Emerging low-cost Controllers: Disruptive for Digital Signage and the Cloud looses to IoT.

Mind expansion time.   This topic is just not being discussed enough.  That is: How emerging developments are combining  relative to a forecast that completely changes our world.  A version of the truth I’m starting to use to categorize my thinking goes like this:

• The internet of People — most recently emergent in mobile appliances and social media.  The internet of People.  IoP
• The internet of Things — which is about putting sensors and processing intelligence in toasters (see the reposted article below.) The internet of Things.  IoT
• The internet of Places — and Interactive Digital Signage will interconnect the first two — Hyperlocality.   The internet of Locations.  IoL

You see, the “Cloud” will not matter.  Our fixation with it at present is a passing phase.

Location is THE common denominator — the disruptive attribute that People and Things share as they intersect in in time and space.  Both are either fixed or moving.  An example is:  I’m at the coffee shop, where’s my bus?  I’m not interested in the restaurant in Seattle, I’m interested in the one in New York because I’m in my cab and I’m hungry.

Perhaps the cab will be smart enough to intersect with my phone and tell me where to eat.  At the present time, we geo-locate the phone, and expect records in the cloud to tell us about our location.

What I’m suggesting is that it will be the internet of things at our location that our mobile equipment will filter for interesting things and places — it will network in some manner directly to the stuff where we are at.    

This method is attractive for at least a few reasons:

1. Keeping big brother and the Cloud from knowing everything about us.
2. Reducing the amount of traffic to the cell tower, which opens signal for more users and should drive costs down.
3. The local network will be free to use (probably.)
4. A local network of signals will be exceedingly fast; much more responsive, thing to thing, than connecting to information in the Cloud.

A critical component is ultra low cost computing.  Read on…

Cross Linux With an Arduino – What Will You Build? (via Dice News in Tech)

You’ve undoubtedly witnessed the tremendous development in the nano-Linux niche lately. The Raspberry Pi jumpstarted the nano-Linux movement and has sold over 1.75 million units. It has various video capabilities, is programmed primarily in Python…