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.

The many webs of things

Two recent posts dealt with the activities of Samsung and Google in the area of the physical web, otherwise known as the Web of Things. Given the announcements of these two heavyweights within a few weeks of each other, it is worth exploring what it means for the rest of us. For starters, what is the Web of Things? Put succinctly, it is the allocation of URLs or web addresses to physical objects, allowing apps, web interfaces, and cloud services … Read more…

What are Gogoro up to?

Gogoro, a well-funded Taiwanese start-up founded by big-hitting former HTC-execs with a name plucked out of the Tech industry’s random name generator has hit the headlines this week for raising a further $100m over an initial $50m in April 2011. Its broad aim, in rather fluffy terms is to “utilize the power of mobile connectivity and data analytics to transform energy distribution and management in the world’s cities.” Additionally, it is participating in the creation of a “more intelligent and … Read more…

Samsung invests in EVRYTHNG

 

EvrythngYou may have heard of EVRYTHNG, the vocalically-challenged IoT platform technology company. Well, today they announced that Samsung Ventures has provided investment funding on top of that already received from Cisco and other companies in April. With two these two behemoths behind them, EVRYTHNG stands a decent chance on their mission to become the leading player in the ‘Web of Things’, a world whereby physical objects, be they simple or complex are associated their own individual web presence, with EVRYTHNG’s platform providing the glue (and APIs) between the physical and the virtual world. What is not clear yet is how ‘open’ this framework will be – on one hand, the Web of Things aims to be open as the Web, while on the other hand, EVRYTHNG has stated that it wishes to be the Facebook of Things.

The Periodic Table of IoT

CB Insights, an analyst firm specialised in tracking technology companies, investors and acquisitions has pulled together a rather novel way of representing the IoT ecosystem. It presents companies, VCs, private equity firms and acquirers in a conveniently colour-coded “Periodic Table of IoT”. As in the periodic table from our days in chemistry class, the characteristics of the ‘elements’ vary as we traverse the table, in this case from the technology firms in individual verticals such as wearables, connected home and … Read more…

Goldman Sachs on IoT

Perhaps an unlikely source for a top-level intro to the Internet of Things, but Goldman Sachs provide a fairly serviceable “IOT 101”, describing it, in a not very understated way as the next Mega Trend. The report does however, correctly pull together all the key technology advances that have allowed this ecosystem to come to being, as well as provide an overview of all the key verticals. Of more direct interest to the general Goldman Sachs readership are the main … Read more…

Qualcomm set to acquire CSR

Today Qualcomm announced its planned purchase of CSR, formerly Cambridge Silicon radio. Key observation is that Qualcomm is making a dual-technology strategy for personal area and local area networking, namely Bluetooth and WiFi, the latter building on its previous Atheros acquisition. This surely must raise questions for the current home-automation protocols such as Zigbee and Z-Wave, who cannot compete for scale of deployment with Bluetooth and WiFi, which are implemented in practically every Smartphone and Tablet sold. As Qualcomm buys CSR, … Read more…

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