Thursday, October 02, 2014

IoT: ARM's new OS: mbed

Internet of Things gets a hand from ARM's new operating system - CNET:

"chip designer ARM Holdings ... has created a free operating system called Mbed, which it is launching with about two dozen partners including Freescale, IBM, Salesforce, Marvell and NXP."

IoT: Google project: "The Physical Web" (!)

Physical-web by google
"Walk up and use anything"
"What is this?
The Physical Web is an approach to unleash the core superpower of the web: interaction on demand. People should be able to walk up to any smart device - a vending machine, a poster, a toy, a bus stop, a rental car - and not have to download an app first. Everything should be just a tap away.

Why is this important?
The number of smart devices is going to explode, and the assumption that each new device will require its own application just isn't realistic. We need a system that lets anyone interact with any device at any time. The Physical Web isn't about replacing native apps: it's about enabling interaction when native apps just aren't practical."


google/physical-web · GitHub
"The Physical Web is, at its base, a discovery service where URLs are broadcast and any nearby device can receive them. This takes the web we know and love and unlocks exciting new ways to interact.

The URL is the fundamental building block of the web, giving remarkable flexibility of expression. It can be:
  • a web page with just a tiny paragraph of info
  • a fully interactive web page
  • a deep link into a native application."
Example interaction


Nice attempt from Google, but appears to be falling short on very important issue of semantics: machine understandable data. Without common "vocabulary", human languages (English?) are just not practical for handling very large amounts of transient data expected from devices. Yes, using "web" instead of "apps" is much better solution, super important.

Peter Thiel: innovation and future

What Will Peter Thiel Say Next? Notes From A Stanford Visit:

"A self-styled contrarian, Thiel opened the session with a summary of some of his book’s edgier points. By his account, the best businesses are monopolies; any business that is forced to compete with many rivals is likely to end up with smaller profits. Successful companies are built upon rare insights, which he dubs “secrets,” that most outsiders don’t appreciate. And anyone trying to copy the success of notable entrepreneurs such as the founders of Facebook or Google is doomed to miss the most important insight: do something that no one else has ever done before."

Peter Thiel Thinks We All Can Do Better | On Point with Tom Ashbrook

"Peter Thiel is not impressed with our technology age. We’re actually in a tech slowdown, he says. This techno-libertarian says the US, the world, has to surge forward, technologically, or flame out. The way we’re headed won’t cut it."

Entrepreneur Peter Thiel talks 'Zero to One’ - SFGate



Peter Thiel's Zero to One Might Be the Best Business Book I've Read - The Atlantic

Microsoft Office Dev Center: web APIs, web Apps

Home | Office Dev Center | Office, SharePoint, Apps for Office and SharePoint, Office 365 APIs:

  • "Office 365 APIs extend the Office 2013 platform through REST APIs and standard OAuth flows so that websites and native applications running on Windows 8, iOS, Android, and other device platforms can consume Office 365 data."
  • An app for Office is a webpage you build and host inside an Office client application to extend what your document, spreadsheet, or email message can do.
  • Apps for SharePoint are easy-to-use, lightweight web applications that extend what your SharePoint website can do.
So all Apps are now "web apps" Nice :)