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Imagine getting points in an online game each time you drink more water, floss your teeth or take a step toward some other healthy lifestyle goal. That's the promise of Green Goose, a company that uses tiny sensors and accelerometers on stickers or credit cards to track everyday behavior and record it online.

Two members of the panel of investor judges put $100,000 into the startup on the spot while the company was still on stage. A third, Bill Warner, had already invested. "It's amazing and there's so much more you haven't even heard," he said about the company.

All thanks to a simple sticker or other attachable sensor. It's the simplest and most pleasing example we've seen yet of the widely anticipated trend called The Internet of Things.

China's inland and maritime rivers and canals are now part of the Internet of Things. The Chinese maritime authority has outfitted cargo and passenger ships with RFID chips and has placed RFID readers at strategic locations. Now, keeping track of the identify of ships, their speed and what they carry is automated, at least for a segment of the populous country's water traffic. Almost all waterways Grade IV and higher have been equipped, according to the People's Daily. The Maritime Safety Administration of China made this announcement recently, explaining that the tags use the Automatic Identification System, a maritime Internet of Things platform designed to track waterborne traffic.

The EPC network, using tiny RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags, will enable computers to automatically recognize and identify everyday objects, and then track, trace, monitor, trigger events, and perform actions on those objects. The technology will effectively create an "Internet of things." RFID will fundamentally impact the industries of manufacturing, retail, transportation, health care, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and government, offering an unprecedented real-time view of assets and inventories throughout the global supply chain. And in the process, whole new vistas (and challenges) will open up to software developers.

For years, scientists have kept track of who’s who by attaching colored bands to birds’ legs and then keeping a vigilant eye out for the marked bird to return. Now, a technology called RFID (radio frequency identification) is automating that vigilance, and yielding more detailed information than scientists ever dreamed possible. A recent study at the Cornell Lab kept track of 129 separate songbirds on a staggering 650,000 individual feeder visits over a period of 5 months (see “What We’ve Learned Already,” below). Instead of pulling 24-hour vigils, the scientists needed to spend only about 6 hours per week tending these wired feeders.

According to the Current Analysis report, AT&T's strengths include: Providing "custom solutions" for companies, including expanded professional services, targeted to specific business needs Offering cost-effective services to global customers, with expanding global M2M footprint Developing key relationships with platform providers to provide enhanced services for M2M customers Excellent traction with 12 million Connected Devices in Q1-11 "AT&T continues to add value to its M2M solutions," wrote Kathryn Weldon, Principal Analyst, Current Analysis. "AT&T has made a number of recent alliance announcements with application platform providers, which adds to its arsenal of solutions."

Rymble is an object connected to Internet social networks, merging the real and the virtual worlds. It is a “social compass” that, instead of pointing to the north, moves in different directions as news and alerts happen in the user’s social network, in the web page of a company, artist, sports team or any other subject.

Master tinkerer [Ryan Rusnak] created the very popular BEER ROBOT. With a press of button on Ryan’s iPhone, the mini fridge armed with an air cannon and webcam fires a beer at him with deadly accuracy. Ryan linked the controls to the iPhone using the ioBridge IO-204 module. So, in reality he could control his creation from anywhere in the world via the Internet. Less exciting and deadly are Ryan’s ability to remotely monitor and control the temperature of the refrigerator also via ioBridge. The Mini Fridge Beer Robot is featured in Popular Science magazine in the June 2011 issue: Inventions of the Year. In this PopSci, you can learn how-to create your very own beer firing robot with a step-by-step guide. The beer robot, dubbed the ioFridge, is the perfect connection between man and machine! And, when we created ioBridge, you better believe we saw a future of armed machines that are web-enabled. Congrats on making PopSci and getting us one step closer…

From Libelium: Libelium, a technology leader in wireless sensor networks, announces the completion of its Smart Cities platform. The new sensor board measures noise pollution, dust quantities (PM-10), structural health (cracks detection and propagation) and garbage levels in bins in order to improve the waste management. This board may be combined in a network with previously available sensor boards for gas monitoring, radiation detection and Smart Parking. System integrators can now create a comprehensive range of services based on the Smart Cities platform. Read more here.

Vehicle tracking and recovery remains the major application area for wireless M2M communication in the security industry, using devices that combine GPS with GSM and GPRS technologies. The main markets in terms of units and value include tracking of passenger cars and commercial vehicles. However, there are also several emerging niche markets, such as construction equipment as well as leisure vehicles and boats.

“There is still a significant untapped potential in the residential market segment for monitored alarms,” commented André Malm, senior analyst at Berg Insight. He added that only about 25% of the 30 million alarm systems in Europe are connected to an alarm receiving centre. The latest generation of monitored alarm systems with GSM and GPRS is well adapted to the residential market as many households abandon PSTN services.

“Wireless sensor networks are the enabling technology for key applications in defense, health care, home and industrial automation and energy management. Technology leaders have recognized this fact and are providing high end application solutions for their customers based on advanced WSN technology. The Millennial Net Energy Management System which includes LEM energy sub meters, wireless pneumatic thermostats and numerous other devices allow for monitoring and control of commercial, public and light industrial buildings of several hundred thousand square feet with unprecedented scalability and reliability, leading to substantial energy savings and ROIs of around 1 year,” said Dieter Schill, President and CEO of Millennial Net.

This gateway connects the networked devices to existing Building Management System via BACnet or communicates with hosted internet-based application for monitoring and control. The devices are designed to work with legacy HVAC systems, fixtures, and appliances, making it unnecessary to upgrade HVAC equipment to save energy. Energy savings are achieved by improved compliance and energy policy enforcement.

David McCullough has connected up into Pachube’s public platform, to share, store and visualise weather sensor data, using the Opengear ACM5000 smart device server

Pachube is a global data brokerage platform for the Internet of Things, managing millions of datapoints per day from thousands of individuals, organisations and companies around the world. By sharing data feeds from and between physical Things, such as environmental sensors, smart meters, building management and process control systems, Pachube provides a globally distributed data ecosystem and application development platform.

The Opengear ACM5000’s Linux system under the hood made integrating Pachube API support quick and easy using the free Opengear Custom Development Kit. The ACM5000’s legacy as an industrial-grade, rugged device that is proven and reliable in harsh environments, and wide array of network and data ports, make it an ideal solution to provide network connectivity and data telemetry for things such as weather stations.

Powering remote sensors, which are seen as the key to the future “Internet of Things”, is a problem. Given that sensors may well be embedded, long-life power sources are essential; you don’t want to be changing AA batteries every few months on the predicted 50 billion devices that will be connected to the net. Now U.S. researchers have devised a way of tapping into the energy found in the fog of electromagnetic energy that envelops us all; a fog caused by radio and TV signals, mobile phone transmissions, even domestic WiFi. The researchers have already successfully operated a temperature sensor, according to reports by PhysOrg.

a new study conducted and released by Latitude, a technology research consultancy, published in collaboration with ReadWriteWeb. The study’s main takeaway message: “kids are predicting that the future of media and technology lies in better integrating digital experiences with real-world places and activities. They’re also suggesting that more intuitive, human-like interactions with devices, such as those provided by fluid interfaces or robots, are a key area for development.”

Researchers scored the kids’ inventions on the presence of specific technology themes, such as type of interface, degree of interactivity, physical-digital convergence and user’s desired end-goal.

The Digital vs. Physical Divide is Disappearing: Children today don’t neatly divide their virtual interactions from their experiences of the “real world.” For them, these two realms continue to converge as technologies become more interactive, portable, connected and integrated.

With big bets by the titans of technology and consumer finance, 2011 is becoming the year that American business got serious about jumpstarting the “Internet of things“—a broad web of digitally enhanced locations that consumers can navigate the same way they now use smartcards to pay their bus fare or open security doors at work. For Seattle startup Iota, that transformation isn’t happening fast enough. This team of former T-Mobile employees is aiming its considerable experience in the mobile sector at a new type of device that it says is ready to go right now. They believe it can be made cheaper, easier, and more open than expensive new radio frequency ID-enabled smartphones controlled by the big market players. Their mission is to put the futuristic promise of what’s called “near-field communications,” or NFC, into the hands of anyone who doesn’t have a smartphone, or wants to spend less time digging around in a field of apps. The company, based in Seattle’s hip Capitol Hill neighborhood, has raised $1.4 million so far and is currently about $600,000 of the way through a $1 million convertible-note round, founder and CEO Russ Stromberg says.

The cool kids of today - yes, the same kids who will be voting in the 2012 election - don't want to talk about infrastructure. Instead, they want to talk about mobile devices, crowdsourcing real-time data and collaborating via high-tech RFID sensors. They don't want to think about massive government expenditures and cheap bank loans for new construction projects. They think about cool ways for The Internet of Things to empower everyday citizens.

We are in the early stages of the Internet of Things, the much anticipated era when all manner of devices can talk to each other and to intermediary services. But for this era to achieve its full potential, operators must fundamentally change the way they build and run clouds. Why? Machine-to-machine (M2M) interactions are far less failure tolerant than machine-to-human interactions. Yes, it sucks when your Netflix subscription goes dark in a big cloud outage, and it’s bad when your cloud provider loses user data. But its far worse when a fleet of trucks can no longer report their whereabouts to a central control system designed to regulate how long drivers can stay on the road without resting or all the lights in your building turn out and the HVAC system dies on a hot day because of a cloud outage.

The current cloud infrastructure could crumble under the data weight In the very near future, everything from banks of elevators to cell phones to city buses will either be subject to IP-connected control systems or use IP networks to report back critical information. IP addressability will become nearly ubiquitous. The sheer volume of data flowing through IP networks will mushroom. In a dedicated or co-located hardware world, that increase would result in prohibitively expensive hardware requirements. Thus, the cloud becomes the only viable option to affordably connect, track and manage the new Internet of Things.

That is critical, in turn, to mitigate growing latency risks for mobile connectivity resulting from the wild proliferation of IP enabled devices on mobile networks coming in the new era of the Internet of Things.

The sensors inside modern smart phones present a range of security threats. An attacker who compromises a phone can, for example, track the owner's location by GPS, use the camera to see the phone's surroundings, or turn on its microphone to record conversations. At a conference in Chicago on Thursday, a group of computer researchers from Georgia Tech will report on another potential threat. The researchers have shown that the accelerometer and orientation sensor of a phone resting on a surface can be used to eavesdrop as a password is entered using a keyboard on the same surface. They were able to capture the words typed on the keyboard with as much as 80 percent accuracy.

Although Siri is limited in what it can do, what it does do, it does well. And based on my experiences with Siri so far, I think it illustrates what I think of as the “invisible interfaces” of future connected devices. Admittedly, that sound like a bold claim, but the reality is this: Thanks to the “Internet of Things,” more devices are gaining connectivity that makes them smarter and more useful. At the same time, computing interfaces haven’t changed all that much in the past several decades. They’re going to have to, however, as we can’t have a multitude of different interfaces across a myriad of connected devices in this new world.

The key for potential success here is in Siri’s uncanny ability to understand not just natural language input, but also context. This is great for smartphones where we have so much personal data such as contact names, addresses, phone numbers and digital music tracks. Even better is when Siri works with multiple apps or services on our handsets; tying them together through a simple command. “Remind me to take out the trash when I get home,” for example, leverages both the Reminders application and the integrated GPS radio of an iPhone.

“Close the windows and turn on the air conditioning if the outside temperature rises above 85 degrees,” could be a real-world example in just a few years time.

Smart Grid deployments are not only delivering improved energy security, grid reliability, and consumer control to us, they are bringing the Internet of Things closer to reality.  The Internet of Things (IoT) is defined in the Smart Grid Dictionary as a conceptual description of the ability to connect any objects with an IP address and some level of embedded intelligence to the communications network.  Embedded intelligence can include localization, sensing, identification, security, networking, processing, and control. 

Your mobile wireless carrier may soon have a say in the way you think about health and wellness. AT&T, through its Emerging Devices unit, plans to offer for sale health-tracking clothing equipped with wireless sensors that enable you to track your heart rate, body temperature and other vital signs -- and then send all this data to a site where a physician can access it. The first offering will be a version of the E39 body compression shirt, originally designed by Under Armour for the NFL scouting combines and other world-class athletic competitions. Now imagine yourself as a high-performance weekend athlete, effortlessly transmitting your heart rate, skin temperature and activity levels to the Web. That the “smart fitness” trend – which can be traced back to the Fitbit tracker – is now transforming into a broader “e-wellness” movement is not a coincidence. The biggest wireless network carriers - like AT&T – are under intense pressure to produce new revenue streams. The total mobile Internet penetration rates at these companies have hit a saturation point. They can advertise as much as they want, but there’s simply no one else who needs another mobile phone these days.