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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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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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We Have Been Interviewed by ARA.cat

The newspaper Ara is one of the newest newspapers in Catalonia. Every sunday there is a special magazine focused on new technologies and entrepreneurship. Last week, they interviewed our founder Marc Pous.

theThings.IO at the ARA newspaper

theThings.IO at the ARA newspaper

Translation in English

Marc Pous is a computer engineer and since some years ago he has been involved on the Internet of Things research scenario. That means, how to connect quotidian objects around us to the Internet and how people interact with them.

“The costs to make processors have decreased a lot and today is much easier to integrate computers inside objects: from watches, glasses, bikes or even plants at home”, says Pous, born in Barcelona. “One thing is to manage three or four mobile applications to interact these gadgets, but when we will have 30 or 40 gadgets connected to the Internet it will be much more complicated”, add the entrepreneur.

In June, Pous created the company Next Big Thing Labs SL with the goal to launch the platform thethings.iO, a kind of social network where users will be able to add and manage the information generated by their gadgets in real-time. “For example, if you run, the running application will share the running information with your scale; you also will be able to turn off your lights from your mobile device or see when do you need to water your plants”, says.

The Next Big Thing Labs team is composed by three people. They are looking for 150.000€ as an investment to make a strong development team during the next years. “We want to lead the Internet of Things from Barcelona”, says Pous. The beta version will be available at the end of the year.

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

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One App For Each Gadget? No Way! This Is Not The Internet of Things We Want

When we envision the future of the Internet of Things, we see this scenario that Apple and Google helped to build with their mobile devices and their application market. We see tons of gadgets and objects connected to the Internet each one (or even brand) managed through their mobile application.

Dozens of IoT mobile apps (Photo by: Gonzalo Baeza)

Dozens of IoT mobile apps (Photo by: Gonzalo Baeza)

Philips Hue and LIFX are both household light bulbs and both are compatible with the analogical light bulbs that we have at home. However, both require the user to download separate apps to control their own device, this doesn’t make any sense.

Philips HUE and LIFX

Philips HUE and LIFX

People love to monitor their health by using scales but now with the invention of wearable trackers such as Fitbit or Nike+ people are able to also monitor their physical activity throughout the day. There are scales such as the Withings scale but this is not compatable with the Fitbit or the Nike+. We feel as if technology should make watching our health more convenient, not more difficult.

Our solution

We believe that the users of these millions of gadgets do not want to use dozens of mobile apps to interact with their devices. We propose a central place where they are able to aggregate, manage and interact in real-time with all of the devices.

We want to provide a platform where all of the Internet of Things in our market are interoperable and end users do not need to deal with different mobile apps.

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

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