wave of cloud-based applications in the market. Cool! From the SXSW Guide:

“This presentation discusses how software/content developers can use open-source hardware to build devices that integrate tightly with their applications.”

Become Immortal: Understanding the Digital After Life

Now talk about ghosts in the machine. Just think, when we die our identities will float in cloud networks all over the world. This may be the most philosophical discussion around cloud computing that we see at SXSW. It’s time to explore the digital beyond!

Finally, can one man be a cloud? The cloud is just about anything at SXSW so a man on a bike with a wifi hotspot in his backpack must qualify. Look for “The Jason Cloud,” as you walk the streets of Austin. Considering AT&T’s service, you may want to hire a bike taxi and follow Jason around for a few days.

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McKinsey: Get Ready For Sensor-Driven Business Models

Consulting firm McKinsey has just released a report on the Internet of Things, one of ReadWriteWeb’s top 5 trends of last year. The report, available for free if you sign up as a member of McKinsey Quarterly, focuses on the "new sensor-driven
business models" that Internet of Things brings.

McKinsey sees two categories for emerging applications: "information and analysis" and "automation and control." Many of the applications listed are for large companies or specialized industries (for example automobile manufacturers). But consumers should take note too, because there will be a lot more data about us flowing onto the Internet.

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McKinsey defines Internet of Things as "sensors and actuators
embedded in physical objects [...]
linked through wired and wireless networks, often using the same
Internet Protocol (IP) that connects the Internet."

In the "information and analysis" category, McKinsey firstly lists tracking behavior. An example is insurance companies installing location sensors in customers’ cars, allowing them to base the price of policies on "how a car is driven as well
as where it travels." Another example is Tesco’s use of sensors to capture
shoppers’ profile data via membership cards. According to McKinsey, this "can help
close purchases by providing additional information or offering
discounts at the point of sale."

On the B2B side, McKinsey points to companies using sensors to track RFID tags placed on products moving through
supply chains. We’ve written before about IBM’s activities in this market.

The next information and analysis application is enhanced situational awareness.
This is when large numbers of sensors are deployed in infrastructure such
as roads and buildings, in order to report on real-time environmental conditions such as weather or temperature.

Sensor-driven decision analytics shows how revolutionary sensor technologies could be, without most consumers even realizing it! The report explains that some retailers are presently studying ways to gather and
process data from shoppers as they flow through
stores. Sensor readings and videos will be able to "note how long they linger at
individual displays and record what they ultimately buy," data which McKinsey says "will help to increase revenues by optimizing retail
layouts."

The second major category for Internet of Things apps in this report is "automation and control."
By this McKinsey means "converting
the data and analysis collected through the Internet of Things
into instructions that feed back through the network to actuators
that in turn modify processes."

The first class of apps listed under this category is process optimization, for example for chemical production and assembly lines.

Next is optimized resource consumption, for example power companies that provide so-called ’smart meters’ so that customers can better manage their power expenditure. This is particularly useful for companies that use a lot of power every day, because they can "shift energy-intensive processes and
production away from high-priced periods of peak energy demand to
low-priced off-peak hours."

The third and final automation and control use case is complex autonomous systems, which McKinsey calls "the most demanding use of the Internet of Things" because it involves rapid,
real-time sensing of unpredictable conditions. For example the automobile industry is developing systems that can detect imminent
collisions and take evasive action.

The report ends by saying that the Internet of Things holds great promise, but there are many issues to resolve – including privacy, legal and cost of sensors and actuators. However McKinsey thinks that energy consumption efficiency and process
optimization are "good early targets" for businesses using Internet of Things.

Overall, this is an informative, useful report for companies who want to get their heads around the potential business opportunities of the Internet of Things. For ReadWriteWeb’s ongoing coverage and analysis of this important trend, check out our Internet of Things archive and subscribe to our RSS feed.

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Roundup: Conan takes over Twitter with one tweet, Bloom pulls back the curtain, and more

Here’s the latest action:

The future of music on the web — TechDirt takes a deep dive into possible future business models for the online music industry, highlighting the need for companies to connect with fans, while adding value they are willing to pay for.

Salesforce reports strong fourth quarter — The enterprise software company posted $20.4 million in profits, up 48 percent from the previous year. Revenue came in at $354 million, up 22 percent. ZDNet has more details.

Conan instantly trumps Leno on Twitter — Within three hours of joining the micro-blogging site, the dethroned king of Late Night racked up almost twice the followers as competitor Jay Leno. You can follow him here (though he only has one tweet up so far).

Why did Wordpress fail? — The blog publishing service’s founder talks about how the cloud wasn’t to blame for its downtime last week, but data center routing was. He tears down the concept of the ‘cloud’ a little bit in the process.

Breaking down Bloom Energy — Earth2Tech drills down into what the ‘miracle’ fuel-cell startup is promising versus what it will need to make clean, off-the-grid power a reality.
Lotus launches its own hybrid http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10459455-48.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=GreenTech

Yelp slapped with extortion lawsuit – The review site has just been served a class-action lawsuit for allegedly charging companies ranked on the site money in exchange for removing negative critiques. TechCrunch has the story.

An ‘adult section’ on the App Store? — In response to Apple removing sexually-explicit content from the iPhone App Store, several bloggers and analysts, fueled by suggestive screen shots, have speculated that there will soon be a category created in the store for explicit content only.

Foursquare airs first TV commercial — The location-based mobile app ran its first television advertisement tonight. You can see it below:

Companies: Apple, Bloom Energy, Foursquare, salesforce, Twitter, wordpress, Yelp

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Apple’s Secret Cloud Strategy And Why Lala Is Critical

This is a guest post from Michael Robertson, a 12-year veteran of the digital music business. He is the founder and former CEO of digital music pioneer MP3.com. He is currently the CEO of music locker company MP3tunes. Robertson is also an adviser to Google Voice.

For years there’s been speculation that Apple would supplement their $1/song (now $1.29) iTunes business with a monthly subscription service, but their upcoming plans are quite different and once again are positioning them to lead the digital music industry into a new era. Leveraging their ubiquitous iTunes software Apple plans to upgrade their users almost over night to a cloud music service in an ambitious move to beat Amazon and others to a cloud music service. Record labels are wary to give Apple even greater dominance which is why Apple’s new strategy is designed to sidestep new licenses from the major labels.

Apple’s recent acquisition of digital music startup Lala rekindled speculation of an iTunes subscription service. There’s no shortage of subscription offerings (Napster, Rhapsody, Spotify, Pandora, etc), but none have attracted the millions of subscribers necessary to make the high royalty structures work. Experts have pondered that Apple’s design expertise and hardware integration could make subscription work. And leveraging Lala’s digital library, licenses from the major labels, and a management team who cycled through several business models including the ten cent web song rental could make it a reality. It’s a logical assumption, but after talking to a wide variety of insider sources it’s clear there is no upcoming Apple subscription service and Apple has far different plans.

Lala will play a critical role in Apple’s music future, but not for the reasons cited above. Lala’s licenses with major labels are non-transferable, so they’re not usable for any new iTunes service. The 10 cent song rental model never gained traction and does not cover mobile devices thus is of little value to Apple. What is of value is the personal music storage service which was an often overlooked component of Lala’s business. As Apple did with the original iPods, Lala realized that any music solution must include music already possessed by the user. The Lala setup process provides software to store a personal music library online and then play it from any web browser alongside web songs they vend. This technology plus the engineering and management team is the true value of Lala to Apple.

An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet. The Lala upload technology will be bundled into a future iTunes upgrade which will automatically be installed for the 100+ million itunes users with a simple “An upgrade is available…” notification dialog box. After installation iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area. Once loaded, users will be able to navigate and play their music, videos and playlists from their personal URL using a browser based iTunes experience.

Apple will link the tens of millions of previously sold iPods, Touches, AppleTV and iTablets to mobile iTunes giving users seamless playback of their media from a wide range of Apple branded devices. Since media will be supplied from the user’s personal collection, Apple is freed from the hassles of device and region limitations. iTunes shoppers will be able to continue to buy music and movies as they can now with purchases still being downloaded, but once downloaded they will be automatically loaded to their mobile iTunes area for anywhere access. Again because users are in possession of the materials no new licenses are required from the record labels or publishers.

Some are curious why Apple with thousands of engineers would need Lala talent and technology. For sure Apple could copy Lala technology, but time is of the essence and Lala lets Apple move faster in transitioning from their PC software business to a cloud service. They get a knowledgeable digital music engineering team, plus a code base to build upon which already does uploading and web playback. There’s precedence for this strategy. The iTunes software did not originate within in Apple but came via an acquisition. Finally, Apple gets the quick witted, brilliant, but occasionally loony Lala CEO Bill Nguyen who will play a future role in Apple. (Although one wonders how Jobs and lime light relishing Nguyen can co-exist.)

It’s critically important that technology companies build and maintain a core strength. This cornerstone allows them to command a significant portion of the profit stream and is a beachhead to launch other initiatives. Think Amazon/e-commerce, Microsoft/OS, Google/search, Apple/media. Jobs is keenly aware of the digital transition from PC to cloud centric programs and services. It’s imperative Apple lead in this transition or risk ceding leadership in media to others such as Amazon, Real, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. Lala will help Apple protect their media franchise from encroachment by accelerating their cloud efforts. iTunes users can expect mobile iTunes in 2010.

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How Google Can Combat Content Farms

In my recent post about the rise of content farms like Demand Media and the current incarnation of AOL, I posited that Google (and search in general) risks becoming less relevant as the Web gets drowned in lesser quality content. This is due to the scale at which these content farms are operating at – Demand Media alone pumps out 4,000 new pieces of content every day. The solution is of course for Google and other search engines to find better ways to surface quality content, whether that be from traditional news media, blogs or even Demand Media (not all of its content is poor quality).

So how can Google evolve to identify quality content better?

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Quality! Pah, Does Google Need to Bother?

Perhaps we should first answer the question: why should Google be worried about the quality issue? After all, it has a virtual monopoly on the search market. The obvious and PR answer is that Google wants to provide the best search results possible for its users. But there is another big reason why Google needs to do something. So-called "quality" content providers are already well advanced in routing around Google, or at least making them less relevant.

As I wrote yesterday, Reuters is onto something with its subscription business model. According to Chris Ahearn, President of Media at Thomson Reuters, the company already makes the “vast majority of its revenues” from subscription-based business models targeted to “vertical and niche markets.” Reuters also provides services as well as just content. Bloomberg is another leading media company finding success with this strategy.

The subscription model is making inroads, because the users themselves are flocking to it. A prime example comes from VC Paul Kedrosky, who became frustrated after doing various Google searches for "dishwasher reviews" and getting unsatisfactory results. He says that this has made him "more willing to pay for things" – in that case a Consumer Reports review of dishwashers. As Kedrosky archly noted, "the opportunity cost of continuing to try to sort through the info-crap in Google results was simply too high."

What Google Can Do

Google surely knows that quality (or lack thereof) in its index is a problem. As one part of the solution, Google is currently experimenting with real-time search results from social media sites like Twitter, MySpace and even Facebook. The theory is that users are more likely to get timely, relevant results by tapping into their social network.

That’s all well and good, but real-time search is unlikely to give you better results on the dishwasher search and other topic-focused search queries. So what else can Google do to identify and surface quality material?

Some readers in Sunday’s post (Tadhg, Charles Coxhead and others) argued that Google’s current algorithm accounts for quality well enough, through the link economy. But many others thought that Google must improve its ranking of quality. Here were some of our readers’ suggestions:

• Neutralize the link dilution; A.J. Kohn, who further wrote that "the introduction of SearchWiki, their measurement of short-clicks versus long-clicks, the new domain/brand SERP listing, snippet links, and use of breadcrumbs all point to a gathering movement to help determine quality without such a reliance on an ever diluted link ecosystem."
• Do a better job ranking authority; for more on this read Clay Shirky’s post on "Algorithmic Authority."
• Introduce a user rating system; Tony Masinelli.
• Leverage sharing networks to determine where the quality is; Alex Kessinger.
• Special curation and algorithms on top of that; William Mougayar, whose company Eqentia does precisely that.
• p2p recommendation (i.e. filtering through your peers); Nick Taylor.
• Capture engagement data; Mark Littlewood.
• Give special weightings to categories of content, e.g. content farms, social media bookmarks blogs and Twitter; Aaron Savage.
• Use anti-spam type software to identify content that makes too much use of keywords; Barry.
• Track reputation against authors rather than URLs – a ‘PageRank for People’; Marshall Clark.

These are all great ideas. Google is almost certainly already doing some of these things already – as will other search companies. John Battelle is expecting a "major breakthrough" in search in 2010 and I hope he’s right.

One thing is for sure, Google will need to do more in 2010 if it’s to stay ahead of the content farms and continue to surface quality content for its millions of users.

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The End Of Hand Crafted Content

Old media loves nothing quite so much as writing about their own impending death. And we always enjoy adding our own two cents – the AP not knowing what YouTube is, the NYTimes guys reading TechCrunch every day, etc.

Speaking broadly, I like what Reuters, Rupert Murdoch and Eric Schmidt are saying: the industry is in crisis, and the daring innovators will prevail. Personally, I still think the best way forward for the best journalists, if not the brands they currently work for, is to leave those brands and do their own thing.

But as one of the innovators in the last go round, I think there’s a much bigger problem lurking on the horizon than a bunch of blogs and aggregators disrupting old media business models that needed disrupting anyway. The rise of fast food content is upon us, and it’s going to get ugly.

Old media frets over blogs and aggregators that summarize content and link back to the original source. They can’t make a business in that world, they say, so they run the other way and try to find a way to protect and charge for content.

These are the cavemen, or whoever, who were afraid of fire when it was discovered because it burned, or was too technologically advanced to really understand. The smart guys used it to cook their meat and keep them warm, and multiplied.

For our part, we throw a party when someone “steals” our content and links back to us. High fives all around the office. At least there’s some small nod in our direction. And the aggregators like TechMeme can figure out who broke the news. Page views are lost, but reputation is gained.

But for every link there are dozens of sites that outright steal our content with no attribution. Not just spam blogs, even the NYTimes does it. This isn’t a copyright issue – the stories are rewritten by actual people. But it’s far cheaper to simply take the news and rewrite it – if you can get away with it – than to hire people who do actual journalism. Over time, it becomes a competitive tax that is difficult to bear.

But even then, companies like ours can find a way to compete.

So what really scares me? It’s the rise of fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that hand craft their content today. It’s the rise of cheap, disposable content on a mass scale, force fed to us by the portals and search engines.

On one end you have AOL and their Toyota Strategy of building thousand of niche content sites via the work of cast-offs from old media. That leads to a whole lot of really, really crappy content being highlighted right on the massive AOL home page. This article, for example, is just horrendous. One of AOL’s own blogs trashes the company’s spinoff, rambles for miles without any real point, and adds a huge factual error to top things off (”the company is losing money”). Hiring a bunch of people who couldn’t keep their old media jobs and don’t have the stomach to go out on their own and then slapping little or no editorial oversight onto these masses of sub-par journalists leads to an inevitable conclusion – cheap, crappy content. And that crappy content is given a massive audience on the AOL portal.

On the other end you have Demand Media and companies like it. See Wired’s “Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model.” The company is paying bottom dollar to create “4,000 videos and articles” a day, based only on what’s hot on search engines. They push SEO juice to this content, which is made as quickly and cheaply as possible, and pray for traffic. It works like a charm, apparently.

These models create a race to the bottom situation, where anyone who spend time and effort on their content is pushed out of business.

We’re not there yet, but I see it coming. And just as old media is complaining about us, look for us to start complaining about the new jerks.

My advice to readers is just this – get ready for it, because you’ll be reading McDonalds five times a day in the near future. My advice to content creators is more subtle. Figure out an even more disruptive way to win, or die. Or just give up on making money doing what you do. If you write for passion, not dollars, you’ll still have fun. Even if everything you write is immediately ripped off without attribution, and the search engines don’t give you the attention they used to. You may have to continue your hobby in the evening and get a real job, of course. But everyone has to face reality sometimes.

Forget fair and unfair, right and wrong. This is simply happening. The disruptors are getting disrupted, and everyone has to adapt to it or face the consequences. Hand crafted content is dead. Long live fast food content, it’s here to stay.

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