Daniel Obodovski explains IoT

My good friend Daniel Obodovski wrote a very good book, The Silent Intelligence, that provides an excellent overview of the internet of things phenomenon. He and his partner, Daniel Kellmereit, discuss topics such as connected cities, connected homes, connected healthcare, connected cars, and various other connected things, both industrial and commercial.

There are some key points that Daniel and I have discussed often which are well summarized in this video interview he did last year. The day Google acquired Nest (yes, the smart thermostat company!) for over $3 Billion Dollars, made everyone start pay attention to IoT, even though Daniel and I have been involved in this high tech area for over 5 years now!

 

 

Wireless Technologies, Big Data and Healthcare

Ok, this is a bit outside of the usual IoT area, but high tech and healthcare are becoming such a hot topic, that I wanted to share this presentation made by my friend, Dr. Mattison (here is his bio).  He spoke at an intimate gathering of TiE here in San Diego in September 2014. (Start video at 15 minutes if you want to go directly to the start of the presentation). In his presentation Dr. John covers everything from why you should wear your Fitbit, to genomics and social networking, and the transformation of what future of practicing medicine holds, and how doctors will again be healers with the help of these various technologies. In his first slide he has a list of books that he recommends, so stop the video and go to Amazon!

 

M2M Data and Product Quality

One of the key uses of the “big data” that is generated by the devices connected to the Internet of Things is something that you may not have considered so far. As a former QA guru who relied on metric and statistics to determine whether a product was ready for deployment and then follow the standard improvement processes for new feature additions, I see M2M data as a great way to measure the quality, reliability and usability of the products out in the field.

Imagine that the new refrigerator you just launched is now connected and you’re getting logs of data as to its functionality, frequency and time of use, energy used, maintenance information, etc. that you can now incorporate into your next product development cycle to add to your test plans and product development plans and to prioritize next feature upgrades.

You now have a real-time connection with your customers and can respond to problems before they are even aware that the problem exists. In this new world of IoT, you will be the one proactively contacting the customer to let him know that the new refrigerator they just bought needs a replacement part, and that it’s already being shipped, and a repair person has been notified to arrive and replace it tomorrow!

Looks like Ericsson shares my worries

This article validates many of the ideas that I expressed in my panel discussion a few weeks ago about the concerns I have regarding what really happens with all the data that is collected from all the millions and billions of devices that are being deployed as part of this Internet of things.

On one hand there is a utopian view of having various gadgets around us collect data and help us in preventing problems with things like our appliances and our cars for example. However on the flipside all this data as we have seen recently may be collected for intentions that we’re not even aware of and will paint patterns of activities that may be used for tracking us, or worse it may fall into hands of unknown entities, which may have even more nefarious intentions.

What about M2M and Data?

Technology Spectator said this earlier this year about The Internet of Things

The development of high-speed broadband infrastructure is now well and truly underway in many countries and one of the real value propositions of this new infrastructure will be the further development of the ‘Internet of Things’(IoT) which is going to be a real game-changer. It will transform every single sector of society and the economy and it will be out of this environment that new businesses – and indeed new industries – will be born. For the telecom this trend will be driven not so much by the carriers as by internet-based services (databases), and it looks as though these developments will come from the bottom up. Exciting new internet applications and mobile apps will see people installing sensors to link to the internet, and data-gathering and real-time analytics will be valuable services that people will want to use. Companies will follow later –either by building their own IoT infrastructure and/or by buying up some of the IoT start-ups.

So when Anil Kripalani asked me to moderate a TiE South Coast panel on wireless, I chose this particular topic. Here’s the video from that panel discussion with the following industry leaders: Mo Nasser from Sprint, Naresh Soni from Interdigital, Fred Yentz from ILS Technologies, and Prof. Subramanya from National University.