Simon Fabri

This blog explores different aspects of what it takes to create great tech products. It is meandering journey as I amble around from topic to topic driven by where my curiosity takes me. Sometimes I try to explore different aspects of what makes truly great tech teams, while at other times I try to get under the skin of the latest tech hype or understand what's going on in a particular industry. This blog started off with a distinct IoT flavour, but now is fairly tech-agnostic.

Internet of Things and Big Data – The concept of Data Gravity

A number of posts in this blog have dealt with the increasing variety and sheer number of ‘things’, be they sensors, wearables, appliances, actuators, industrial components etc. that will gain connectivity over the coming few years. There will however be no point adding connectivity to these items if they do not produce meaningful data, and in turn there will be no point collating this data unless insights are obtained that can be acted upon. This is why the ‘Internet of Things’ is invariably coupled with its close relative in the family of hyped buzzwords –  Mr ‘Big Data’.

To give an example of the scale of data being produced, Cisco estimates that by 2018, connected devices will generate 400 zettabytes of data annually. (I too needed to look that up. Apparently a zettabyte is 1021 bytes or 1 billion terabytes).

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The Future of Digital Health – Part II

Although it’s only been a few days since I discussed some of the ways in which digital health will be transformed by the nexus of wearables and data analytics, it is already time for an update. A company called BitBite is currently seeking $60,000 dollars to kick of production of a device that tracks eating patterns, including what foods are consumed, how well a person is chewing and how frequently he or she snacks. This is done through a wearable device that clips … Read more…

Smart Thermostats – More than just a pretty app

An article in the UK mainstream press recently investigated the how smart thermostats and controls can be used to reduce household energy bills. The claims savings that can be achieve range from 10% by Hive of British Gas, up to around 20% for Google’s Nest thermostat. Given that the average energy bill of the UK household is around £1400/year, these represent significant amounts, though offset by the price of approx £200. While anything that significantly dents energy bills will be well-received, these smart … Read more…

Digital Health gets real

Health & fitness is often touted as being one of the most promising segments of wearable devices. Evolved from the humble pedometer, these now boast an impressive range of sensors, capable of monitoring heart rate, stress levels, sweat, quality of sleep as well as physical activity to quantify in great detail every waking (and sleeping moment), creating a true ‘datafication’ of the self . Two of the most advanced proponents of this class of solution are the Jawbone Up3 and … Read more…

Gartner predicts 25 billion connected devices by 2020

Today Gartner released a report forecasting the number of connected “things” – i.e. excluding phones, tablets and computers that will be in use until the end of the decade. This year, Gartner estimates that there will be 3.7 billion devices in use, while this will jump to 25 billion by the end of the decade. This estimate is somewhat higher than that provided by Cisco, who predicted 7.3 billion devices by 2018. Gartner believes that the single three largest industry … Read more…

Amazon Echo – Who’s listening & why?

As discussed previously in this blog, the proliferation of connected sensors will produce a stream of information back to a cloud-based service provider about what a person is doing throughout the day. Last week saw the announcement of two products that make use of sound sensors (i.e. microphones) as a key part of the product experience. The one that has got most interest, is the Amazon Echo. This is essentially a voice-controlled Bluetooth speaker with Cloud-based Artificial Intelligence in a similar vein to Apple’s … Read more…

The Internet of Things standards tussle – A phoney war?

  One thing that all commentators on the ‘connected everything’ space agree on is the need for common standards to allow a wide range of sensors, appliances and devices to talk to each other. This is nicely captured in an article in the Economist magazine, where the key problem is described as there being too many overlapping and conflicting initiatives. This is nothing new, and most new technologies which benefit from network effects, starting with the battle between direct and … Read more…

M2M device explosion to fuel growth in cloud infrastructure

This week, Cisco released its latest forecast on global data centre and cloud computing, covering the time period 2013 – 2014. During this time Cisco forecasts that annual data centre traffic will triple, a compound growth rate of 23%. But to what extent is this being driven by the growth in connected devices, and the traffic they generate? The answer can be found by digging into the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) published in June. Over this period, it can … Read more…

The weird and wonderful world of Beacons

Aislelabs, a technology company specialising in big data analytics for retailers has just published what they are calling “The Hitchhikers Guide to iBeacon Hardware”. In 2013, Apple introduced support for Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) (or Bluetooth Smart) in iOS7 as a means for providing finely-tuned location information indoors. The idea is that if you pass an exhibit in a museum, a display in a shop, or approach a check-in gate at the airport, the appropriate app will trigger. In the … Read more…

First chips supporting Apple HomeKit start shipping

Although Apple announced Homekit, its home automation solution for iOS devices last June, its launch is not expected until early 2015. However yesterday Forbes reported that Broadcom and Texas Instruments have started shipping Homekit-enabled WiFi chips to their customers. While this is clearly too late for products aimed for the 2014 holiday season, it means that we should start seeing first products early 2015. Of course, the question remains whether people will buy into an Apple walled garden view of home automation, … Read more…

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