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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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thethings.iO at the X Seedrocket Campus in Madrid

Last week our founder, Marc Paus, was presenting thethings.iO at the X Campus of the SeedRocket. Thethings.iO was one of the nine startups selected among 220 companies that applied for the SeedRocket accelerator program.

 

Marc pitching at the SeedRocket investors during the Demo Day

Marc pitching at the SeedRocket investors during the Demo Day.

Among all the accelerator programs that exist today in Spain, SeedRocket is one of the oldest and best in existence. Made by investors that have their own internet companies, they were the first ones to advise the new entrepreneurs that were attending the SeedRocket Campus.

Although we weren’t able to pass the selection process, it was worth it to attend the event and get a lot of good advise from successful Spanish businesses. However, we didn’t spend all of our time conducting business, we were able to visit Makespace Madrid and the MediaLab Prado.

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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Interesting Videos on the Internet of Things

Due to the Gigaom #mobilizeconf, we were able to view some mind blowing things regarding the Internet of Things. Here are some of our favorite videos we have seen to date.

The first video is a panel session at the Gigaom Structure Europe 2013 managed by Alexandra Deschamps from the Good Night Lamp with Alicia Asín from Libelium and Michael Simon from Xively.

The second video is a panel from the conference Gigaom Mobilize. Surj Patel from Smart Mocha managed the panel with Michael Rosenblatt from ATOMS express and Hugo Fiennes from electric imp

Both videos are saying that the Internet of Things will be here sooner then we think and that the pioneers of the devices actually will come from everyday people in their basements instead of a massive corporation.

If you find any interesting video of the Internet of Things let us know and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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Our Experience At The Maker Faire Rome 2013

Entrance of the Maker Faire in Rome

Entrance of the Maker Faire in Rome

We’re proud to say that the Maker Faire Rome was a success! We say this not only because the of quality of the projects showed at the Maker Faire, or  because of the new Arduino (and non-Arduino, such as the Intel Galileo, thanks!) shields presented and the people going to visit the Maker Faire (more than 30.000), but also because we got to meet a lot of interesting people that were interested thethings.iO and the Internet of Things.

Before the presentation at the Maker Faire

Before the presentation at the Maker Faire

Marc’s goal when speaking was to try to give the audience a clear vision of the current situation of the Internet of Things. At the end of the talk, we gave a coupon to Internet of Things developers. There were several questions after the presentation relating to property of data generated by the gadgets.

We had the opportunity to meet Bruce Sterling. author of the book Shaping Things and writer of the Beyond the beyond at WIRED blog.

 

Bruce Sterling with the connected beer of the Oktoberfest of Things

Bruce Sterling with the connected beer of the Oktoberfest of Things

We got to chat with the founders of Arduino, David Cuartielles and Massimo Banzi, about a few of thethings.iO’s projects such as One Seat Away and Oktoberfest of Things, which was shown by Thomas Amberg at the IoT Zurich booth.

We also had the privilege of meeting the Internet of Things Madrid meet up organizers, Sara and César. Their booth consisted of Oblobots,

which are open sourced 3D printed robots’ pieces with a conductive dow that can teach children simple electrical circuits. Children at the Maker Faire were astonished by the Oblobots which were playing and challenging them to make a mega-robot.

Oblobots

Oblobots

A few other interesting groups we had the privilege of meeting were the Cooking Hacks team and Snootlab. The Cooking Hacks team helped us with some questions regarding the next project at the thethings.iO. The Snootlab is a French startup that is building things with technology using Arduino.

We feel very fortunate to have met such amazing and innovative startups, teachers, architects, and makers all who are interested in the future of the Internet of Things. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

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