 The
Internet of Things is a term that is appearing with much frequency these
days (e.g., in this article). Akin to 3G and 4G, the definition does
not seem to be very well defined; that is to say more subjective than
objective. Per Wikipedia's entry: "The
Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their
virtual representations in an Internet-like structure. The term 'Internet
of Things' was proposed by Kevin Ashton in 1999. The concept of the
Internet of Things first became popular through the Auto-ID Center at
MIT and related market analysts publications. Radio-frequency identification
(RFID) is often seen as a prerequisite for the Internet of Things. If
all objects and people in daily life were equipped with identifiers,
they could be managed and inventoried by computers. Besides using RFID,
the tagging of things may be achieved through such technologies as near
field communication, barcodes, QR codes and digital watermarking."
 Lots
of creative people are turning out cool and useful devices based on
readily available, relatively inexpensive, plug-and-play circuit building
blocks which are designed specifically to facilitate invention. EE Times
recently ran a story titled, "Need
Connectivity? 11 Easy Wireless Modules for Prototyping Projects,"
that does a good job of presenting popular options. To name a few, the
Electric Imp, for instance, is an SD-shaped card that includes an 802.11b/g/n
WiFi module and antenna. NiO offers a communication platform that makes
communicating between connected devices and a smartphone easy and reliable.
Spark Core is a small Arduino-compatible board with a TI WiFi module
for connecting to the Internet. Bug Labs' blocks enable Internet connectivity
via Bluetooth, WiFi, and 3G interfaces along with an integrated Linux-based
CPU. The full article goes into more detail - if you can endure the
annoyance to read it all (see next paragraph).
 Well
this is annoying. As if full-page website entry advertisements are not
bad enough, I just discovered that EE Times now imposes a two-page
access limit per day if you don't log in on their website. It might
not be so for EE Times, but usually when logging in is required
it is to provide a means for collecting your personal contact information
so it can be passed on to advertisers and marketing firms. One way around
the insult is to empty your browser cache, open a new instance of the
browser, and then go back to the forbidden page(s). Alternatively, use
an entirely different browser to view the page. The best option might
be to skip the story altogether and deny revenue-generating traffic
to the website, and send the webmaster a friendly note instead expressing
your appreciation.
Posted October 1, 2013 |
