A wearable I need ! What is it?
First Fitness Tracker Designed For Swimmers (Compliments to Ray Hammond for his future trends)
Yes, since my injury I have been doing a lot of PT in the pool. But there really hasn't been a FitBit that shows me how I'm doing!
It had to happen - iHealth has launched Wave, a swimming tracker that aims to help improve performance in the pool.
The wrist-based device is designed to work in and out of the pool, and will count daily steps, activity and active time.
However, it's in the pool that Wave really comes into its own. It's capable of recording stroke type, number of strokes and calories burned, and displays the information in iHealth's MyVitals 3.0 app, before offering a full report on your session.
Fascinating! First wearable to .....
First Wearable To Analyze Your Saliva (compliments to Ray Hammond on his future trends!)
Your spit says a lot about your health, and now there’s wearable technology being tested to track it.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have demonstrated a mouth guard with electronic sensors that can detect concentrations of certain chemicals in saliva. Such a gadget could be useful to soldiers, pilots, athletes, and even hospital patients.
The group recently revealed a new sensor that can detect the concentration of uric acid—an elevated concentration of uric acid in the blood and urine has been associated with various metabolic disorders.
This is the second sensor the group has made for the mouth guard. Last year, it showed that it was possible to measure lactate—elevated concentrations of which have been associated with muscle fatigue, among other things.
The device wirelessly transmits the information it collects to a smartphone or computer via Bluetooth Low Energy, a technology that consumes much less power than classic Bluetooth.
Cloud and IOT: Making it real at the Imperial College of London
[youtube=http://youtu.be/OSe_h1-X1H8]
3 Internet of Things "Items" you need to know!
The cloud has allowed the IoT to emerge. What is the IoT? It is a term that describes the growing network of objects that can communicate with each other and complete tasks without any human involvement having to take place. In November 2014, Gartner stated that there will be 4.9 billion connected "things" in use by the end of 2015, Wow!
With all these connected devices, connectivity will be the biggest part of it. 5G is being called the smartest network ever and is required for IoT to be successful.
All of us will need to know about the IoT! Here's 3 items that are in all the IoT space!
Internet of Everything. ABI Research summed it up well by explaining that the IoE has three subsystems: IoT, the Internet of Humans (human input to machines in any form) and the Internet of Digital (generating data and communicating it on for further use).
The Raspberry Pi is a series of credit card-sized single-board computers developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools.
MQTT. In order to allow IoT data to flow from producers (sensors on the field) to consumers (IT backends, web apps, etc.), MQTT is an OASIS standard that implements a publish-subscribe communication model. It has several QoS levels making it easy to find the perfect tradeoff between reliability and resources/bandwidth usage.
3 Surprises from Millennials on the Purchase Process
I love working with Millennials as well as understanding their purchasing habits.
From IBM's Institute of Business Value's study on Millennials, I had 3 Aha moments about how they like to purchase!
- The world's gone social! Millennials meet with vendors face-to-face during the sales cycle, but they would much rather interact remotely during this initial phase
- In God we trust, all others bring data. Millennials place equal weight on data analysis and the opinion of family and friends when deciding whether or not to make a B2B purchase costing US$10,000 or more
- Millennials are eager to share positive experiences, but very reluctant to share disappointments
These 3 ahas, tell me that in order to meet their needs, we need to:
- Be social in the sales cycle ! Since this social network scene makes the most sense to millennials, consider setting up an internal private social site to gain more input, and answer questions.
- Share data and analytics to assist in the progression! Since millennials want the data, share it! Do your homework to make it valuable but don't forget the "word of mouth" as well.
- Make it easy to shout it from the mountain tops! Since this new generation likes to share positive experiences, make it easy for them to do so. This enables them to become your brand ambassadors!
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3…2...1… Houston, we have lift off! IBM at the NASA Challenge with Internet of Things leading!
Over the weekend of April 11th and 12th, IBM partnered with NASA on their International Space Apps Challenge. Over 12,000 attendees participated in the 48-hour hackathon in 133 cities around the world creating apps to solve some of the most challenging issues we face here on earth, in space, around robotics and as human beings. IBM Bluemix was used as a development platform during this hackathon and we saw Bluemix adopted by more than 3600 developers during this event.
Combining the real time data provided by NASA about earth & space, and the ready-to-use Cloud services and app development tools provided by Bluemix, developers rapidly created powerful solutions to address the challenges we see everyday. .NASA Astronaut Catherine "Cady" Coleman made this bold statement at the New York City Main Stage Event: "Having the tools, having a platform like Bluemix, to get these people in this place solves problems that we don't have enough people to solve, and I think we're going to see some amazing solutions." - Watch the video at youtu.be/88KtkdVD8gs.
In this blog, I want to drill in and highlight three key things that I have learned
1. Creativity by combining IoT data and mobile
Wildfires are an immediate danger when they are close to human communities. When evacuating these areas, it turns out that the chosen route is crucial to people's survival. A NYC based team created the Wildfire Navigator Mobile IoT App that analyzes the CO2 sensor data and combines real time imagery coming from NASA satellites Aqua and Terra, and builds optimized safest route API using Bluemix Python services. The route API will make predictions about potential areas that wildfires can spread to. Finding routes will take into consideration these predictions. Learn more at ibm.biz/BdXHrr
One of the NASA Space App topics was "Food Direction" - the country decision makers and the general public need to to understand the self-sufficiency of their country across decades and under fluctuating market conditions. To meet this challenge, Noordwijk team from Europe created the app "Can You Feed Me?". This Android app uses space data combined with other data sources to create insight into the imports and exports of food in the world. It was built to withstand global demand and supply data. The app's backend mapping web service was built on Bluemix using its Web app services and is capable of telling if there’s enough food for the population of a specific country. Learn more at ibm.biz/BdXHj8
The Great British Space Race, created an app that uses British astronaut Tim Peake's inaugural mission to the ISS to encourage people on Earth to keep fit. Keeping track of the exercise they do, participants can pit themselves against friends to earn mission badges and astronaut wings as they race towards orbit. Groups can challenge each other, and in conjunction with gyms, teams across the world can race around the solar system by earning "rocket fuel" for their physical exercise.
2. Women can do this too
In keeping with NASA's focus on Women in Data for the 2015 Space Apps Challenge, the Space Apps Data Bootcamp was led by many exceptional women making an impact on the world through their engagement with data. This was NASA’s first Data Bootcamp and it was a huge success for women in or interested in coding.
Women of all ages got a chance to hear several women panelist speak about their first hackathons, problem solving tips, and more. Panelists included 13-year-old Olivia Ross, who represented Black Girls CODE. She got started in coding when she was just 11 and definitely embodies what we’re looking for in future Bluemixers. Learn more at ibm.biz/BdXHsd. two creative solutions out of these thousands of apps that developers came up with in solving our earth problem in the 48 hour period.
My colleagues at IBM have recognized this trend and will build programs that specifically help women of all ages to take the leap and help them acquire necessary skills that transform their ideas into the next great product.
3. Innovation is happening everywhere.
In this rapidly evolving world, we have transitioned into an innovation economy - where capital and computing infrastructure is becoming a commodity, while creativity + speed have emerged as real differentiators in how a business can leapfrog their competition. The #SpaceApps challenge has shown that by leveraging developer's creativity and a rapid innovation platform's speed, you can create new solutions within 48 hours. I challenge your team to join us in our future Hackathons that my colleagues have created to challenge you to create your innovative solutions. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/events/
Internet of Things Foosball on BlueMix With Social Linkage!
Yes, the students have done it! This is an Internet of Things Foosball Table designed by Fabian Eitel and Marcel Seibold. In this picture, they are the 2 gentlemen playing against me !!
This table with sensors throughout does the following:
- It tweets the scores.
- It rates the probability of the winning team (my team was not rated high -- even though I did score one point!)
- Others can tweet to cheer you on!
Here you can find our final result in Twitter as a little souvenir. https://twitter.com/TischkickerEhn/status/590534529464467456)
It is a very innovative way to showcase the value of the Cloud. Marcel and Fabian are not hard core coders but were able to get this up and coming quickly because of Bluemix.
How does it work?
Sensors capture the "game" and then send the results to the cloud, where the data is analyzed and stored. Then based on the game, Tweets are automatically sent and the probablity of a Winner Calculated!
What fun!
