Category: Internet of Things

Web VR has me excited; you should know about it

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Mozilla is offering this week the 1.0 release of its WebVR API proposal for displaying virtual reality content in the browser.

The proposal features interfaces to VR hardware like sensors and head-mounted displays, aiding developers in building VR experiences, according to the editor’s draft of WebVR. “Recent VR technology advances and community feedback have allowed us to improve the API to address developer needs,” said Mozilla’s Casey Yee, a virtual reality designer and developer, in a blog post. WebVR was co-developed by Mozilla technologies and Brandon Jones of the Google Chrome

The 1.0 specification includes VR-specific handling of device-rendering and display, the ability to traverse links between WebVR pages, and suitability for desktop and mobile experiences. Mozilla plans to include a stable implementation of the APIs in the Firefox Nightly test browser project sometime in the first half of 2016.

Virtual reality has recently come to be viewed as ready for enterprise business use for tasks like providing virtual 3D tours and simulated test drives. In elaborating on a newfound demand for VR, Yee said he expects 2016 to be a banner year for the technology, with VR products becoming available and software companies ramping up support. “The new medium has also driven demand for Web-enabled support from browser vendors,” he said.

WebVR offers support for virtual reality devices like Oculus Rift in Web applications. The specification lets developers ranslate position and movement information from a display into movement around a 3D scene, according to the Mozilla Developer Network.

In 2014, Mozilla set up a virtual reality Web site, MozVR, functioning with iOS and Android devices, Google Cardboard-compatible headsets, and the Oculus Rift headset. The site also has required a WebVR enabler add-on when using Firefox.

Amazon Echo has some new hardware

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AMAZON RELEASES NEW ECHO DEVICES, INTEGRATES NEST AND HONEYWELL: Amazon made several major updates to its Echo connected speaker and smart home hub yesterday. The Echo is quickly becoming one of the most popular smart home products in the US, and recent research from Argus Insights showed that consumers favor the Echo over Apple’s and Google’s platforms for controlling smart home devices. The latest updates should make the Echo brand even more popular and help improve the Alexa voice assistant platform that powers Echo speakers. The new updates include a pair of smart home integrations and two new speaker products.

Amazon announced that it will integrate Echo speakers with Nest and Honeywell smart thermostats with a software update by the end of this month. Amazon just added commands for smart thermostats to Alexa’s voice recognition capabilities last month, and has already integrated the Ecobee 3 smart thermostat. The integration with Nest’s thermostat is particularly notable as the Echo and the Nest thermostat are two of the most popular smart home devices on the market. Enabling the Echo to control Nest thermostats should heighten its appeal for smart home customers.

The first new speaker, the $89 Dot, is a small hockey puck-sized device that connects into any speaker to give it Alexa’s voice recognition capabilities. That means any speaker connected to the Dot can do all the things the Echo speaker can: play music on voice command, deliver news and weather updates, control smart home devices, and order an Uber car.

The second new device, the $129 Tap, is a smaller, portable version of the Echo speaker. The Tap has Alexa’s full set of voice commands, but the device is not voice activated. Users have to manually trigger the voice recognition system by pressing a button on the Tap. Amazon said this change was made to help preserve battery life on the smaller speaker. The Tap also has to be tethered to a smartphone to get a Wi-Fi connection, allowing users to take the Alexa platform with them on the go.
US consumers’ use of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant is still lagging behind other voice assistants, including Apple’s Siri, Google’s ‘OK Google’, and Microsoft’s Cortana, according to a recent MindMeld survey. While adoption is low, MindMeld notes that the US consumer use of Alexa has doubled from 2% to 4% in the past year.

Wireless: the next generation #iot

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The advent of 5G is likely to bring another splurge of investment, just as orders for 4G equipment are peaking. The goal is to be able to offer users no less than the “perception of infinite capacity”, says Rahim Tafazolli, director of the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey. Rare will be the device that is not wirelessly connected, from self-driving cars and drones to the sensors, industrial machines and household appliances that together constitute the “internet of things” (IoT).

Great insight on Economist.

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21693197-new-wave-mobile-technology-its-way-and-will-bring-drastic-change-wireless-next?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/wirelessthenextgeneration

When the World Is Wired: The Magic of the Internet of Everything – Singularity HUB

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http://singularityhub.com/2016/02/09/when-the-world-is-wired-the-magic-of-the-internet-of-everything/#%2EVrpyn88UTbE%2Elinkedin

Unexpected convergent consequences: This is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once.

An expert might be reasonably good at predicting the growth of a single exponential technology (e.g., the Internet of Things), but try to predict the future when the following eight technologies are all doubling, morphing and recombining. You have a very exciting (read: unpredictable) future.

1. Computation

2. Internet of Things (Sensors & Networks)

3. Robotics/Drones

4. Artificial Intelligence

5. 3D Printing

6. Materials Science

7. Virtual/Augmented Reality

8. Synthetic Biology

The enterprise is growing faster than consumer:IOT

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HIGH PRICES MEAN THE SMART HOME MARKET WILL DRAG ON CONSUMER IoT ADOPTION: Lack of consumer demand will inhibit IoT adoption, as many consumers are turned off by the high prices of many consumer IoT products, a recent Motley Fool article predicts. The article questioned the reliability of forecasts predicting billions of IoT devices will be deployed over the next few years, citing a consumer survey by Accenture in which 62% of respondents called IoT devices too expensive. The Motley Fool article points out that enterprises will be faster than consumers to adopt IoT devices, as  the data extracted from these devices will be extremely valuable for them.

BI Intelligence agrees with the assessment that enterprises will adopt IoT devices faster than consumers. We predict that 24 billion IoT devices will be connected by 2020, with enterprise IoT devices making up the biggest share of that installed base, followed by the government and then consumer sectors. The consumer sector will make up only about 20% of the IoT devices connected in 2020, according to our projections. Additionally, we believe that the smart home market will slow overall consumer adoption of the IoT because of the price concern that Accenture found, but other consumer IoT device categories will flourish.

The connected car, smart home, and wearables categories will make up the majority of the consumer IoT market. The connected car market is set for fast growth as automakers are connecting more and more of their models. Between 35-40% of cars shipped in the US last year were connected, and we expect about two-thirds will be connected in 2016. Typically, the car’s connection is already built into its overall cost, and consumers can often get their car added to their mobile data plan for around $10 per month.

BI Intelligence also predicts that annual wearable shipments will grow by 39 million over the next four years. Fitness trackers (the most popular category of wearables) can be bought for less than $100. To compare that to a popular smart home device, the Nest thermostat costs $250. The majority of consumers are not willing to pay $250 for Nest’s product when they can buy a non-connected thermostat for $20 or less. So we expect the smart home market to grow slowly in the near-term until device manufacturers can bring down the cost of their products to make them more affordable for consumers.

The enterprise is growing faster that consumer:IOT

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HIGH PRICES MEAN THE SMART HOME MARKET WILL DRAG ON CONSUMER IoT ADOPTION: Lack of consumer demand will inhibit IoT adoption, as many consumers are turned off by the high prices of many consumer IoT products, a recent Motley Fool article predicts. The article questioned the reliability of forecasts predicting billions of IoT devices will be deployed over the next few years, citing a consumer survey by Accenture in which 62% of respondents called IoT devices too expensive. The Motley Fool article points out that enterprises will be faster than consumers to adopt IoT devices, as  the data extracted from these devices will be extremely valuable for them.

BI Intelligence agrees with the assessment that enterprises will adopt IoT devices faster than consumers. We predict that 24 billion IoT devices will be connected by 2020, with enterprise IoT devices making up the biggest share of that installed base, followed by the government and then consumer sectors. The consumer sector will make up only about 20% of the IoT devices connected in 2020, according to our projections. Additionally, we believe that the smart home market will slow overall consumer adoption of the IoT because of the price concern that Accenture found, but other consumer IoT device categories will flourish.

The connected car, smart home, and wearables categories will make up the majority of the consumer IoT market. The connected car market is set for fast growth as automakers are connecting more and more of their models. Between 35-40% of cars shipped in the US last year were connected, and we expect about two-thirds will be connected in 2016. Typically, the car’s connection is already built into its overall cost, and consumers can often get their car added to their mobile data plan for around $10 per month.

BI Intelligence also predicts that annual wearable shipments will grow by 39 million over the next four years. Fitness trackers (the most popular category of wearables) can be bought for less than $100. To compare that to a popular smart home device, the Nest thermostat costs $250. The majority of consumers are not willing to pay $250 for Nest’s product when they can buy a non-connected thermostat for $20 or less. So we expect the smart home market to grow slowly in the near-term until device manufacturers can bring down the cost of their products to make them more affordable for consumers.

How will wearables influence mobile advertising – News magazine hitech digital posting the new technology

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Having read with great interest over the past few weeks a number of different MarketingTech articles on the role of wearable technology in marketing, I wanted to take the opportunity to share my thoughts on what’s happening with wearables in another fast growing area of digital marketing mobile.How will wearables influence mobile advertising,newshitechdigitalMuch like wearables, mobile is still seen by some as a new kid on the block. But while mobile fought to have a presence on media plans in the beginning, in the last 18 months the industry has turned a corner. Mobile ad spend in the UK now accounts for over one fifth 23% of all digital advertising, according to the IAB UK’s 2014 figures.

This change is being driven by proliferation smartphone penetration will hit 2.89 billion globally by 2017 according to the GSMA and by usage many reports estimate that consumers now look at their mobile screens up to 220 times a day. Brands can’t afford to miss out on the mobile opportunity.

Wearables on the other hand are still very much at an early juncture in their trajectory. However, the expectations are just as immense as mobile. In February this year, Cisco forecast that global wearable device connections would total 578 million in 2019, compared with 170 million in 2015.
But will the growth of both these sectors impact each other and, if so, why should marketers really care.

Driving wearables adoption

As well as Cisco’s predictions, industry analysts are falling over themselves to predict an explosion in the Internet of Things IoT over the next few years with the introduction and adoption of connected cars, appliances, wearable technology, and more. Whilst some heralded the shelving of Google Glass earlier this year as the death knell for wearables, we’re still actually just waiting to see where consumer usage on a mass scale will take wearables.

For example, with the recent launch of Apple Pay in the UK, how will Apple Watch users be driven to use their wearable device as a commerce tool? And how in turn will that influence ads being served to them on both that device and their smartphone?

The wearables debate at the moment seems to focus on whether we make technology wearable such as the aforementioned Watch or if you enable wearable things with tech. In these earlier stages, both are arguably as relevant as the other, but the one thing we can be sure of is that it is consumers who will decide how they want to use wearable tech and engage with brands through those devices.

With that in in mind, I believe that the app ecosystem, with mobile at its core, is only going to be more prevalent as IoT and wearables become a reality.

Brands are already considering new screens and interfaces, and will push themselves to innovate and connect with consumers in smart new ways. When it comes to advertising on wearables, wherever the consumer attention goes, and wherever new innovations are delivered through apps, advertisers will follow.

Mobile at the heart of connectivity

In the next few years, we’ll see technology moving into the background as it gets embedded into products we already own. For example, soon we’ll see fabrics that can react to electric charge to change colour, enabling wearers to control light patterns to match other elements in their outfit or colours in the surrounding environment. It would be relatively easy to make part of this fabric a screen when required.

The wearable itself isn’t necessarily where ads will be displayed but the data that will come from wearables will prove to be most valuable. For example, consumers may not carry their mobile on a run, or wear it in bed, but with wearable and smart clothes, brands will be able to acquire and use the data generated.

This increased connectivity between the different parts of our lives, with mobile at its core, will start to give brands a much more holistic view of their audience. It will mean we no longer target consumers by buying ‘off-the-shelf’ audiences, but that every brand audience will be fully bespoke.

Marketers seeking to get ahead need to use the data available to them to analyse how consumers engage as they move across screens, media, and moments.

http://newshitechdigital.com/will-wearables-influence-mobile-advertising/

Amazon: the brain inside the IoT?

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Amazon this week announced it will push deeper into the smart home market by selling semiconductors from a chip design company it purchased last year for $350 million. The chips from Annapurna Labs will sell to home equipment designers that build products for the Internet of Things.

Advertising and media executives may not realize that these ARM-based silicon chips act as the brain for IoT devices. The brain automates functions, similar to the way advertising platforms buy and bid on ad placements. The chips are used by original equipment manufacturers that build network-attached storage, WiFi routers, and streaming media, among other devices. These programmable chips have the ability to search and pull in data, serve or save information, and connect with other devices.

Amazon’s decision will see companies integrate search into a variety of hardware devices.

This week we learned of Amazon’s new product line, Alpine, that will serve as a foundation for next-generation digital services for the connected home, according to a press release.

The chips can enable functions such as voice search in a device. Voice search will drive new behavior and understanding for marketers in 2016, according to David Pann, GM of Microsoft Search Advertising, who made seven search predictions for 2016. Pann’s predictions range from using search data to predict the outcome to using paid-search advertising to go beyond keywords to audience and action buying, and mobile to personalize the experience.

Search marketing will harness the majority of digital marketing spend, predicts Pann, but the industry will need to find a way to automate more functions into chips and devices.

Search marketing will represent 45.4% of digital marketing spend in 2016, per Forrester Research Digital Marketing Forecasts, 2014 to 2019 (US). That likely doesn’t include future search investments that will become automated in devices.

 

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/266361/luxury-bracelets-marketed-as-smart-wearables.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=89342

How marketing technology could transform healthcare

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I don’t know who  Mayur Gupta is but I’d give him a fist bump for this post. 

How marketing technology could transform healthcare

Convergence of Marketing Technology and Healthcare

The following is a guest post by Mayur Gupta, a pioneering chief marketing technologist and author of the Inspire Martech blog, who is now a senior vice president and head of digital atHealthGrades. Mayur is also on the board of advisors for the MarTech conference, and he will be one of our featured speakers at the San Francisco event, March 21-22. Check out the MarTech agenda and save $500 on registration before January 9.

We live in a digital world where, as a consumer, you now shop for fresh groceries on your phone and expect them to be delivered at your doorstep in less than four hours. You call for a luxury SUV or a taxi while you eat your last bite and expect your ride as you step out, without worrying if you have enough cash or a credit card in your pocket.

All this and more are part of our daily lives, thanks to the evolution and convergence of data, technology and consumer experiences. The last few years have witnessed exponential investment and growth at the intersection of marketing and technology, enabling experiences that successfully change consumer behavior and drive participation and engagement.

The world of marketing and storytelling is in a constant state of evolution as well: from multi-channel to channel agnostic and omni-channel thinking; from push and time-based campaigns to more always-on push & pull engagement; from pre-planned content to more automated and data-driven conversations. It is all happening in verticals like finance, retail, CPG, travel and hospitality.

But a key part of our lives that is still behind is the world of healthcare and healthcare services. A traditionally fragmented, slow, regulated and highly monopolized system that has been anything but consumer-focused. Most technology investments have been made to optimize the “health IT” systems to maximize the billing opportunities.

Even the most chronically ill patient spends only 1% of their lives in a hospital, but 80% of healthcare investment goes into the hospital infrastructure and not addressing the remaining 99% of the individual’s life. The focus has navigated around a “volume-driven” system: more interventions for more beds for more procedures for more people more often for more money.

But the future will not be the same

With the cost of care pushing towards the consumer, ever-narrowing networks and limited choices, and lack of transparency and communication, the consumer is finally pushing back. She now “owns her health” and is proactively looking for alternate solutions.

On top of that, the re-imbursement model has flipped on its head. The entire healthcare machinery will gradually be measured against outcome, the quality and success of a treatment leading to the positive health of an individual, instead of the sheer volume of treatment and utilization.

It’s a shift from volume to value, from sickness and treatment to health and wellness. The notion of “population health” has put the consumer at the center of a traditionally fragmented ecosystem, and consumer behavior is becoming the binding force. The health systems are now incentivized and rewarded based on how consumers behave in their daily lives, outside of hospital boundaries. And an urgent care hospitalization will represent an abject failure of the health management process, where the condition should have been predicted, prevented and managed higher up in the funnel.

Connected Healthcare Ecosystem

As a consumer, this is ripe for positive disruption — a transformation she has gotten used to in other parts of her life. But as a health system, provider, pharma or payer, I now have to fundamentally evolve my thinking, operations, and execution.

  • Always-on patient engagement
  • Behavior-based inter-visit conversations
  • Data-driven predictive models
  • Universal understanding of the consumer
  • Consumer insights and analytics
  • Omni-channel content strategies

…and a lot more.

“CMO” has another meaning in healthcare beyond Chief Medical Officer now: Chief Marketing Officer

For the first time, this industry is now looking at marketing as a strategic capability to drive top-line growth, brand loyalty, and better health outcomes.

Most health systems are now hiring chief marketing officers, especially from other verticals like CPG, finance and retail, where Marketing transformation is already driving consumer acquisition, maximizing lifetime value and top-line growth. This is taking the scope of marketing from the big hoardings, direct mail and television spots, to data-driven always-on digital engagement that influences behavioral change.

Convergence of Marketing and Technology

To accomplish this vision of “healthcare in a digital world”, marketing and information technology cannot continue to operate in isolation. The healthcare technology evolution cannot be limited to the EMRs and EHRs of the world or the advancement of technology equipment within the hospitals, OTs, or clinical data management. It has to include 99% of the consumer’s life when she is not being treated inside a hospital.

80% of a consumer’s health is determined by non-medical factors — what she eats, where she lives, does she own or rent, does she drive or ride, how much she runs, is she married or single, her educational background, how much TV does she watch, what time does she sleep — even what she reads for that matter.

This is forcing health systems brands and marketers to be in an “always listening” and “always communicating” mode. This would not be possible without marketing technology — the convergence of marketing and technology, as we know it from the other verticals.

Context, Content & Care

The consumer journey in healthcare is a never-ending cycle with infinite ZMOT-like moments. There is indeed no funnel. The consumer could jump from being a completely passive and healthy individual to a patient looking for the best doctor, and the best hospital, in a flash. And on the flip side, she could be in a state of awareness and proactive health management for a very long time before an encounter.

Communication will be the next big intervention in healthcare

The “Right Content to the Right Person at the Right Time” cliché could not be applied in a more appropriate place than in healthcare. It will require a holistic communication strategy that may include personalized content around lifestyle, administrative, and healthcare needs. But none of this is possible without the adoption of a connected marketing technology and data ecosystem, the underlying machinery to deliver seamless omni-channel care experiences.

Capabilities such as:

  • Marketing Automation for Always-On Data-Driven Communication — Driving behavioral change and participation through rule-based, data-driven communication that could be anything from a reminder to book the next appointment or take a medicine or lifestyle content about the right food for that individual.
  • Web Experience Management Platforms for Personalized Relevant Healthcare Experiences— From generic pieces of content and mass communication to more personalized, relevant, and contextual experiences on a hospital.com site or any other third party platform.
  • CRM and Lifetime Value Management with Always-On Care — Establishing an always-on system of engagement that focuses on understanding consumer behavior and insights and leverages content across all channels to inspire behavioral change through participation. It also includes continuous listening to the consumer, both passive and active listening, to get her the care and information she needs even before she knows she needs it.
  • Predictive Models for Various Health Conditions — Leveraging big data across clinical, claims, financial, socio-economic, household, behavioral, personal and other areas to build predictive models that may signify an individual’s propensity against specific health conditions and using that insight to influence communication with that individual.
  • Data Management Platforms (DMPs) for Managing an Individual’s Universal Health Profile— None of this would be possible without a universal 360-degree view of the consumer across the offline and online world, across her clinical and non-clinical life. While the data has always existed, it has never been harmonized and connected. The DMPs not only provide this universal view along with consumer insights but can also feed that insight into various communication channels (pull & push) based on business rules, enabling the most seamless and connected healthcare experience.
  • Other Capabilities – Programmatic Buying, Social Monitoring and Consumer Engagement, Agile Mindset and Methodology — Everything that has been built to deliver immersive consumer experiences will now be applied in the world of healthcare, because the same consumer expects the same level of relevance, value, and storytelling in how they consumer healthcare services.

The human-centered technology ecosystem

Like any other vertical, the biggest opportunity lies in connecting these isolated pieces of “marketing and advertising technology” with the traditional healthcare IT systems to form the most connected technology ecosystem that puts the human at the center. This is where I believe the traditional definition and focus on healthcare IT is no longer enough.

That world has to converge with the world of marketing, advertising, and storytelling to deliver healthcare experiences that matter and to drive participation and behavioral change.

The “no baggage” healthcare industry will move fast

There is no doubt that healthcare is far behind in terms of digital adoption as compared to the other verticals. But healthcare has no historical marketing baggage. This offers healthcare brands and marketers an opportunity to adopt new capabilities and technologies with greater speed and agility, to deliver care experiences that are more connected, seamless, and immersive.

It’s no surprise that most leading health systems are already talking about “omni-channel experiences” and not just a “multi-channel” existence — a notion that took many years for all other verticals to understand and comprehend, let alone execute.

I am sure many will question the gap between today’s reality and tomorrow’s dream in healthcare. There are obvious questions around the broken ecosystem, conflicting business model with, let’s say, tele-health, lack of digital adoption, regulations, HIPAA compliance, and much more.

But the consumer is now at the helm. She is calling the shots, asking questions, and exercising choice. Healthcare brand builders have no option but to focus on consumer experiences as much as clinical output. And if they want to maximize the lifetime value of this consumer, brands will need to become data-driven and operate at the intersection of marketing, communication, technology, and healthcare.

Come meet Mayur in person at MarTech this March in San Francisco and hear him speak onThe Omni-Channel Reality with Marketing Technology & Integrated Experience Planning.

Mission Viejo aims to save water, stay green by using smart irrigation controllers

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It is awesome to see the community recognize the awesome tech and customer experience we have been working on with our Signature client. To many more communities finding the courage to make change and do their part.

MISSION VIEJO – Facing mounting pressure from the state and the public, the city is turning to one of the few remaining options to save additional water: Technology.

http://m.ocregister.com/articles/water-696297-city-signature.html