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Future Internet of Things

About 20 years ago, the World Wide Web revolutionized the whole world. Now, it is Internet of Things turn. As we have said and repeated here in this same blog, IoT is going to change the way we understand life forever, becoming the next big technological revolution.

Nowadays, there isn’t anyone without a smartphone in their hands. The smartphone you are probably using to read this post is going to improve its services, apps, functionality… absolutely everything. So let’s focus on IoT capabilities. You will turn your lights on, and also modulate them using the smartphone. And what do you think about the boxing gloves that actually measure your strength?

But this is not just for consumers or users, it is about companies too. All the Data generated remains on the Cloud (generated by companies such as thethings.iO). That Data, as Marc Pous (thethings.iO CEO) says in the video, will be able to be used to improve our lives. Consumers’ role will change: they will become proactive consumers, creating and using their own Data.

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Internet of Loving Things

Internet of Loving Things

It seemed impossible to understand “love” in multiple ways, but like everything around us, love is ever changing and evolving with the other revolutions. No one believed in the possibility of a long distance relationship, but with the evolution in technology and the new forms of communication that have came with it, long distance relationships have become common place today. People no longer need to be in the same room to be able to express their affection to one another.

There are lots of new ways to keep in touch with the people we love, even when she/he is on the other side of the world. Texting, skyping… the possibilities become infinite, and it will be something even bigger when the Internet of Things introduces itself in the love sphere. Actually, the Internet of Things already has made an impact in how we can show our emotions to one another.
Feel the Internet of Things
It is time to go to sleep and the only thing that you want is a kiss from your significant other, but they are on the other side of the planet away on business. You can try and imagine the feeling you remember but what about the actual feeling? Would that make it better?

In one of our earlier posts about Tactile Internet we talked about the opportunity to be able to feel sensations using the Internet. We are soon realizing that everything imaginable will be possible in the near future. Feeling, emotions and even sensations will be able to be sent via the internet to the ones we love. Just a few days ago, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said that “One day, I believe we’ll be able to send full rich thoughts to each other directly using technology. You’ll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too if you’d like. This would be the ultimate communication technology”.

Do you not remember the Kissing Machine from The Big Bang Theory’s show a couple of years ago? Check the clip out below:

Love without limits thanks to IoT

In 2013, it was something funny and often laughed at. Now in 2015, it is more that that, hugs, kisses, and touch are possible even when your significant other is around the globe.

The main idea of Pillow Talk was to allow long distance couples to feel closer to one another when not together. Each person has a wristband they wear to bed at night while also placing a speaker inside their pillowcase. The wristband picks up your real-time heartbeat and transmits it to the others pillow so that the heartbeat of your partner can be felt by the other even when apart.

While being interviewed by StuConnect, the founder of project Pillow Talk said, “In today’s digital world, it’s easier than ever to maintain a relationship across long distances, but existing methods of communication such as email or facebook are very two-dimensional, often screen-based, and don’t capture one of the fundamental aspects of being in a relationship with someone: the other person’s presence”.

BOND was born with this same principle. This product proposed the idea of being able to transmit tactile touch. Each person has a bracelet or a pendant, and when someone touches it, it transmits a vibration to the other person’s device no matter where they are at that moment.

The role of thethings.iO in here

At thethings.iO we connect devices or wearables such as the ones we have mentioned in this post to the Internet. We are a Cloud solution for companies that decide to build new cool things that can be connected to improve our lives. If you want to know more about us, you can create an account by clicking here, sign up to receive our monthly newsletter or follow us on Twitter! Stay tuned and be the first in knowing the latest news of the IoT world and thethings.iO.

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Living in a Woman’s IoT World

Living in a Woman’s IoT World

As a song says, this is a man’s world, but it wouldn’t be nothing without women. Well, the world is changing and is becoming a woman’s world as well. It is changing in the social and technological field, therefore it is not strange to see the new IoT wearables designed specially for women.

Jewelry Meets Internet of Things

The Apple Watch broke borders recently, as Fitbit did some months ago. Now, it is the turn of more esthetic devices and the jewelry business has seen a huge opportunity to use the IoT technology to sell a unique product. It is not just about the beauty. It is about the functionality and new possibilities to do “something else.”

If some years ago we could not see jewelry as more than an accessory, nowadays they are able to do whatever. From notifying you of a call on your smartphone using a vibration, to advising the police of emergencies.

Lots of new functionalities may seem like fiction, but they are actually real. The past Fashions Weeks, specifically the one located in New York, showed the whole world some new wearables for women, most of them appearing as a bracelet style. The main idea of the companies is to create a kind of technology that could not be noticed by others. And they have achieved it!

Internet of Things Turns into Fashion

Ringly is, apparently, a normal ring, but what it has inside makes it a unique piece of technology. It houses an accelerometer, Bluetooth LE, tiny LEDs and a motor inside its precious gem. This ring is connected to a smartphone that alerts wearers about incoming texts or calls via vibration and flashing lights. Looking at its sophisticated and accurate design, you would never believe it is an IoT device.

Ringly - wearables for women

Ringly – wearables for women

The noise has been created in the bracelet design area. Lots of companies (mature ones and new), have proposed designs for new possibilities of IoT bracelets. MEMI’s idea uses wireless technology to communicate with the wearer’s iPhone. It can vibrate for important calls (you can also select callers), text messages and calendar alerts. Easily usable, MEMI fits all its technology (LEDs, sensors, etc) into a fashion bracelet that will not remain indifferent to anyone.

Memi - wearables for women

Memi – wearables for women

Otherwise, MICA’s proposal was to see what happens when beauty meets intelligence. My Intelligent Communication Accessory, better known as MICA, is a bracelet with a touchscreen display, designed by Opening Ceremony and engineered by Intel, which allows you to easily access the notifications from your VIP contacts (messages, calendar alerts…).

Safe IoT-Fashion Devices

A bracelet, ring or necklace that incorporates technology inside should provide more than just a vibration when you are called or texted. Certainly, we want the technology to make us feel safer at anyplace and anytime. Fashion has met safety and IoT at the same time to create wearables that are unstoppable.

By having UVA and UVB sensors, JUNE by Netatmo measures precisely the wearer’s sun exposure. An app computes the data and gives you, in real time, the UV index in order to know when you should apply SPF or the level you should use, for example.

June by Netatmo

June by Netatmo

Speaking of safety, (maybe you were thinking about more dangerous situations than the sunburn ones), Revolar was created from the idea of a magic button in which you press when you are in danger. So, this is exactly how it works. When you find yourself in a dangerous situation, you press the button, which is hidden under your clothes, and an Emergency Alert message with your location information (updated every 3 minutes) is sent to a person on your emergency contact list.

Revolar - wearables for women

Revolar – wearables for women

Similar to Revolar, Cuff is a jewellry collection (not just a little device that can be hidden) that allow women to be connected everytime, everywhere. The way it works is simple: you just press a button when you are in danger and automatically it is sent a notification to somebody else. That one, receives an alert on his/her smartphone to make the process to call the police faster.

Why do we post this? As you should know, thethings.iO is an Internet of Things Start-up. So, imagining and creating a cool device is your job, while ours is to connect it to the Internet. We can connect all those bracelets, rings, necklaces… fast and easy.
If you want to know more about the IoT world and thethings.iO stay tuned!

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thethings.iO introduces you to the Tactile Internet

Tactile Internet

Tactile Internet

Is it possible to touch your daughter’s cheek while you are talking to her via Skype? Or to take a piano class from Tokyo if you’re in London? In a near future, it will be.

What exactly is Tactile Internet

Developers are working on the 5G, which is expected to come in 2020. Much faster, much longer and much better than the 4G we have nowadays. What might surprise you is that by 2020 about 26 billion devices will be connected to the Internet.

Tactile Internet goes further. The term ‘Tactile Internet’ was first introduced by Professor Gerhard Fettweis from the Technical University of Dresden in Germany in 2012, while working on control robotic systems remotely and in real time.

It was King’s College London professor Mischa Dohler that made ‘Tactile Internet’ something more than “remote control”. His idea was to close the data cycle in order to improve communications. So it is not about just seeing or hearing things far away, but also the opportunity to transmit accurately the equivalent of human touch using the bits and bytes of data networks.

The role of the Internet of Things

To make Tactile Internet possible, there is the need of having devices that can read and understand the codes to be able to make the functions we want. Those devices or “things”, must be connected to the faster Internet we have mentioned before. It is necessary to find a way to encode touch, then transmit the data and at the end make the user able to receive the sensation he or she is looking for.

Users are demanding a world in which they’d be able to feel the emotions and sensations that in a past, they were not able to. The world we live in changes fast and the Internet is no exception. Tactile Internet allows users to experience new sensations in perfect synchronization with no time-lag.

Think about a daily example of it: the e-commerce applications of Tactile Internet. You would be able to touch and see what you are about to buy on yourself without having to actually have purchased it already. This may sound like something out of a Star Trek movie but just wait a few years and you will not be thinking about it because you will be using it.

When Tactile Internet meets thethings.iO

Which is the relation between Tactile Internet and thethings.iO? thethings.iO connects devices to the Internet. To make Tactile Internet possible we must have Internet-connected “things”. Do not you see the relation yet?

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IKEA joins the IoT revolution

IKEA joins the IoT Revolution

IKEA joins the IoT Revolution

Internet of Things is now a reality, and lots of companies have to face it. Companies from many different fields (as we have seen: housing, decor, gardening…) have to improve their offers in order to survive in the new technological era. That’s why the famous Swedish company IKEA has decided to adapt things into the IoT’s world and also create new connected things to make our lives easier.

IKEA’s idea is to make a more sustainable life at home, so that is the reason why in the next decade the brand is going to create and develop new connected things, such as the whole kitchen. In a collaboration with IDEO, a global design company, and design students from Lund University (Sweden) and Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherland), IKEA has created the named Concept Kitchen, which was shown at the Milan Design Week.

Read more →

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thethings.iO on Think Big: From Futuristic Ideas to the True Reality

Think Big

Last June, we appeared on Think Big blog (a project of the company Telefonica). The post was about the growth of wearables in the last couple of years, and how they are changing the entrepreneurship world. The movement started with the Apple Watch, and now the scene is looking to explode with not just wrist products but anything imaginable.

Marc Pous, thethings.iO CEO, says that the revolutions will not be just with the wearables, but with lots of internet-connected devices, the number of which will increase in the next 5 years.

“If we compare it with the forecast of connected devices by 2020, when the number of those devices will be 7.000 milion, can you visualize the number of business models that a technology which is 4 times bigger than the mobile era will generate?”, says Marc Pous.

Lots of entrepreneurs and startups have taken this opportunity to jump into the industry, developing new projects and products that will forsure be part of the new technological revolution.

Marc Pous adds, “The most important thing is to create a product that offers value or a need that can not be covered without a wearable”.

To create and make all those wearables useful, there must be other companies that connect the things to the Internet. That is the reason why we are beginning to see Internet of Things as its own market, and companies that offer exactly this service. The IoT devices are changing the way we understand our cities, houses, cars, kitchens… making our work that much easier. thethings.iO appears in here in order to make the process of connecting things to the Interner easier by offering a Cloud solution service.

“Nowadays, companies that connect things to the Internet do everything from scratch, and that costs too much. We let them focus on building the product and with our technology we connect their devices to the Internet in real time. In addition, we not only accelerate their development, our technology also allows them to save money. Our pricing system allows them just to pay if they sell the devices”, explains Marc Pous.

You can check the whole post (in Spanish) by clicking here!

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