Category: Products

Energie Visible: A Video 4,862

Energie Visible: A Video

I’m pretty sure that by now you got the fact that the Energie Visible project is one of our favorite use-cases for the Web of Things. In this project we apply the concept of smart things with webservers and RESTful APIs to create a plug-and-play energy monitoring system for your home or company. In order to better illustrate the application and for us not to have to carry a printer, a kettle and a… fridge around for each demo, we shot a video of the prototype. The end of the video also contains some more technical insights on the structure...

Tim O’Reilly: “The next stage of Web 2.0 is going to be driven by sensors” 2,954

Tim O’Reilly: “The next stage of Web 2.0 is going to be driven by sensors”

Not that we did not know it, but when somebody as important for the Web community as Tim O’Reilly says it, it becomes even more true! Apparently according to Tim O’Reilly at the Web 2.0 Expo the next evolution of the Web is going to be physical or to be more precise, driven by sensors. In his O’Reilly Radar post, Dylan Field talks about a few concrete applications of this Web of sensors. We also listed some and are about to list the other ones we are working on. Understanding the use of the sensor Web and having examples of...

Poken: review quickie 3,056

Poken: review quickie

I’ve been meaning to write a quick review of my experience with Poken at LIFT conference. Poken is a small toy/gadet/figurine/whatever that has some near field connectivity (something like an active RFID) in it. The point is that when you meet somebody who also has a Poken you high-five your two figurines together (high-four actually, it missed a limb as it’s not human), and then you’re best friend forever on all your social networks at once. We got a sort of strippeddown Pokens for free as part of our LIFT badges, which I found to be a really awesome idea...

Keynotes at Lift: David Rose 2,285

Keynotes at Lift: David Rose

Great pleasure to be able to attend another talk from David Rose from Ambient Devices and Vitality Inc. Instead of a pure transcription I’ll try to sum up some aspects of the talk. Note that does not entirely reflect what Dave meant but rather my interpretation of the talk. Dave began by talking about clairvoyance and magics. He explained how they materialized these chimers into the well-known Orb which changes its color according to a trend. Dave then explained how ambient devices where between push and pull technologies, how they should be peripherial and seamless with the environment(s). He explained...

Tikitag now becomes touchatag 3,922

Tikitag now becomes touchatag

Our friends from tikitag, just rolled out their new website (and name, and applications, …). The had copyright issues with the older name so now they are touchatag. I have to admit tikitag was a way better name than touchatag (no offense), as this new name actually makes me think of feldpausch in terms of sex appeal (maybe it’s just me). I have been playing with their readers for quite some time, and find them quite cute and easy to use. Maybe I’d like to see more open code to use their reader from different languages (I just have some...

Energie Visible: A Sustainable Web of Things Project 5,548

Energie Visible: A Sustainable Web of Things Project

Together with people (Dominique Guinard, Markus Weiss and Tobias Graml) from the BitsToEnergy lab of ETH Zurich we are actively working on a Web of Things system that helps people to better understand their energy consumption. A major burden for people, who want to save energy at home, is for them to identify how much energy is consumed by different appliances. How much does my computer consume in operation / when it is powered off? Is the consumption of my energy-saving lamp significantly lower in the long run than the normal lamp I’ve got there? Such questions are key to...

L’Energie Visible got Selected for National Energy Award 2,794

L’Energie Visible got Selected for National Energy Award

Hi guys and gals, Remember not long ago I was talking about our first real-world implementation of the WOT concepts in an energy monitoring application: Are you Energy Efficient? Sense it the WEB way, well this system, now named “l’energie visible” or “visible energy” was selected amongst a number of projects for the Jade national energy award in Switzerland. It is now entering the final selection phase, 20 projects are on the list. The folk can vote for the projects on Jade Award. So if you like the Energie Visible project then do support us, vote for project 13. More...

David Oban talks about OpenSpime and WideSpime Internet of Things. 3,963

David Oban talks about OpenSpime and WideSpime Internet of Things.

David Oban talks about OpenSpime, an open Internet of Things. The Trend Cisco is forming the Internet Smart Object alliance, which promotes the used of IP in Networks of Smart Objects not long after this announcement they also acquired Jabber to extend their knowledge in messaging. The EU is organizing a number of Internet of Things workshops, thus it seems like the IoT is becoming a reality not sci-fi anymore. Spime Application Space Spime is the contraction of SPace and tIME. It’s about a new category of objects aware of their surroundings. As an example CO2 Spime collects the CO2...

Talk at Liip 1,493

Talk at Liip

Oh, that’s a good topic to start the new year (a little late okay)! Happy new year anyway! We just gave a talk on the Web of Things, over at the folks from liip, a cool swiss Web development company with whom we share common interests (i.e. making the Web cooler). The slides of the talk are online: intro & demo (@Dom: put your slides here dude, UPDATE: It’s down there dude! :-)). Too many things to present in such a short time, but we hope this would lead to further discussions (and hopefully collaborations) with Web developers, to learn...