internet of things | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Learning to ask the right questions

What a three time Oscar winner can tell us about managing the data generated from the Internet of Machines

How do we make sense of the masses of data entering our businesses? Tableau Software founder – and multiple Academy Award winner – Pat Hanrahan thinks he has the answer.

A major challenge presented by the Internet of Things is in understanding the data that’s generated by devices, data visualisation companies like Tableau Software are making easier to interpret what machines are telling us.

“The streaming data coming from sensors is a very interesting opportunity,” Tableau co-founder Pat Hanrahan told Network Globe when discussing machine to machine technologies, “there’s so much potential.”

A Stanford Professor and winner of three academy awards for Computer Generated Imagery, Hanrahan founded Tableau with Christian Chabot and Chris Stolte in 2003 with a mission to help people to understand data. Today the company employs a hundred people after going public last year.

The origins of Tableau came from Hanrahan tiring of the movie industry which he’d been part of since joining Pixar on graduating in 1987, “I was thinking could we use computer graphics for other things, I want to find something more work related so I got interested in data visualisation.”

Hanrahan teamed with Stolte, who was one of his students, to set up a company called Polaris that became the basis of Tableau; “it was a classic Stanford start-up, Google was literally right next to us. I remember when the company started, Larry Page came to our office party.”

Making data accessible

“I’ve always been fascinated with taking the high end stuff and making it more accessible” says Hanrahan. “We’re in a transition phase, where we’re tying to figure out how to make it more accessible.”

Helping those who are passionate about facts and reasons is one of Tableau’s missions,”we have fanatical customers,” says Hanrahan.

“If you’re one of the rare people who use facts and reasons to solve the world’s problems then you are persecuted, you are on a mission, you’re going to convince those crazies that you’re right and you’re wrong and that’s why they’re so fanatical about our product.”

“There’s a little bit of hype around big data right now, but it’s a very real trend;” states Hanrahan. “Just look at the increase in the amount of data that’s been going up exponentially and that’s just the natural result of technology; we have more sensors, we collect more data, we have faster computer and bigger disks.”

A good example of the exponential growth in computing power is in how the smartphone has developed, citing how far computers have come since 1997 when IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat Kasparov, “at the time both Kasparov and the computer were rated 2700, the best chess programs now are rated 3800.”

“The chess program running on my iPhone is rated above 3000,” observes Hanrahan.

Despite the leaps in power, Hanrahan doesn’t see algorithms completely replacing the human touch, “you have the technology and resources to do this but you still need someone to figure out how to make it accessible.”

One of the keys to understanding information is to be literate in using it, “every student should be efficient in using data,” Hanrahan says and he sees data analysis skills as being essential in the future workforce; “we have to know how to ask the right questions.”

Making the data generated by connected machines accessible to the public, workers and managers is going to be one of the big challenges for organisations over the next decades; it’s an area where companies like Tableau are going to do well.

Neglecting the small business sector

The IT industry continues to neglect the small business sector

I’ve previously flagged how the IT industry fixates on the consumer sector, the Kickstart forum on Australia’s Gold Coast emphasised this with vendors, particularly those in the Internet of Things market, focusing on home users.

This is mindset is understandable given the huge numbers being cited for consumer applications, but the sneaking suspicion is that home users simply aren’t going to pay for these technologies and that the real money will be made in helping the retail sector deliver services to customers.

On Networked Globe today we discuss that quandary, it’s something that both vendors, consumers and small businesses should be thinking about given the way it’s going to change supply chains and entire industries.

The evolution of the Internet of Things

Cooking Hacks shows how the internet of things evolved out of other technologies

One of the notable things about modern technology is that few of the developments are actually new, the Internet of Things is a good example of this.

Most of the tech we talk about is a collection of existing technologies that have been cobbled together — cloud computing, 3D printing and the Internet of things are all good examples of this.

Libelium’s Cooking Hacks community page has a good infographic on how the makers’ movement, crowd funding and miniaturization have driven the development of the Internet of Things, 3D printing and wearable technologies.

The diagram, shown at the bottom of the post, is a good illustration of how technologies are evolving and the businesses that are being spawned from the developments.

Cooking Hack’s infographic show why it’s an exciting time to be in business.

Reinventing Moore’s Law

Has the pendulum swung against Moore’s law of computers steadily increasing their capabilities?

Google attracted the headlines yesterday with their prototype smart contact lens that helps diabetes sufferers.

The concept is an example of what’s possible with the next generation of tiny, low powered computers and illustrates how microchips can be slimmed down for a relatively dumb device.

Liz Gannes at Re/Code received a briefing from Google on the details of the device and quotes project lead Brian Otis as saying that the lens is “the flip side of Moore’s Law.”

Moore’s law

For most of the microchip era the focus has been on increasing the number of transistors we could fit in a square inch of silicon, this was the basis of Moore’s law — that the number of transistors on integrated circuits will double every year.

Co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, proposed this rule in 1965 and it has held fairly constant every since.

Now we may be seeing the trend heading the other way as developers focus on what can be achieved with the bare minimum of computing power.

Google’s smart contact lens shows how simplifying devices for specific tasks makes them more affordable and suitable for low power devices.

While the internet of things won’t kill Moore’s Law, it does change the basis of how we think about advances in microchip technology.

Connecting the vending machine

Vending machines are leading the way in adoption of the internet of machines

Wired Magazine’s Klint Finlay speculates why Coca-Cole would want sixteen million MAC address for their vending machines.

That Coca-Cola has connected all their vending machines shouldn’t come as a surprise, probably the only thing moderately unusual from this story is that the soft drink company organises its own hardware rather than getting the machine manufacturers to do it.

Vending machines being connected isn’t new, back in the days of dial up modems some of the more advanced one would use phone lines for basic diagnostics.

Today most vending machines have a cellular connection used for payments, stock monitoring, fault warnings and vandalism detection.

A visit to my local swimming pool today showed this, the Coca-Cola branded machine machine outside the change rooms offers credit payments and in the not too distant future will probably include some sort of NFC type option.

On top of the the machine is a little aerial for the back to base communications. So the device can validate and bill cards, report back when stock levels are low and alert operators to anything untowards happening.

A big opportunity for the soft drink companies and their distributors is analysing the information about buying patterns at various locations — it’s a classic Big Data play.

So it’s not surprising Coca-Cola has registered a block of MAC addresses as the company will probably need several more 16 million blocks in the not too distant future as more of their operations from bottling plants to vending machines require unique connections.

Vending machines are a small but obvious example of how the internet of things is evolving, in the near future most consumer devices will have similar options.

King Canute and Google: When the algorithm is wrong

As society and business drown in big data we’re relying on algorithms and computer programs to helps us wade through the masses of information, could that be a weakness?

As society and business drown in big data we’re relying on algorithms and computer programs to helps us wade through a flood of information, could that reliance be a weakness?

British Archeology site Digital Digging discusses how Google displays Manchester United winger Ryan Giggs in the results search for Cnut, the ancient king of Denmark better known in the English speaking world as King Canute.

Apparently Giggs appears in the search results for Canute because of the footballer’s futile attempt to hold back a tide of information about his love life.

While Google’s algorithm seems to have made a mistake, it’s only doing what it’s been programmed to do. A lot of trusted websites have used the term ‘Canute’ or ‘Cnut’ in relation to Giggs so the machine presents his picture as being relevant to the search.

Confusing Ryan Giggs and King Canute is mildly amusing until we consider how critical algorithms like Google Search have become to decision making, there are no shortage of stories about people being wrongly billed, detained or even gaoled on the basis of bad information from computers.

The stakes in making mistakes based on bad information are being raised all the time as processes become more automated, a chilling technology roadmap for the US military in Vice Magazine describes the future of ‘autonomous warfare’.

By the end 2021, just eight years away, the Pentagon sees “autonomous missions worldwide” as being one of their objectives.

Autonomous missions means local commanders and drones being able to make decisions to kill people or attack communities based on the what their computers tell them. The consequences of a bad result from a computer algorithm suddenly become very stark indeed.

While most decisions based on algorithms may not have the life or death consequences that a computer ordered drone strike on a family picnic might have, mistakes could cost businesses money and individuals much inconvenience.

So it’s worthwhile considering how we build the cultural and technological checks and balances into how we use big data and the algorithms necessary to analyze it so that we minimise mistakes.

Contrary to legend, King Canute didn’t try to order the tide not to come in. He was trying to demonstrate to obsequious court that he was fallible and a subject to the laws of nature and god as any other man.

Like the court of King Canute, we should be aware of the foibles and weaknesses of the technologies that increasingly guides us. The computer isn’t always right.

Smart homes come of age

Smart devices are going to change our homes as much as our offices.

For years we’ve been predicting the arrival of the smart home, this week the Chicago Tribune reports that the connected household may be becoming a reality.

The Chicago Tribune describes Raffi Kajberounihi’s Santa Clarita home where his doors and his home automation systems are all controlled by his smartphone.

Most of the technology in Raffi’s house isn’t new, it was just unaffordable for most people until recently.

“It had always been an upscale-type business: Unless you were in the top 5% of income levels, you didn’t have access to this type of connectivity,” said Randy Light, merchant of home automation for Home Depot.

Wireless Internet and the widespread proliferation of smartphones are making smart home technologies more sophisticated — and affordable.

“This used to be something out of ‘The Jetsons’ or limited to the super-rich,” said Jonathan Dorsheimer, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity. But as smart home technology has improved and costs have come down, “it’s becoming more mainstream.”

While much of the focus on the smart home has been around the consumer applications, much of the real potential lies in the machine to machine possibilities.

The Nest smoke detector is a good example of how smart devices are evolving, it doubles as a nightlight and is intelligent enough to spot the difference between burning toast at 7am and a smoldering electric blanket at 11pm.

The next wave of air conditioners could be checking the weather forecast and adjusting settings before a cold change hits, similarly a smart alarm clock may well check transit and traffic information to adjust wake up times when the trip into work is unusually congested.

For all the benefits though there are risks; as we saw with the Foscam baby monitor, security remains a real concern that isn’t as built into devices as it should be.

Over time, we’ll find these smart technologies are changing our households. With that will come advantages and risks that we’ll have to manage.

Discussing Cryptolocker and Internet of Things security on ABC Radio

This morning with Linda Mottram on ABC 702 I’ll be discussing Cryptolocker ransomware and the security of the Internet of Machines.

If you missed the program, you can listen to the segments through Soundcloud.

Tuesday morning with Linda Mottram on ABC 702 I’ll be discussing Cryptolocker ransomware, the security of the Internet of Machines and the tech industry’s call for less internet surveillance.

It’s only a short spot from 10.15am and I’m not sure we’ll have time for callers, but one of the big takeaways I’ll have for listeners is the importance of securing your systems against malware, there’s also some security ideas for business users as well.

We’ll probably get to mention the ACCC’s warnings on smartphone apps and the current TIFF bug in Windows as well.

If you’re in the Sydney area, we’ll be live on 702 from 10.15, otherwise you can stream it through the internet.

Abolishing the service visit

Will the internet of things change the way we service our cars and industrial equipment?

“Service used to be an act of damage control,” said Salesforce’s Peter Coffee at the recent Dreamforce conference. “You are bleeding brand equity until that problem is fixed.”

Coffee’s view is that the internet of things is an opportunity to delight the customer with proactive service that allows companies to fix customers’ problems before they happen.

Zero planned maintenance

Taking this idea further is GE’s Chief Economist, Marco Annunziata, who sees the internet of things as an opportunity to introduce the concept of Zero Planned Downtime where there is no need to stop machines for scheduled repairs and maintenance.

“A lot of the maintenance work is done on a fixed schedule,” Annunziata. “You end up wasting time and money servicing machines that are perfectly fine.”

“On the other hand you might miss that something is about to go wrong between two maintenance periods.”

“The idea of the industrial internet is that by gathering so much data from these machines themselves – plus having the software to analyse this data – you will have information that flags to you when intervention is needed.”

Annunziata’s view is that connected machines won’t need to have regular service intervals, instead of insisting a car has an inspection every ten thousand kilometers where the tyres are replaced and the oil changed, often unnecessarily, the vehicle need only be called in for maintenance when its sensors flag that a part or consumable needs attention.

Finding the benefits

While that can mean big savings for car owners, it’s in fields such as aviation, mining and logistics where the greatest benefits of Zero Planned Downtime would be found.

For businesses it’s another example of how they will fall behind if they don’t invest in modern technology as those who invest in newer, connected equipment will be able to reduce downtime and maintenance cost.

How achievable Zero Planned Downtime is in many fields remains to be seen, not least because of regulatory hurdles in sectors like aviation, however the idea does promise to change the business model of companies that depend upon service revenue.

A geek’s tour of Barcelona

How Barcelona is using smart devices to make their city better.

Spain and Barcelona have faced challenges in recent years as the economy was hit hard by the 2008 crisis. Now the city is looking to the internet for the next wave of prosperity.

This quest for reinvention isn’t new for the city, “Barcelona used to be an industrial city, that was badly hit by the economic crisis of the seventies,” said Deputy Mayor Antoni Vives. “There were some guys in the city at the time that decided that we had to keep on being an important city.”

“There’s a new generation of politicians, civil servants, of thinkers and people committed to the city that ten years ago started to work on a new phase of what the city was to become.”

Antoni Vives - Deputy Mayor of Barcelona — Antoni Vives – Deputy Mayor of Barcelona

“We decided that Barcelona had to become the edgiest city in the world related to the new revolution and the new revolution was this one — the technology related to mobility, devices and mainly the internet.”

That vision resulted in Barcelona starting to rewire the city which was one of the reasons for Cisco choosing the city as the venue for its inaugural Internet of Things World Forum.

As part of the event, the City took delegates on tours of some of the connected infrastructure the city has installed. Here’s what we learned on the press tour.

The digital bus stop

The digital bus stop is one of the prides of Barcelona, not only does it display digital advertising and real time bus schedules it also offers tourist information, USB charging sockets and acts as a free WiFi base station.

One of the barriers Barcelona has encountered has been the Spanish telecoms regulators objection to the city providing municipal WiFi so services are restricted to the city’s property, which happens to include bus stops.

The bus stops themselves are connected to the city’s fibre network that runs most of the backhaul and connects many of the fixed devices.

Smart parking spots

Connected to the city’s WiFi network are these smart parking spaces that detect the presence of cars through a combination of light and metal detectors.

The city’s plan is that payment and monitoring of the smart parking spots will happen online and with smartphone apps.

Powering the dot, which is a fairly dumb device, is a battery with an expected five to seven year lifespan. Interestingly, the dots don’t work with motorcycles.

One of the reporters on the tour questioned the durability of these devices given Barcelona doesn’t get extreme temperatures, the response from the Cisco and city staff indicates that ice or hot weather may shorten the lifespan of these devices.

Smart lighting and monitoring

In the square outside the Born Cultural Centre, the city has installed a row of streetlights with multiple features including CCTV, air monitoring and Wifi. All of these lights are connected to the city’s 500Km long undeground fibre network.

The fibre network itself is being installed progressively as the city carries out routine maintenance to roads and other underground services. By co-ordinating the work with other trades it reduces the installation cost dramatically.

Smart rubbish bins

The connected garbage bins are one of the showpieces of the city’s services. By monitoring trash levels, the council’s sanitation team can plot the optimal routes for collection services.

Again the sensors on the bins are fairly dumb devices that connect wirelessly to a base station, shown on the pole above the bins in the earlier photo, these track rubbish levels and later versions are expected to detect the presence of obnoxious or hazardous materials that might be dumped in the bin.

Single person operation of the connected garbage truck

Operators of the garbage trucks get real time updates to their routes which optimises their productivity. It’s cost savings in the city’s operations which is one of the key drivers for the city’s investment in these technologies.

Power savings

One of the major cost savings identified by the Barcelona Council is in energy costs. Along with the expense of running garbage trucks unnecessarily are power bills.

Part of the smart lighting system is that it will dim when there’s no motion detected in the streets and lighten when pedestrians are around. This is intended to save money and help the city meet it’s zero carbon emission targets.

Barcelona and the future

Every single one of the technologies being shown today in Barcelona will be commonplace in most developed cities in the near future.

The problem for adopting these systems is going to be connectivity, in places where there aren’t the fibre optic services or easily deployed WiFi it will be difficult to install smart devices and monitor them.

Every major city is going to be facing the question of how they deploy these devices over the next decade as their residents expect better and more efficient service. Barcelona has taken the first steps that most others will follow.

A trillion points of data

As shopping centres, social media services and police forces collect greater amounts of information about us, we need to understand and manage the risks involved.

Last night, current Affairs program Four Corners had a look of the risks to families in the age of Big Data.

Earlier in the day I had the opportunity to speak on ABC 702 Sydney with the program’s reporter, Geoff Thompson, to discuss some of the issues and take listeners’ calls about Big Data and security.

What stood out from the audience’s comments is how most people don’t understand the extent of how data is being shared. The frightening thing is the Four Corners program itself understated the extent of how information is being distributed around the internet.

Looking beyond social media

Social media sites like Facebook are an obvious and legitimate area of concern with most people not understanding the ramifications of the terms and conditions of these services, however Big Data is a far more that what you share on LinkedIn or Instagram.

A major point of the program was how the New South Wales police force’s Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) equipment stores photographs of car license plates.

One of the applications of ANPR shown during the program was how an officer can be warned that a vehicle has owned by someone potentially dangerous or used in a suspicious situation, allowing them to be more cautious if they decide to pull a car over. Probably the greatest application is getting unregistered, uninsured or unlicensed drivers off the road.

Those sorts of usage is the positive side of Big Data and its role in reducing the road toll, the example also illustrates how data points are coming together with the internet of machines as traffic lights, road signs and cars themselves are communicating with each other and those police databases.

When that information is put together there’s a lot valuable intelligence and that’s why people are concerned that the NSW Police are storing millions of apparently useless images of car number plates with the time and location of the photographs.

These technologies aren’t just being used in shopping centres; instore mobile phone tracking combined with the same numberplate recognition the police use watching who is entering the carparks makes it possible to predict buying patterns and target offers to shoppers.

Couple that information with store loyalty cards and add in rapidly developing facial recognition, retailers have a very powerful way of monitoring how their customers behave.

“What instore analytics does is it takes the same kind of capablities that e-commerce sites have had for more than a decade and apply them to brick and mortar stores,” says Retail Next’s Tim Callen. Using the store’s CCTV system the company applies facial recognition software to track shoppers’ behaviour.

Securing the data feeds

The immediate concern is the security of this data, we’ve covered the hackable baby monitor and the Four Corners program examined Troy Hunt’s exposure of security flaws in Westfield Shopping Centres’ Find My Car App. Similar security concerns surround government databases like the NSW Police’s numberplate store.

As we’ve seen with the repeated data breaches of 2011, the management of big and small organisations like Sony or Stratfor don’t take security seriously. It’s hard to recall any senior public servant being held accountable for a security breach by their department.

A billion points of data

On their own, each of these data points means little but for a motivated marketer, tenacious police officer or determined stalker pulling those separate information sources together can pull together an accurate picture of a person’s private information, habits and beliefs.

Almost all the collectors of this data claim this information is anonymised or isn’t personal information, unfortunately there’s mismatch between the definition of private data and reality as number plates and mobile phone MAC addresses are not considered private, however they provide enough insight for an individual to be identified.

That aspect isn’t understood by most people, the final caller to the ABC Radio spot asked why she should be bothered worrying about privacy – it doesn’t matter.

As French politician Cardinal Richelau said in the Seventeenth Century, If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him

Today we each have six million points of data that can hang us, in a decade it could easily be a billion. We need to understand and manage the risks this presents while enjoying the benefits.

Realising value from the internet of everything

How will businesses benefit from the internet of everything?

How much opportunity does connecting all our machines to the internet really offer businesses and society?

Cisco’s Internet of Everything index released last week looks at one of the great opportunities facing today’s managers in realising business value in these new technologies .

On Cisco’s calculations, the internet of everything is worth over $14.4 trillion to the world economy and nearly half the business benefits are going wasted.

Germany and Japan lead the pack and, as discussed yesterday, Australia wallows between China and Russia.

Despite German businesses being the leaders, Cisco estimates $33bn, or nearly 40% of the potential gains, isn’t being realised even in that country.

How different industries are using the internet of machines is notable as well, with Cisco claiming the biggest benefits currently being realised by the IT industry while the greatest potential lies in the service, logistics and manufacturing industries.

cisco-internet-of-everything-value-index-by-industry — Internet of everything value by industry

If anything, these projections could be on the conservative side with Cisco estimating fifty billion devices connected to the net by 2020. Given the rate of smartphone being sold and everything from vending machines to clothing being online, it may well be ten or even a hundred times that number.

The real challenge for businesses in all these projections is how individual organisations can realise this value in their operations.

For some businesses, there’s plenty of existing opportunities with well established services in areas like field services and logistics tracking the locations of staff and packages. These are relatively simple to incorporate into existing operations.

In other applications, businesses will find things more complex as the connected devices will tie into analytics and Big Data plays. These won’t be simple.

One particularly important area for the workforce as a whole in business process automation where many tasks currently done by humans can be carried out by machines talking to each other.

This is already happening in fields like fast moving consumer goods and hospitality where stock levels can be automatically monitored and replacement stock ordered in without staff being involved. As the technology becomes more widespread this will threaten the roles of many previously well paid managers.

Many of those managers though will be challenged anyway unless they’re prepared to deal with the changes that internet of things is bringing to their businesses.

How do you think the internet of everything will change your business?