- A History of the Future in 100 Objects — is out! It’s design fiction, describing the future of technology in faux Wired-like product writeups. Amazon already beating the timeline.
- Projects and Priorities Without Managers (Ryan Carson) — love what he’s doing with Treehouse. Very Googley. The more I read about these low-touch systems, the more obviously important self-reporting is. It is vital that everyone posts daily updates on what they’re working on or this whole idea will fall down.
- Intellectual Ventures Patent Collection — astonishing collection, ready to be sliced and diced in Cambia’s Lens tool. See the accompanying blog post for charts, graphs, and explanation of where the data came from.
- Smokio Electronic Cigarette — the quantified cigarette (not yet announced) for measuring your (electronic) cigarette consumption and uploading the data (natch) to your smartphone. Soon your cigarette will have an IPv6 address, a bluetooth connection, and firmware to be pwned.
"sensors" entries
Four short links: 20 December 2013
History of the Future, Managing without Managers, Intellectual Ventures, and Quantified Cigarette
Wearable computing and automation
The Jawbone UP shows the promise available in all kinds of wearable sensors.
In a recent conversation, I described my phone as “everything that Compaq marketing promised the iPAQ was going to be.” It was the first device I really carried around and used as an extension of my normal computing activities. Of course, everything I did on the iPAQ can be done much more easily on a smartphone these days, so my iPAQ sits in a closet, hoping that one day I might notice and run Linux on it.
In the decade and a half since the iPAQ hit the market, battery capacity has improved and power consumption has gone down for many types of computing devices. In the Wi-Fi arena, we’ve turned phones into sensors to track motion throughout public spaces, and, in essence, “outsourced” the sensor to individual customers.
Phones, however, are relatively large devices, and the I/O capabilities of the phone aren’t needed in most sensor operations. A smartphone today can measure motion and acceleration, and even position through GPS. However, in many cases, display isn’t needed on the sensor itself, and the data to be collected might need another type of sensor. Many inexpensive sensors are available today to measure temperature, humidity, or even air quality. By moving the I/O from the sensor itself onto a centralized device, the battery power can be devoted almost entirely to collecting data. Read more…
Software, hardware, everywhere
Software and hardware are moving together, and the combined result is a new medium.
An updated version of this essay was published in December 2014.
Real and virtual are crashing together. On one side is hardware that acts like software: IP-addressable, controllable with JavaScript APIs, able to be stitched into loosely-coupled systems—the mashups of a new era. On the other is software that’s newly capable of dealing with the complex subtleties of the physical world—ingesting huge amounts of data, learning from it, and making decisions in real time.
The result is an entirely new medium that’s just beginning to emerge. We can see it in Ars Electronica Futurelab’s Spaxels, which use drones to render a three-dimensional pixel field; in Baxter, which layers emotive software onto an industrial robot so that anyone can operate it safely and efficiently; in OpenXC, which gives even hobbyist-level programmers access to the software in their cars; in SmartThings, which ties Web services to light switches.
The new medium is something broader than terms like “Internet of Things,” “Industrial Internet,” or “connected devices” suggest. It’s an entirely new discipline that’s being built by software developers, roboticists, manufacturers, hardware engineers, artists, and designers. Read more…
Ginger.io: Putting the Patient-Provider connection at the center
A tool for outreach to patients produces unexpected benefits
This posting was written by guest author Julia Bernstein of Ginger.io. Ginger.io’s CEO Anmol Madan will be speaking on this topic at Strata Rx.
The traditional, office-based model for health care is episodic. The provider-patient relationship exists almost completely within the walls of the exam room, with little or no follow-up between visits. Data is primarily episodic as well, based on blood pressure reading done at a specific time or surveys administered there and then, with little collected out of the office. And even the existing data collection tools—paper diaries or clunky meters—are focused more on storing data that on connecting the patient and provider through that data in real time.
There is no way to get in touch when, for instance, a patient’s blood sugar starts varying wildly or pain levels change. The provider often depends on the patient reaching out to them. And even when a provider does put into place an outreach protocol, it is usually very crude, based on a general approach to managing a population as opposed to an understanding of a patient. The end result is a system that, while doing its best within a difficult setting, is by default reactive instead of proactive.
The Role of Big Data in Personalizing the Healthcare Experience: Mobile
Sensors, games, and social networking all create change in health and fitness
This article was written with Ellen M. Martin and Tobi Skotnes. Dr. Feldman will deliver a webinar on this topic on September 18 and will speak about it at the Strata Rx conference.
Cheaper, faster, better technology is enabling nearly one in four people around the world to connect with each other anytime, anywhere, as online social networks have changed the way we live, work and play. In healthcare, the data generated by mobile phones and sensors can give us new information about ourselves, extend the reach of our healers and help to accelerate a societal shift towards greater personal engagement in healthcare.
Hot Swap Devices and Increase Arduino Interface Options with I2C
Don't be afraid of the bus
After a short period of time, beginners working with the Arduino development boards often find themselves wanting to work with a greater range of input or sensor devices—such as real-time clocks, temperature sensors, or digital potentiometers.
However each of these can often require connection by one of the two digital data buses, known as SPI and I2C. After searching around the Internet, inexperienced users may become confused about the bus type and how to send and receive data with them, then give up.
This is a shame as such interfaces are quite simple to use and can be easily understood with the right explanation. For example let’s consider the I2C bus. It’s a simple serial data link that allows a master device (such as the Arduino) to communicate with one or more slave devices (such as port expanders, temperature sensors, EEPROMs, real-time clocks, and more).
Read more…
Context Aware Programming
I’m increasingly realizing that many of my gripes about applications these days are triggered by their failure to understand my context in the way that they can and should. For example:
- Unruly apps on my Android phone, like gmail or twitter, update messages in the background as soon as I wake up my phone, slowing the phone to a crawl and making me wait to get to the app I really want. This is particularly irritating when I’m trying to place a phone call or write a text, but it can get in the way in the most surprising places. (It’s not clear to me if this is the application writers’ fault, or due to a fundamental flaw in the Android OS.)
- Accuweather for Android, otherwise a great app, lets you set up multiple locations, which seems like it would be very handy for frequent travelers, but it inexplicably defaults to whichever location you set up first, regardless of where you are. Not only does it ignore the location sensor in the phone, it doesn’t even bother to remember the last location I chose.
- The WMATA app (Washington Metro transit app) I just downloaded lets you specify and save up to twelve bus stops for which it will report next bus arrival times. Why on earth doesn’t it just detect what bus stop you are actually standing at?
- And it’s not just mobile apps. Tweetdeck for Mac lets you schedule tweets for later in the day or on future dates, yet it defaults to the date that you last used the feature rather than today’s date! How frustrating is it to set the time of the tweet for the afternoon, only to be told “Cannot schedule a tweet for the past”, because you didn’t manually update the date to today!
In each of these cases, programmers seemingly have failed to understand that devices have senses, and that consulting those senses is the first step in making the application more intelligent. It’s as if a human, on awaking, blundered down to breakfast without opening his or her eyes!
By contrast, consider how some modern apps have used context awareness to create brilliant, transformative user experiences:
- Uber, recognizing both where you are and where the nearest driver is, gives you an estimated time of pickup, connects the two of you, and lets you track progress towards that pickup.
- Square Register notices anyone running Square Wallet entering the store, and pops up their name, face, and stored payment credentials on the register, creating a delightful in-store checkout experience.
- Apps like FourSquare and Yelp are like an augmentation that adds GPS as a human sixth sense, letting you find restaurants and other attractions nearby. Google Maps does all that and more. (Even Google Maps sometimes loses the plot, though. For example, yesterday afternoon, I was on my way to Mount Vernon. Despite the fact that I was in Virginia, a search unadorned with the state name gave me as a first result Mount Vernon WA, rather than Mount Vernon VA. I’ve never understood how an app that can, and does, suggest the correct street name nearby before I’ve finished typing the building number can sometimes go so wrong.)
- Google Now, while still a work in progress, does an ambitious job of intuiting things you might want to know about your environment. It understands your schedule, your location, the weather, the time, and things you have asked Google to remember on your behalf. It sometimes suggests things that you don’t care about, but I’d far rather than than an idiot application that requires me to use keystrokes or screen taps to tell the app things that my phone already knows.
Just as the switch from the command line to the GUI required new UI skills and sensibilities, mobile and sensor-based programming creates new opportunities to innovate, to surprise and delight the user, or, in failing to use the new capabilities, the opportunity to create frustration and anger. The bar has been raised. Developers who fail to embrace context-aware programming will eventually be left behind.
What journalists can learn from gamers, using ‘citizen sensors’, and best hits of a data pioneer
As the field grows, and the demands for “data journalists” proliferate, journalists find themselves walking a fine line between embracing technology’s potential in the field, and never losing sight of the crucial role of the journalist — which has traditionally been focused on helping people acquire the tools to make sense of information. This week’s links include stories about how journalists and storytellers are adapting the profession for success in this new world of information, where the data tells the story.
Journalism and Technology
-
What News Nerds Can Learn from Game Nerds, Day One (The ProPublica Nerd Blog)
In journalism, we’ve heard over and over again that mobile is the future. So what kind of storytelling can we do to take advantage of the fact that if they’re on their smartphone we know our readers’ physical location, and that with the right inspiration, they are willing to move great distances? What if on election day, we could help voters find their most convenient polling locations? -
The danger of journalism that moves too quickly beyond fact (Poynter)
The best thinking about journalism’s future benefits from its being in touch with technology’s potential. But it can get in its own way when it simplifies and repudiates the intelligence of journalism’s past. Machines bring the capacity to count. Citizens bring expertise, experience and an expanded capacity to observe events from more vantage points. Journalists bring access, the ability to interrogate people in power, to dig, to translate and triangulate incoming information, and a traditional discipline of an open-minded pursuit of truth. They work best in concert. -
A pioneer retraces the data trail (The Age)
Author Simon Rogers founded the Datablog in early 2009 and oversaw it until May 2013 when he became Data Editor at Twitter. This book is a “best hits” compilation, a primer for data journalists and a compendium of weird and wonderful facts.
Four short links: 5 June 2013
Interesting Themes, Distributed Systems Failure Modes, Gesture Sensing Through Wifi, and Bad Taste Agile
- OATV Fund III Pitch Deck (Slideshare) — contains a list of what they were investing in, and what they want to invest in with the new round. Then: Quantified self; Internet subsystems; Smart networks of things; Manipulation and visualization of big data; sustainability; Maker movement. Now: Quantified Self Pro; Maker Pro; Hacking Education; Hidden Economies; Operations as Competitive Advantage; A Router in Every Pocket; The Internet Operating System. The move to “Pro” interests me, too. (via Bryce Roberts)
- The Network is Reliable — Many applications silently degrade when the network fails, and resulting problems may not be understood for some time—if they are understood at all. […] much of what we know about the failure modes of real-world distributed systems is founded on guesswork and rumor. […] In this post, we’d like to bring a few of these stories together. We believe this is a first step towards a more open and honest discussion of real-world partition behavior, and, ultimately, more robust distributed systems design.
- Wisee (PDF) — recognising gestures using disturbances in the (wifi) force. Our results show that WiSee can identify and classify a set of nine gestures with an average accuracy of 94%. (via BoingBoing)
- Why Your Users Hate Agile Development (IT World) — What developers see as iterative and flexible, users see as disorganized and never-ending. Here’s how some experienced developers have changed that perception. (via Slashdot)
Strata Week: Can your passwords stand up to a cracker?
Password (in)security, sensors and ant-sized computers, and big data skeptics are called out.
Companies, developers need to do more to increase password security
Google urged users this week to take more care in creating passwords. In a post on the Google Blog, Google Software Engineer Diana Smetters offered some guidelines, including using a different password for each online account, keeping them in a safe place, creating a recovery option and making them hard to guess. Smetters suggests using a mix of letters and numbers and avoiding basing passwords on common phrases.
Though industry experts generally applauded Google’s efforts to increase consumer awareness, most agreed the company could do more. Seth Rosenblatt reports at CNET that industry experts Alex Salazar and Mary Landesman feel Google should be pressuring developers and companies to improve their security practices.
Landesman noted, for instance, that using spaces in passwords makes them stronger, but most sites don’t let you do that. Salazar outlined three steps Google could take to make the web safer for consumers: pressure companies to require consumers to choose passwords that are easy to remember but hard to break; be a stronger two-factor authentication advocate; and to publish guidelines for developers — and to do a better job of stressing the importance of protecting your customers. Landesman pointed out that often, blame for password breaches is misplaced on users. “[Password security] is tilted against the user,” she said.