Category: housekeeping

Episode 437: Goodbye and good luck

This is the final episode of The Internet of Things Podcast, and to send us off after eight years, we don’t discuss the big news of the day such as Arm’s planned IPO, a new display option from Brilliant, or new gear from Leviton. Instead we share our reasons for stepping back from the show, and where we’re heading next. Also, because everyone wants some new podcasts or IoT news options, we share some of our favorite resources. On the podcast side, I sometimes listen to the Mr. Beacon Show or The IoT Podcast. We also read The Verge, TechHive, The Ambient, and The Journal of Innovation published by the Industrial IoT Consortium. We both stop in at r/smarthome and r/homeautomation on Reddit, and I’ll read anything by James Blackman over at RCR Wireless for industrial IoT news. I also check out the Axios Pro Rata newsletter from Dan Primack to see fundings and sales, and subscribe to Target is New by Iskander Smit for thoughtful takes on IoT, AI, and design. There are many other options out there, but we didn’t want to make our goodbye episode any longer. To close out the show we answered our last listener question on what we think makes a complete smart home and our thoughts on future innovation that will keep the industry moving forward.

After we started the show full-time in 2016, I never had matching light switches again. Image courtesy of S. Higginbotham.

Our guest this week is Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge. I’ve known Jenn for almost a decade from her work covering the smart home for a variety of publications. She is smart, tries everything she writes about, and has the history in covering technology to see the bigger picture. She’s on the show to talk about where the smart home is today, the state of Matter, and what business models are likely to work for connected home devices. She gives us some insights into some cool things the Connectivity Standards Alliance is planning, her thoughts about smart home infrastructure versus devices, and even shares her current smart home setup. It’s the perfect note on which to end the show.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge

  • Why we’re saying goodbye.
  • What to read or listen to when we’re gone.
  • What we’re looking forward to in IoT innovations.
  • What might be next for Matter.
  • What Jenn Tuohy from The Verge has in her home.

 

 

 

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Episode 46: Barbie has a smart home and Sense gives your home computer vision

Andreas Gal, the CEO of Silk Labs has built what feels impossible. With the Sense hub he has created an artificially intelligent home hub that contains a camera, controls for other connected devices and a dedicated to privacy that means he can still offer services but still protect users from blanket surveillance. And the device is beautiful. Gal came on the show this week to talk about the Sense hub and why the world needs yet another connected camera and how he took his role as the former CTO of Mozilla and used that to inform the privacy features the camera offers. We also discussed how to implement AI models and learning on a device as opposed to in the cloud. Many of the challenges Gal has dealt with in his design are ones that hardware designers are thinking through as they implement their own AI or consider how to think about privacy in a world where the U.S. government has declared open season on stalking the Internet of Things.

The Sense camera and home hub from Silk. --Image courtesy of Silk.
The Sense camera and home hub from Silk. –Image courtesy of Silk.

And yes, Kevin Tofel and I discuss James Clapper’s comments before the Senate’s Armed Services Committee from last week in this episode, as well as a bunch of updates to some popular products. Some are good, such as the Wemo updates that boost reliability of the platform and Wink’s updates that bring lighting commands inside the home as opposed to between clouds. Some are frustrating, such as Philips Hue updating its Android app in a way that breaks it if users don’t want to share their location and photos. And some are just awesome, like the continued updates to Amazon’s Echo that include support for Spotify, Uber and the Ecobee3. And yes, Barbie has a smart home. So get set for your commute, your run or however you enjoy the show and have a listen.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guests: Andreas Gal, CEO of Silk Labs

  • Barbie’s smart home might rival yours
  • Amazon’s Echo gets better and updates gone crazy for Hue, Wemo and Wink
  • The Internet of things is a gift for spies
  • Meet the Sense home hub which uses computer vision to learn more about your home
  • Rethinking privacy for connected devices

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Yes! The Internet of Things podcast is finally on iTunes!

The headline says it all, but for those of you who have been patiently waiting for the opportunity to subscribe to the show in iTunes, your patience has been rewarded. I finally got my feed in the proper working order and hopefully won’t have to change it anytime in the near future and force y’all to adjust it. So please, go subscribe and await the show on Thursdays, when we’ll publish new episodes for your listening pleasure.

Check out which show is new and notable!
Check out which show is new and notable!

But before you run off to subscribe, let me say thank you. It’s been a tough two months since Gigaom imploded taking the original podcast with it. I appreciate everyone who encouraged Kevin and I to continue the show, and who listened despite our lack of intro music, fancy touches, and the long wait to get the new podcast back onto iTunes. We’re slowly adding all of the glitz back into the show, and most importantly, we’re committed to making it essential listening for people who care about the internet of things.

So thank you so much for listening so far, and please let us know what you think, either by dropping us an email at info at iotpodcast.com or just by writing a review over on iTunes. I couldn’t have done this without y’all (and of course, Kevin).