Nigel Whiteoak

Whilst passing through Gatwick airport recently, I was curious to see the airport using Internet of Things startup StickyBits to keep travellers updated on progress with building works.

I stumbled upon this in the app store today, recommended to me via Genius after I’d downloaded the ‘Do Some Good’ app.

The folk at the London School of Economics behind the Mappiness app are trying to get better data on what makes people happy, using iPhones as data-logging devices to randomly record levels of happiness and the associated circumstances.

George MacKerron explains in more detail at the TEDxBrighton event:

Several people I talked to on my visit to California predicted an explosion in the number of connected devices we’re going to see over the next few years.

Count ‘em. How many have you got at the moment? A laptop probably. A printer and smartphone perhaps. Your games console(s) and a digital photo frame? Maybe even an iPad?

One prominent interviewee reckons there’s likely to be at least ten connected devices for each of us. So what else is going to be hooked into the ‘net? How about some of these:

• Radio: There’s already a raft of WiFi radios in the market. Check out Amazon’s selection here. One day, all radios will be like this.
• TV: More than a quarter of all TVs sold in the US in January 2010 were connected to the internet, admittedly mostly through either consoles or set-top boxes. I’ll cover the IPTV story in a later post, but in ten years’ time expect all TVs to be connected to the ‘net and offer Boxee-like services 
• Plugs: Tenrehte are about to launch the Picowatt, a wifi-enabled smart plug, allowing you to monitor your home energy use from any socket. But AlertMe in the UK have beaten them to it with a home energy monitoring system that’s already available and integrates with Google’s PowerMeter.
• Washine machine: The prototype iBasket from Electrolux is a WiFi enabled washing machine, that knows when to wash your clothes and tells you once they’re done.
• Car: iSuppli reckon that 55m consumers will have access to the internet built into their cars by 2016, up from 860,000 at the end of 2009
• Weighing scales: a friend was recently caught out when his net-connected weighing scales started tweeting his daily readings to his followers. Where Sevitz leads, others follow?
• Fridges: Samsung recently launched the Zipel e-diary in South Korea. You’d never guess it from the name, but it’s a WiFi enabled refrigerator.
• Toys: Mecanno has the Spykee, ToyBots has WooZees. The must have Christmas gift for 2020? It won’t be hip if it ain’t got a (WiFi) chip.
• You and me. Isn’t it time we each had our own personal IP address? Intel reckons there’ll be chips in our brains by 2020, connecting us to the internet. Welcome to the matrix.

So, whaddya reckon? What else will be connected? And what will the connections add to these devices? How will we cope with all the extra data that’s produced? And how will it change how we live our lives. As ever, let me know in the comments below.