There’s a lot of authoring on ‘The Internet of Things’ – inter-connected, smart, comunicative bits of stuff – everything from fridges, smart phones, tvs, you name it …
These devices, meshed together begin to form greater levels of intelligence, insight and will produce trillions of bits of data that if collected and analysed correctly will bring about greater insight into consumer behaviour. It may even help smart citizens get smarter. Most likely, it will help business have a greater knowledge and insight into how consumers behave and how to provide new services to them.
But there is a stack of dumb things out there which will never be part of the ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’ … unless you retrofit smartness to them. One such application, which is getting a high profile on Linkedin (amongst other places) is ’tile’ – http://www.thetileapp.com/ which makes dumb(ish) things smart(er). I am not a consumer of the tile (yet), I have no financial interest in ’tile’ but it looks like a neat product that could provide added-smartness to otherwise dumb things.
It can be used by the consumer to find mis-placed keys (a new application to an age-old problem) or to track a stolen laptop, bike, car through meshing together the apps used by tile users. That is, of course, if the thief doesn’t simply rip if off and discard it.
The success of this product will be greatly enhanced if the uptake of it meets a critical mass. No doubt there will be competition in the market soon – but it looks like a neat product. And who wouldn’t want to make dumb things smarter?
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