Right now, web browsers are your window to the internet. Thanks in part to the Internet of Things, that’s gonna change. Can’t imagine it? Listen to this, and you will!

This episode is about why and how, with some free extra bonus conversation about how the way we interact with “things” is going to look very different within our lifetimes.

Topics

• The end of URLs?
• Bigger screens, smaller screens, flexi-screens
• The end of car mirrors?
• Other ways the IoT will disintermediate browsers
• The always-watching, always-listening IoT
• Voice recognition
• Distilling multiple inputs to emotional state and intent
• Anticipatory computing
• Devices sharing sensor data

Links

• Amazon Dash, Amazon Fire TV
• Quartz Article on the Internet of Things overtaking the Internet as it is today

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The big three duke it out! Which company is best positioned to become the owner of the Internet of Things in the consumer market? Which will win in our first ever Farstuff Battle of the IoT Giants?

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Stuff we talk about

• Operating Systems
• Gadgetry
• Customer Reach
• Our 3 C’s: Connect, Communicate, Compute
• Android isn’t open source, it’s faux-pen source
• Apple is a consumer electronics company, Google is a technology company
• Web services for IoT devices
• “Being the store” vs. “being the doormat”
• “Apple has my credit card, so we’re in a relationship that way”
• Hybrid (local+cloud) computing

The ridiculously arbitrary results

[table width=”500″ colwidth=”100|100|100|100|100|100″ colalign=”left|center|center|center|center|center”]
Contender,Tech/OS,Gadget Portfolio,Customer Reach,Services,Total
Apple,10,15,20,10,55
Google,15,7,10,25,57
Samsung,1,20,3,0,24
[/table]

Imagine a world where your every move, heartbeat, body temperature change and sleep is tracked by an intricate network of activity monitors. In this episode we talk about the wearable world of activity monitors, which live at the intersection of health and the Internet of Things.

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Sensors in activity monitors

• Accelerometer — G-force acceleration
• Gyroscope — Rotation
• Compass — Orientation
• GPS — Location
• Altimeter — Altitude

Activity monitors

[table colalign=”left|center|center|center|left”]
Monitor,Steps,Calories,Sleep,More
Fitbit ($89-$130),Yes,No,Yes,Stairs
Basis ($199),Yes,No,Yes,Heart Rate
Withings Pulse,Yes,No,Yes,Distance\, Heart Rate
Jawbone Up ($100),Yes,No,Yes,Alarms
Nike Fuelband ($149),Yes,Yes,Yes,Goals
Misfit Shine,Yes,Yes,Yes,Waterproof
Garmin Vivofit ($130-$170),Yes,Yes,Yes,GPS
BodyMedia Fit ($89),Yes,Yes,Yes,Temp
Striiv Play ($40),Yes,Yes,No,Stairs
Fitbug Orb ($50),Yes,Yes,Yes,Distance
[/table]

More fashionable activity monitors

• Wellograph
• Pebble Steel on Kickstarter

“Wearable” clothing (activity monitoring clothing)

• Hexoskin on Indiegogo
• Squid Fitness Monitoring Shirt — Measures muscle electrical pulse. Partnership with Nike+ and Northwestern University
• Under Armour & Zephyr partnered to create a sensor-equipped compression shirt
• Sensoria Fitness Smart Socks for runners
• AiQ BioMan Fabric — Heart rate, respiration, skin temperature
• GOWTrainer.com

Other fun diversions in this category

• Whistle — The dog activity monitor
• Google Glass — Come on! You know this will show up on lots of lists!
• Notch — 10 sensors for athletic training
• Tao Wellshell — Isometric device, pitting your muscles against themselves
• Beddit — Sleep monitor for your bed, just slip it under your sheets
• Trace — The ultimate for Surfers, Skateboarders, Skiers and Snowboarders
• Empatica — Real-time stress monitor

Episode topics

• Apple and iWatch and Healthbook, oh my
• The possibility of privatized EHRs (electronic health records)
• The Apple iWatch: It’s not a thing yet™!
• What is the Internet of Things, again?
• Gamification
• Fashionable wearables
• What’s in these things anyway? (See “What’s in activity monitors?”)
• Accuracy (a.k.a. “truth devices”, a.k.a. how do they test these things?)
• The smarts is in the software
• “Wearable clothing”
• Smart socks
• Prescribing the Internet of Things
• Implications for sports, including board sports
• IoT-based scoring

What’s the likelihood that our network of Internet of Things will exceed our own human intellect? What would this mean for the rights of robots? Join us for a fun discussion involving some of our favorite fictional robots, and speculation about what the world would look like with a society that includes incredibly intelligent creatures of our own making.

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Shows and characters we mention:

• The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager
• Lieutenant Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation (“the good one”)
• Battlestar Galactica

We talk about:

• What is “The Singularity”?
• Sentient Roombas
• But will it have Scarlett Johansson’s voice?
• Robot civil rights
• My Siri and your Siri
• “I wanna see that movie!”
• The robot version of X-Men
• Analogy with other civil rights movenents
• Why Will Smith gotta be mean to robots?
• “Doing almost nothing all of the time”
• Hoping Watson stays on our side
• Capping AI skill levels
• Robot labor party!
• Paying people to be your friend
• Virtual pop stars vs. meatspace pop stars: Fight!
• “Well I think that you wouldn’t want a used one”
• Dogs vs. Furbys

Enjoy! We’d appreciate it if you could help us get the word out about Farstuff by sharing your thoughts on the podcast to your social media network(s) of choice.