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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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Jam Packed Week at thethings.iO

Last week was an interesting one here in Barcelona.

We started with the Internet of Things Barcelona meetup, which was one of the biggest, with over 85 attendants at the venue. Some of the discussions included Jiri of Claro Partners, Telefonica presenting their Thinking Things, Alicia Asín introducing Libelium and Adam Dunkels showcasing his Thingsquare last novelty (in a live demo). It was also awesome to meet Hugo Fiennes from Electric Imp and hear some of his experiences on the Internet of Things field.

On Tuesday Marc went to the radio, he went to RAC1 to talk about the Internet of Things. Checkout the podcast

On Friday Marc was invited to the IoT tapas organized by Claro Partners. It was one of the best brainstorms related to the Internet of Things we’ve ever attended. We have continued the development of our beta website and look forward on showing it off soon enough.

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

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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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Internet of Things at CES and MWC 2013

After two days at the Mobile World Congress 2013 and reading about CES 2013 at Las Vegas, we strongly believe the Internet of Things will be big in 2013.

CES 2013 at Las Vegas

One of our companions from , had a booth set up and they caught several people’s interest due to their Kickstarter campaign.

The Good Night Lamp at CES 2013 (by todbot at Flickr)

The Good Night Lamp at CES 2013 (by todbot at Flickr)

Experts says that Quantified Self has been the guest star at CES 2013 because they create a lot of expectations with HAPIFork, Fitbit, Jawbone and Withing among other interesting companies.

The Mobile World Congress 2013 at Barcelona

In our opinion, the star of this conference was the Internet connected coffee machines. With an unclear use of companies defended the product saying that people do not want to wait to have coffee prepared when they go to the machine. A coffee takes thirty seconds to one minute to prepare through a machine.

The Cisco coffee machine connected to the Internet

The Cisco coffee machine connected to the Internet

The engineering solution for coffee machines were very intriguing.

On the other hand, the stackable pieces of plastic are ready to send the real-time information to the Telefonica cloud servers.

Thinking things by Telefonica I+D

Thinking things by Telefonica I+D

At the SMA Connected Cities booth, Jordi Corominas was presenting Ecooltra, an electric motorbike connected to the Internet. The system lets the users rent a motorbike using their mobile devices. Then, they could use NFC to start the motorbike at the Ecooltra parkings.

We were very excited to have this opportunity to join in on this conference. We hope that thethings.iO will help users improve the ability to interact with their Internet connected objects through our dashboard.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter @thethingsIO and check out our weekly #IoTFriday Blogs!

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What is thethings.iO?

Nowadays the Internet of Things is becoming the Internet of Walled Gardens. Most of the IoT projects are vertical solutions that cannot interoperate with other objects or projects. Kickstarter has accelerated this scenario, funding some awesome projects related with the Internet of Things and Quantified Self, nevertheless that has increased the silos existing in the current situation.

Technology experts and big companies do not have a clear idea about the real volume of the Internet of Things in the future, but they are confident that it will be big. That means that we will not be able to deal with one mobile application for each object connected to the Internet. All the things connected will have to have its own experience with the different vertical solutions.

thethings.iO is an horizontal solution built to create an interoperable Internet of Things scenario. Thethings.iO is a platform designed to extend the Web by providing access to real objects in the physical world. Our main goal is to let you manage, share and interact with any thing connected to the Internet anywhere, when you like.

Are you a manufacturer?

We want to make your products interoperable with other existing Internet-connected objects. We would like to offer the end-users the same experience interacting with all the objects and things that they own. And of course we want to give you an extra-value for sharing the access and information of your things. Contact us for more detailed information.

Are you a maker or a developer?

theThings.IO would allow you to create add value on the top of the Internet-connected objects compatible with our platform. I’m sure that you will be interested. theThings.IO is the hub in charge of handling all the communications and the requests to access and interact with them. Let us make the hard part!

theThings.IO for end users

Thethings.iO is built as a social network, seen as an interoperable platform that allows one to interact and  remotely manage their Internet-connected objects, such as Fitbit activity trackers, Withings scales or your Arduinos, among other within the same dashboard.

Learn how to connect Internet of Things and Quantified Self with thethings.iO, the new social network for your Internet-connected objects and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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