GigaOM » connectivity

Meet Homo Erectus Connectus — or, if you prefer, Wearable Man (infographic)

Rani Molla — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:28:58 +0000

If wearable technology wants to break into the mainstream, it has to overcome the geek factor. And that may be tough when King of the Nerds Sergey Brin is touting Google Glass on New York’s subways.

Some companies are actually opting for prominent devices as a way to show off your connectedness, or at least not lose your gadget in the wash. But as batteries get smaller, wearables could become less of a fashion statement and more about a new wave of immersive computing.

Either way, there will be a lot of competition. ABI Research predicts that the global market for wearable computing devices in health and fitness could reach 170 million devices by 2017.

At the end of the day, the design of the wearable and how it feels on your body is only half the battle. Wearable makers are hard at work making sure their gadgets can collect the right data and deliver a service to users that makes the data important and useful in their daily lives. If the body data isn’t helpful, then really, what’s the point?

We created this “bare-bones” infographic of wearable devices that are currently available and that fit the mold for what we see as the future of the connected you: data-driven services, and unobtrusive design. Which ones do you own or want to own? Click on each body section to read more about the companies and devices available.

Google Glass

Google’s “augmented reality” glasses allow you to do anything you’d normally do on your phone or laptop — record video, find directions, message your friends — but without your hands. It’s currently available only to select “creative individuals” in colors Charcoal, Tangerine, Shale, Cotton and Sky and perhaps soon in more attractive styles. ($1,500)

Watches

A number of companies including Motorola, Pebble and Basis Science have all thrown their hats in the connected watch arena. Adding new purpose to a time-warn accessory, these smart watches read texts out loud, play music, and track your exercise and health — in addition to telling time. Apple is even working on a watch that could run iOS. ($115-$300)

Bracelets

Companies like Jawbone and Fitbit are marrying data and design for a wearable computing experience that’s seamless and attractive. Their wristbands and bracelets are being used to track fitness, sleep and calories but look like a simple accessory. ($99-$129)

Jewelry

Sensors are the essential part of all wearable devices. Companies like Misfit and its Shine device use sensors that can also function as jewelry for a seamless way to track your activity. A recent Apple filing shows the company might have even broader ambitions for wearable sensors, too. ($59-$99)

Shoes

Thinkstock

From connected shoes to connected clips and inserts, feet are often the preferred place for activity trackers that show where and how far you’ve run. ($ price varies on technology)

Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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Analyzing the wearable computing market

WAN design for the cloud age

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 07:55:03 +0000

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IFTTT raises $7 million Series A to connect your content on the web

Eliza Kern — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 21:58:37 +0000

IFTTT, the platform that allows users to connect their content and make sense of the disjointed web, announced Thursday that it raised a $7 million Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and with participation from NEA and Lerer Ventures.

Andreessen partner John O’Farrell, who will be joining the board of IFTTT, wrote in a blog post Thursday why the need for a service like IFTT exists:

“As the Web has evolved, more and more of that online time is spent in specialized venues such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Foursquare. While these are fantastic applications, they have a downside, in that they largely exist as parallel, unconnected containers for our personal data. Trapped in their respective silos, our posts, photos, tweets, pins and checkins are largely inaccessible to us from outside. Moreover, creating useful connections between one application and another is far beyond the average user. Sure, most of the most popular web applications now have APIs, but they’re written for the benefit of developers, not people.”

IFTTT, (which is pronounced like “gift” without the “g”), stands for “if this, then that,” and allows users to set actions to occur automatically on the web. For instance, you could set up an IFTTT connection that automatically posts an image to Tumblr when you take an Instagram photo. Or if a particular stock drops to a new level, IFTTT can send the user a text message. Users can create the connections, called “recipes,” with any of IFTTT’s enabled sites, which includes more than 50 companies such as Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, and YouTube.

Users have created more than 2 million different recipes, and more than 3 million are executed every day, O’Farrell wrote. The company is looking to hire new talent to grow the service going forward with the new addition of funding.

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Key technologies for the smart city

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 06:55:30 +0000

As more and more people move to urban areas there is an escalating need for the smart city, where technology, sustainability, citizen well-being and economic development integrate. Currently five key technology sectors are enabling the smart city: smart grids, smart transport, smart water and waste management, smart building systems, and the enabling ICT platforms for the smart city. This report examines each and provides recommendations to those key players — IT companies, telcos, utilities and real estate developers — that wish to benefit and harness those technologies.

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Opportunities and challenges for mobile deals

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 07:55:17 +0000

The trend “mobile deals” combines location-aware discounts with mobile marketing campaigns and often incorporates purchases made on the phone at brick-and-mortar retailers. This report sizes up the mobile deals space with an aim to present a comprehensive view of the influential companies and technologies. Heavyweights like Google, PayPal and American Express are moving aggressively forward with new offerings, and it will be worth watching their different strategies (e.g., deploying QR codes vs. NFC technology) to see which dominates and sets the overall bar for the market.

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CES 2012: a recap and analysis

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:40:31 +0000

This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history, boasting 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. The Kerton Group sent three delegates to CES to scout out new products, listen to keynotes, watch announcements and get tips from insiders. This report, which bundles those findings together, serves as an outline of the major launches and overarching trends at CES (think smartphones for $0, Androidification and connectivity) as well as an analysis of what those developments mean for the larger consumer electronics picture. Companies mentioned in this report include Apple, Tesla and T-Mobile. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

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Quality of the cloud: best practices for ISVs

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:53:22 +0000

Demand for cloud computing continues to increase exponentially as consumers, businesses and government agencies seek to defer the expense of acquiring, operating and maintaining infrastructure and applications to third-party service providers. Likewise, software publishers are finding the cloud computing model an efficient and effective mechanism for delivering their products as a service and as an operational expense to their customers. For independent software vendors, cloud computing is opening up new markets and making their applications more accessible and affordable to scores of new customers. For a multitude of reasons, many ISVs are choosing to forego data center development and are partnering with hosting providers that have the infrastructure, resources and expertise in managing and delivering cloud services. This report provides ISVs with guidance on partnering with hosting companies, establishing criteria for selecting a hosting service, metrics for measuring hosting performance as it relates to cloud services delivered and an understanding of the responsibilities they retain even when outsourcing a large part of their services functions to a third party. Companies mentioned in this report include Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.com. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

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Cleantech, meet connectivity: a new era of energy efficiency

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:49:19 +0000

When people think of cleantech, they typically think about solar panels or wind turbines or labs trying to convert biomass to oil. But the momentum right now in cleantech is as much about connectivity and how it can drive energy efficiency as it is about advancing sources of renewable energy, says Adam Lesser, GigaOM Pro Green IT analyst, in a new report for GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

So if cleantech had once been thought of as just the energy-generating technology that could move the economy off fossil fuels, the evolving concept of cleantech is about altering consumer behavior. This is done by accelerating the data that various systems have about those very consumers and using it to reduce consumption. Sunil Paul, the founder of venture capital firm Spring Ventures, calls this the “cleanweb,” and its one of the areas that is actually growing in cleantech.

To read the rest of the 10-page report, which covers car sharing and collaborative consumption, building energy efficiency technology, the smart grid, and electric cars check out “Cleantech, meet connectivity: a new era of energy efficiency.”

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Dissecting the data: 5 issues for our digital future

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 08:01:00 +0000

When it comes to the promise of data as the currency of the web, the current state of affairs has privacy advocates and many consumers up in arms. But it doesn’t have to be the one-sided affair it is today, in which companies have all the data and all the rights, and we shouldn’t have to be afraid of who’s doing what with our information. With laws, products, practices and education, data can become a far more valuable currency than cash ever was. Keeping that in mind, this research note examines five issues that must be addressed by policy makers and entrepreneurs so that they can deliver on our data-driven digital future. Companies mentioned in this report include Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

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GigaOM RoadMap 2011: live video coverage

Nicole Solis — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:45:11 +0000

Connectivity is changing everything. Near-ubiquitous broadband has created a world where companies can work seamlessly with employees in other states or even countries. It’s given us easy access to movies and TV shows right from our living room. But where will these changes take us in the next few years?

At GigaOM RoadMap, we’ll get answers to that question. We’ve assembled some of the great thinkers and innovators — people like Square’s Jack Dorsey, Arista Network’s Andy Bechtolsheim, and Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz — to answer that question and tell us how connectivity will change how we live, work, create and consume.

Our livestream of the event begins at ~~8:25~~ 8:40 a.m. PT on Thursday, November 10, and we will be live-blogging the onstage sessions throughout both days. Please join the conversation on Twitter (use the #RoadMapConf hashtag and follow @gigaomroadmap).

Live-blogged stories from the event:

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