The Network Podcast

In case you were thinking of stealing a motorbike on your next trip to Vietnam, for example, you might like to know that Setech Viet has released a device that could allow the owner to track you on their iPhone.

The number of companies developing analytics that can collect and analyze energy-related data is growing exponentially. Eager startups are scrambling to meet surging demand for ways to manage energy consumption more efficiently.

#60: Smart City Seoul: The Social And Technical Standards by The Network Podcast

#59: Startup Trends For 2014: Wearable, Shareable & Social. by The Network Podcast

Thinking of hiring someone new to oversee your IT security? Then here’s a word of warning: don’t bother digging out the job description you used for your last chief security officer (CSO) or chief information security officer (CISO) recruitment ad. Information security has always been a rapidly evolving field, with new threats popping up on a daily basis. But the scale of change has shifted significantly in recent years as a result of a range of high-profile trends.

#58 2014 A Year Of Accelerating Change For The TV Industry by The Network Podcast

#57: Startups In The UK Unlock New Opportunities With 4G by The Network Podcast

The amount of information captured by the Internet of Everything is so great it could allow us to recreate in detail events, trends, and even lives. On April 15, 2012, rapper Tupac Shaker took to the stage in front of a packed crowd at the Coachella Festival in Indio, California. Fans were not just wowed because Tupac had been away from the music scene for some time… but because he had been dead since 1996.

In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, a massive open source mapping effort is helping relief workers on the ground. Millions of smartphone users carry detailed maps of much of the world in the palm of their hand. In the rare cases where these digital maps are not up to date, the consequences are generally minor—a building looks different perhaps, or a road is closed, forcing a detour.

As mobility grows in Brazil, an increasing number of citizens there are turning to social media. Not just to socialize, but also to report criminal activity. Some Brazilians – particularly youth – are using smartphones to report crimes via Twitter.

There’s something in the air in Rio de Janeiro these days—something that wasn’t there, say, a decade or two ago. It’s a feeling of excitement, of hope, of new possibilities. And it’s not just because Brazil is gearing up to host two of the world’s largest events in the next three years—soccer’s World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. It’s something bigger than that, and it seems to be most clearly embodied in an upwardly mobile generation of tech-savvy residents of the city, or Cariocas, in their 20s and 30s.

#52: Would You Wear A Computer? by The Network Podcast

It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but two separate groups of researchers in Germany are testing technologies that use the human body as an integrated component of the user interface. Researchers at the Hasso Plattner Institute have designed an interface dubbed “the Imaginary Phone” situated within the palm of the user's hand. Meanwhile, researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt have created a prototype called “EarPut” that uses the ear’s surface to input commands from user to computer.

For as long as I can remember, tech companies have been touting home automation as the next big thing. And for just as long, it has failed to happen as systems that were too expensive, too complicated, and too unreliable failed to catch on with any but the most gadget-crazed of consumers.

It’s expected that tens of billions of devices will be hooked up and talking to each other by 2020. But what is going to power all of them? And, does it automatically follow that the communications will take place over the public digital highway? In a laboratory in Cambridge, UK, scientists and engineers have been working up some answers. If the forecasters are to be believed, there will be 50 billion ‘things’ connected and sharing data over networks by the year 2020. But for this to happen, some fundamental issues need to be addressed. One is how these devices will be connected. Another is whether and to what extent these use the public Internet. A further and often overlooked question is how some of these devices will be powered. For example, if advanced health monitoring means more devices being implanted in people’s bodies, it would be safer and more viable long-term if these sensors didn’t need a battery. Similarly, if monitoring devices are to be incorporated within the fabric of new buildings to monitor for wear and tear, they will need a power source that will keep the embedded technology online for the lifetime of that building – which could be 100 years or more. A technology innovation company in Cambridge in the UK is busy addressing all of these issues. Most of the 300+ people who work at The Technology Partnership are scientists and engineers. They spend their time designing and developing next-generation technologies which commercial partners then take to market. A number of TTP’s activities currently have direct relevance to the emergence of an Internet of Things (IoT), from its work in wireless communications to consumer products and medical device design. TTP prefers to think of the Internet of Things as a world of ‘Connected Devices’. It is a subtle distinction, but it acknowledges that many of the devices won’t be connected to the public Internet because of the sensitivity of the content they are transmitting. Rather, they may interact by way of closed networks or specialist cloud-based services. In other cases, objects will communicate directly with other devices such as smartphones using short-range wireless connections. The opportunity associated with connecting inanimate objects over a network, or directly to other devices, is that they can then be controlled remotely or interrogated for information, creating the potential for new types of use and for value-added services. The object must first have a digital microprocessor, interface and/or a sensor to enable the interaction. After that, it needs to be connected to a system or application that can understand and interact with the device – whether that’s a particular PC, a cloud-based service, a mobile app downloaded onto a smartphone, or another device or machine. Dr Antony Rix, a senior consultant within TTP’s Communications and Wireless group, notes that for connected device solutions to be commercially viable, the value of the monitoring activity has to outweigh the cost of providing it. It is this that influences much of TTP’s work. “We’re used to connecting a mobile phone or tablet directly to the Internet via a wireless mobile network, but this is an expensive way of connecting devices,” he says. “If it involves LTE or 3G, you’re talking about adding tens of dollars to the product price. But there are lots of other ways of connecting.” For machine to machine (M2M) communications over a cellular network, an alternative is to use cheaper 2G/GSM networks, for example. “The typical cost of a 3G module so that you can connect a product to the Internet is $30-50; with GSM/GPRS it’s less than $10,” Dr Rix notes. With other connectivity alternatives, such as Bluetooth Smart, the cost could fall to $1 or less, he adds. “It’s this drop in cost that means applications start to make sense commercially – so that it becomes worth connecting the devices.” Other options might include use of specialist wireless technology. One of TTP’s o