Tag: internet of things

Regent Street fights back

London’s Regent Street shows how main street retailers can use new technology to reinvent themselves

Main street shopping strips have had a hard time over the past forty years as supermarkets and big box stores have steadily drained customers away, however the new wave of retail, manufacturing and logistics technologies may be an opportunity to revitalise them.

A good example of shopping strips using new technologies is London’s Regent Street with its smart shopping app that integrates with iBeacon location devices,  the website Contactless Intelligence reports how shopkeepers, landlords and the local authorites are rolling out an initiative as part of a £1 billion regeneration project.

London’s Regent Street is a fairly unique mainstreet in that it’s extremely upmarket which gives it a lot of advantages over most neighbourhoods, but it does point the way for how other shopping strips can use new technologies to reinvent themselves.

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Apple goes for the wearable market

Apple’s gets its message out about wearable technology

“You’re more powerful than you think” is the message of Apple’s current iPhone advertising campaign.

Their latest advert in the campaign features joggers, gymnasts, swimmers and golfers all using iPhone apps to connect with their wearable technologies.

It didn’t take long after Monday’s World Wide Developer Conference announcement of Apple’s Healthkit for the company to get its message out about wearable technology.

Undoubtedly we can look forward to soon seeing the Homekit smarthome campaign showing how Apple’s products make life easy in the smarthome.

What’s absolutely clear is Apple’s determination to be the hub of the domestic internet of things, whether the vendors of those fitness and smarthome devices want to be locked into the world of Apple remains to be seen.

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A bot named Willy and the risk of trusting data

Allegations of Bitcoin market manipulation are a reminder of the risks in blindly trusting data.

For two years we were captivated by spectacular rise of the Bitcoin virtual currency. Allegations those gains were a result of market fixing raise important questions about the integrity of our data networks.

The Coin Desk website discusses how the Mt Gox Bitcoin exchange was being ramped by computer bot network nicknamed Willy.

Rampant market ramping – where stock prices are pushed up to attract suckers before those in know sell at a profit – has a proud financial market history; during the 1920s US stock boom, fortunes were made by inside players before the crash and its subsequent banning in 1934.

So it wouldn’t be a surprise that some smart players would try to ramp the Bitcoin market to make a buck and using a botnet – a network of infected computers – to run the trades is a good technological twist.

Blindly trusting data

The Willy botnet though is a worry for those of us watching the connected economy as it shows a number of weaknesses in a world where data is blindly trusted.

As Quinn Norton writes on Medium, everything in the software industry is broken and blindly trusting the data pouring into servers could be a risky move.

The internet of things is based upon the idea of sensors gathering data for smart services to make decisions – one of those decisions is buying and selling securities.

Feeding false information

It’s not too hard to see a scenario where a compromised service feeds false data such as steel shipments, pork belly consumption or energy usage to manipulate market prices or to damage a competitor’s business.

Real world ramifications of bad data could see not only honest investors out of pocket but also steel workers out work, abattoirs sitting on onsold stocks of pig carcasses or blackouts as energy companies miscalculate demand.

The latter has happened before, with Enron manipulating the Californian electricity market in the late 1990s.

When your supply chain depends upon connected devices reporting accurate information then the integrity of data becomes critical.

Like much in the computer world, the world of big data and the internet of things is based up trust, the Mt Gox Bitcoin manipulation reminds us that we can’t always trust the data we receive.

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4D printing and the next generation of design – ABC Sydney

The future of design and 4D printing are the topics of today’s 702 Sydney segment with Linda Mottram

I’ll be on ABC Sydney this morning discussing 4D printing and the future of design as the Sydney Vivid Festival swings into gear.

Some of the areas we’ll be looking at in the spot that should start around 10.20am is what exactly is 4D printing, how can materials build themselves and how designers are creating more sustainable devices like Google’s Project Ara.

One particularly interesting Vivid session is the Electric Dreams to Reality session that will feature local entrepreneurs and makers explaining how they are using the internet of things and new design.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 222 702 or post a question on ABC702 Sydney’s Facebook page.

If you’re a social media users, you can also follow the show through twitter to @paulwallbank and @702Sydney.

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Microsoft and home automation

Microsoft play catch up in the home automation market with their Insteon partnership

An major Internet of Things story this week was Microsoft’s partnership with home automation vendor Insteon.

This is a fascinating development for Microsoft, particularly given the lukewarm market adoption of Windows tablets and phones.

While Microsoft have some substantial advantages with their internet of things offering for the industrial and commercial markets, home automation is a crowded field where the company is playing catch up.

For Insteon, a partnership with Microsoft doesn’t matter while they have open standards along with support for both iOS and Android, for Microsoft though they have a lot way to go to make a dent in a market that a decade ago many thought they would have dominated.

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The Australian Internet of Things Forum

The first Australian Internet of Things Forum is launched

The first Australian Internet of Things was held in Newcastle today which I MC’d and managed to give a quick presentation on my Geek’s Tour of Barcelona.

Big Data was the big message from all the day’s sessions with every speaker touching on the challenge of understanding and securing the vast amounts of data collected.

It’s interesting how the technologists — and most of the material was quite high level — have identified this as the main problem facing management with the Internet of Things.

A key take away from the forum is that the clear opportunity for entrepreneurs with the IoT lies in giving businesses the tools to understand the data.

One of the reasons for the event was to launch the Kaooma Project that aims to link local businesses to the Internet of Things. The local business angle is something that needs to be explored in more depth.

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Securing the industrial internet

GE’s acquistion of Wurldtech is another example of just how seriously engineering companies are taking security in the internet of things, hopefully those building consumer systems are paying attention too.

One of the big concerns with connecting devices to the public internet is security, particularly when equipment that was never intended to be on the net is suddenly wired up.

When the world’s computers started to be connected to the Internet in the mid-1990s it became apparent very quickly that most of the operating systems then in use were hopelessly vulnerable to security problems.

The worry is the same thing will happen today with the Internet of Things, particularly with household equipment which – if the PC industry’s experience is anything to go by – will open up whole new fields of risk to homeowners.

While having your kettle or home networked hacked could be painful, it’s nothing compared to the risks of infrastructure or vital equipment being compromised.

So GE’s acquisition of security company Wurldtech is an important development as it focuses on the software aspects of its products and the Industrial Internet – GE’s own term for the internet of things.

Techcrunch’s Ron Miller has a good run down on GE’s purchase of Wurldtech where Neil McDonnell, the CEO of the acquired business, describes the company’s two pronged approach to security.

First, they do testing to discover vulnerabilities in the system and they certify sites that are secure. Secondly, they provide specific security solutions around a system such as a substation or pump.

For GE, Wurldtech will help them secure existing infrastructure and equipment that’s being connected to the net, what they learn should also help designers of the next generation of equipment build security into their products.

GE’s acquistion of Wurldtech is another example of just how seriously engineering companies are taking security in the internet of things, hopefully those building consumer systems are paying attention too.

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