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thethings.iO Appeared on Expansion Newspaper

Some days ago, thethings.iO appeared on the Expansion newspaper on wearables and Internet of Things article. The article is called “T-Shirts that saves lifes: these startups are going to change the world“.

Fragment of the Expansion article

Fragment of the Expansion article

On this article, startups such as FirstV1sion who are also at Wayra Barcelona and Nuubo. We were interviewed by an Expansion journalist. This is a partially translation of the Expansion’s article:

The next big thing
By the year 2016 the wearables will suppose a market of 6 billion of dollars. Here you can include professional devices and massive market gadgets. “We are still on the beginning. It’s hard to imagine how many things we are going to have, in some years, thanks of the wearables technologies.” mentions Marc Pous, founder of theThings.IO, a startup that develops software to interconnect several wearables. “We integrate APIs from dozens of vendors,” specifies Pous.

Send us a comment about the future of the wearables and the Internet of Things. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and don’t forget to check out our week;y #IoTFriday blog!

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therhings.iO at the API Strategy Conference in Amsterdam

A few weeks ago our CEO, Marc Paus, was invited to speak and showcase  thethings.iO at the API strategy conference in Amsterdam located at the Track of Hardware and Internet of things.

The panel session had other great speakers such as Rob Zazueta from Mashery, Marco Herbst from Evercam.io, Paul Hopton from relayr and Marc Pous from thethings.iO.

Marc presented thethings.iO as the GlueCode API of the Internet of things. Check out the video below to view the video for yourself.

Feel free to send us some comments or feedback and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

 

 

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Are Wearables The Next Big Thing in 2014?

 

A new hype appear in town, technology that is wearable. New watches, glasses, wristbands and other sensors will be flooding the market in 2014. With companies such as Fitbit Jawbone, Pebble and Nike+, other startups seem to be flooding the industry with the potentials profit in sights.

Forecasted by Canalys, the wearables market will grow from over 17 million in the beginning of 2014 to over 45 million by 2017. With segmented prices of $70 to $200, wearable will be lading the Internet of Things revolution in 2014. Larger companies such as Apple, LG and Samsung will help with this push by putting out their new watches Nevertheless new iterations of the Fitbit, Withings and Nike+ will make the wearables transform the market of sports, fitness, and health segments this year.

With the emergence of Bluetooth Low Energy (4.0) by Apple and the iBeacons (Android 4.4) most brands can connect their watches with smart phones quite simply. Smartphones seem to be the main controlling device for the IoT market in the future.

The fragmentation of new apps and gadgets will most likely ruin the experience of people trying to connect devices among each other. This is why thethings.iO is preparing the dashboard as a tool to inter-connect all of your gadgets. We are creating a transparent tool to allow people to connect, interact and manage their gadgets, glasses, bands, and watches with a great user experience.

Join thethings.IO to get access at the BETA dashboard and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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thethings.iO at the Mobile World Congress 2014

This was our first time at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. During the MWC in Barcelona our CEO, Marc Pous, visited several events where he was able to show our Internet of things platform which is up and running, ready to connect developers devices.

Marc pitching theThings.IO at the IoT Barcelona

Marc pitching theThings.IO at the IoT Barcelona

The first event at which Marc showcased thethings.iO was the Internet of Things Barcelona community  party on Sunday the 23rd of February at Pangea Coworking space. This was the first year the Internet of Things Barcelona group has a MWC event. During the event Marc showcased how to connect things from different brands under the same user experience as Intel and HWTreck.

On Monday we visited the Mobile World Congress exposition and we saw a lot of interesting new things. Featured products included the new connected car presented by Tesla Motors at the Telefonica booth and a new watch presented by Samsung.

On Tuesday Marc presented at the 4YFN conference about the future of the Internet of Things and the role of startups in the field. It was a fun session and we had an in depth discussion about the projects of Smart Citizen and Relayr. We also had the chance to speak with Massimo Banzi, one of the founders of Arduino.

Marc pitching theThings.IO at 4YFN

Marc pitching theThings.IO at 4YFN

On Tuesday Marc presented at the 4YFN conference about the future of the Internet of Things and the role of startups in the field. It was a fun session and we had an in depth discussion about the projects of Smart Citizen and Relayr. We also had the chance to speak with Massimo Banzi, one of the founders of Arduino.

Marc Pous and Massimo Banzi at the MWC

Marc Pous and Massimo Banzi at the MWC

On Wednesday, Marc was organizing one of the biggest events at the MWC called Wearable Wednesdays, which talked about wearables and the future of human computer interaction. Great speakers and panel discussions are planned with Sonny Vu (CEO at Misfit Wearables), Laurent Le Pen (CEO at Omate) or Christian Lindholm (CEO at Koru Labs) showing the quality of the event where a lot of new things will be showcased such as Bitcoin payment with Google Glass.

Here testing the Samsung band at the MWC

Here testing the Samsung band at the MWC

In general the Mobile World Congress was awesome for us as we gained the attention from new customers. The BETA is still underway to be launched for our registered members, so make sure to stay tuned and on the lookout .

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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Sonar+D: One Seat Away Project

Today is the day, thethings.IO will be at Sonar+D presenting its new project, One Seat Away, in collaboration with Simone Rebaudengo, Ken Frederick, Daniel Kluge and Marc Pous.

The One Seat Away project at Sonar+D

The One Seat Away project at Sonar+D

What is One Seat Away

One Seat Away is an artistic project that aims at the exploration of the relationship between the rhythms of a musical performance and the hidden rhythms of a city such as Barcelona. The rhythm of a musical performance is typically measured in BPM (beats per minute), an easily detected value. However, within an urban space, there are multiple ways to define rhythm. There is a physical layer of people, noise, temperature, bikes shared systems. Then there is a virtual layer of activity in a city such as Foursquare check-ins, Facebook likes, Instagram pictures, Tweets among others, that remain mostly “hidden”. Their value reveals another side of how the rhythm of a city can be understood.

We will define the BPMs of the two environments and translate them into an experience that binds these two disparate contexts in real-time: bringing the rhythms of the festival into the city and the rhythm of the city into the festival.

The main goal of One Seat Away is to use connectivity and sensing to augment the sense of the urban space around us and merge it with music and rhythms as a way of experiencing data in a tangible way: something that one can feel and not necessarily have to understand in detail or rationally decode.

How does it work

The project will connect daily objects such as sofas and chairs to Internet. The sofas and chairs will receive the sensed data processed from the real-time Sónar music being played and converted into vibration. In the same way that one can feel music outside of an event without “hearing” it via vibrations of physical structures, we want people to feel and experience the rhythm without actually hearing it.

 

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Selected Semifinalist at the LeWeb London 2013

We are very happy to announce that we have been selected among 16 semifinalists out of over 350 start-ups that presented at the LeWeb London Startup Competition. This is the first times that thethings.iO, the Internet of Things social network, will be presented to the public. Needless to say we are extremely excited for this opportunity and hope to see some familiar faces in the crowd supporting us.

LeWeb Lodon Startup Competition

LeWeb Lodon Startup Competition

If you are in London during the 5th and 6th of June, ping us on twitter @theThingsIO or e-mail. See you in London

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Your data is your data

Jan Chipchase wrote a post where he talked about how some of his Internet-connected devices made him feel guilty when he wasn’t using them anymore. The purpose of this post was triggered by an email from Twine telling him that he wasn’t using his Twine enough.

This type of email is one demonstration of the new source of data generated by the Internet of Things. Most companies are becoming interested in the amount of usage of your device. They want to know where you use your things, when, why, what you are doing when you are using this thing, how many times, and what things you use together.

Canon EOS 500D (Flickr by sindykids)

Canon EOS 500D (Flickr by sindykids)

These companies want to gain an understanding on how we use our devices and therefore will try to market us better from that understanding. For example, imagine that you have a Cannon EOS 500D, a basic camera, but imagine that Cannon could know that you have a normal zoom lent and you have been taking several photos with zoom. With the Internet of Things, this is possible and advertisement will be more focused on what you do and how you do it. Thus, privacy will be more and more complicated with Internet-connected objects around.

At thethings.IO we believe that data made from users is user’s data. Therefore, users have the right to own their own data and give access to this data to third parties which will receive ads and coupons.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday weekly blog!

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