This Technology Makes It Possible to A/B Test Brick and Mortar Stores

November 14th, 2014

Imagine how many video cameras there are in retail stores around the world. Now imagine the usefulness of turning those cameras’ millions of hours of video—of shoppers’ in-store interactions and activity—into simple, optimizable, visual data.

Steve Russell has long seen the potential to turn that retailers’ dream into a reality. After studying computer science and economics at Stanford, Russell founded a company, eScene Networks, that was effectively YouTube for businesses—six years before YouTube even existed. Later, in the wake of 9/11, he founded 3VR, an intelligence company that utilizes video search technology to, in his words, “catch bad guys.” 3VR is now used by law enforcement across the country.

“I’d just become fascinated with video as a source of information,” Russell explained. “I realized that there are tens of millions of video cameras in the world, and if we could use computer vision and search technologies to suss out the interesting information held by those cameras, it would be beneficial for many different businesses.”

With that in mind, and with his background in video-based analytics, Russell founded Prism Skylabs in September 2011—an attempt, he said, “to build a cloud-based SaaS business around unique physical infrastructures already out there.” The most crucial of those unique physical infrastructures: retailers’ video cameras.

As the San Francisco-based company explains on its website:

Prism helps make sense of a visual world. Our unique cloud service transforms any video camera into a business intelligence tool that can be accessed from any device. Retailers large and small, as well as other customers, use Prism’s platform to remotely audit, manage, and optimize their real-world businesses.

I spoke to Russell about the Internet of Things, how Prism is addressing privacy concerns, and the future of real-world optimization.

NEGATING PRIVACY CONCERNS

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the practice of bringing everyday, otherwise inanimate objects to life, as it were, by connecting them to the Internet. Examples include a smart thermostat that learns your temperature preferences; a fitness tracking device with built-in sensors, paradigmatic of the “quantified self” movement; and, in Prism’s case, a technology that optimizes offline commerce by putting visual data online. While the IoT’s evolution means increased convenience—Cisco says there will be 50 billion IoT devices by 2015—it also means more pervasive privacy concerns.

Some of Prism’s competitors, whose goals are likewise to help retailers analyze customers’ in-store activity, “deliver information about shopper behavior by identifying phones’ unique MAC addresses and [using] them to track movement,” writes Gigaom. Because this tracking is “often done surreptitiously and on an opt-out basis,” it has been met with widespread criticism, including from senator Al Franken.

Apple attempted to boost customers’ privacy and negate companies’ abilities to track people by including a feature in iOS 8 that sends random, fake MAC addresses to Wi-Fi networks, though its effectiveness is questionable. Even some pockets of the government—the very entity notorious for its invasion of privacy—are attempting to get on board, Russell said, with pending privacy regulations coming from Congress and the FTC.

Russell said he anticipated these concerns. “I thought it would be important to get ahead of that and invent the technology that might become standardized in years to come,” he said. He has thus positioned Prism as an analytics company with privacy built into its technology engine.

“All our data is anonymized in the aggregate, so you end up with something in the form of ‘500 people walked into your storefront today,’” he said. Unlike Google, which only blurs people’s faces in Street View, Prism’s technology can remove people completely from the visual landscape.

“We have a more privacy-centric product that retailers and others can confidently employ without fear of a law coming down the pipeline that will make it illegal,” Russell said. “We’re an answer to privacy concerns—a good actor, a white knight with a real privacy solution and a way to get businesses to take this massive investment they’ve made in video infrastructure in their stores and put it to productive business use.”

It would be imprudent, however, to completely discount Prism’s competition. Some startups are finding that opt-in tracking, in which consumers fork over their personal data in exchange for a small sum of money, is feasible. Still others are aiming to be personal data brokers between consumers and data-hungry companies.

PRISM VS. THE COMPETITION

Beyond its privacy-protection software, Prism is different in other ways. For one, Prism doesn’t require retailers retailers to install expensive new devices to generate optimizable data. Prism’s data—not hard numbers but visually comprehensible heat maps—is overlaid on existing video-camera imagery of actual stores.

Prism’s heat-map technology allow retailers to see, for example, which products, and how their placement and layout, are engaging customers. If Prism’s heat map shows that a certain product display is consistently red—meaning it’s getting a lot of attention—a retailer would know to put that display in a more prominent, accessible part of the store. Conversely, a retailer might want to scale back its in-store advertising of a product that is blue or green, which signals that consumers aren’t giving it much consideration. It’s A/B split-testing real life.

What’s more, Prism’s high-quality imagery is created at a very low bandwidth, “about one percent of what a competitor with streaming video, like a Dropcam, might require,” explained Russell. That allows for an easier implementation of Prism across retail markets.

Since Prism’s inception, Russell has had no trouble finding retail clients, most of whom have issues “managing hundreds of stores around the globe. They began using us to look at their stores,” he said, “and effectively turn all the cameras into sensors that can analyze customer behavior.” Prism—whose team includes former employees of NASA, Google, Apple, and Microsoft—now has north of 300 customers, is deployed in 63 countries on five continents, and has analyzed more than 300 million customer movements and customer–product interactions.

A LAUNCH INTO THE FUTURE

“Since the beginning of Prism,” Russell told me, “we’ve been conscious of the ton of information that’s hidden within cameras and certain sensors all around us. The big challenge is finding ways to use technology to unlock that and make it useful.”

Now, it’s Prism’s technology that’s being unlocked: On November 3, the company launched Prism Connect, opening up Prism’s software platform to device manufacturers, who will be able to embed the technology “on a host of next-generation devices, from cameras to routers to sensors,” Russell said. By opening its technology, Prism is smartly making its native integration into consumer devices even easier, with out-of-the-box cloud connectivity. “There have been a ton of entrants to the IoT video analytics space in the past year, from Dropcam to companies like Samsung, so it just seemed sensible to open up the software to these devices,” Russell said. “It’ll mean a greater payoff for our customers to have a more turnkey value-driven solution.”

Connect is launching with more than 10 brand partners, including Samsung, Sony, Intel, and Cisco, with whom Prism’s platform will have easy integration.

At the same time, Prism announced the forthcoming release of the first camera powered by Prism. The device will be manufactured by a boutique company called ISD. “It’ll be the first device of its class with Prism on board,” Russell said, “with a tiny, low-cost sensor that does everything Prism is known for, and with the kind of ease of installation you’d expect from a consumer IoT device.” Prism also announced its updated mobile app, “the fastest, sleekest, and most searchable way to interact with cameras and sensor networks,” the company said a press release.

Prism Connect is noteworthy on multiple levels, Russell boasted. “It’s news for Prism’s core retailer customer base, which is getting a better, faster, cheaper, easier device. It’s news for many other customer-facing verticals, from restaurants to hotels to college campuses, that will now have a better video-based analytics solution. And it’s just relevant to the ongoing disco of the IoT space more generally.”

Time will tell where that “ongoing disco”—a corporate dance of innovation and takeovers, such as Google-owned Nest’s $555 million acquisition of Dropcam—goes. In the next year or so, Russell predicted, Prism and its ilk will be “embedded or installed in more cameras natively, and you’ll see price points come down on those devices, and retailers will be able to deploy the service more broadly and more quickly at lower costs.”

Retailers may soon be able to optimize the real world like never before.

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Ecommerce SEO Traffic: In-Store Vs. Online Ecommerce

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January 13, 2014 by pbruemmer - Add Comment

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Ecommerce is a fairly broad term, so I’d like to provide some insights gained over the last 18 years in SEO through the articles I’ll be submitting. My name is Paul Bruemmer. I have 18 years of SEO experience with 10 years specializing in enterprise SEO and the last 3 focused on local search for multi-location retailers, increasing ecommerce SEO traffic.

SEO is responsible for increasing website revenue. In one recent example, a client requested in-house SEO training which resulted in 150% year-over-year growth for 5 consecutive years. Natural search revenue lift went from $25k/day to $350k/day. Together, we built and guided the development training and supervision of a world-class team of 62 analysts and developers with the strategy and tactics for creating a $200MM increase in annual business. Natural search (SEO) contributed to accomplishing this online pureplay’s first billion dollar year.

To accomplish these kinds of results, it’s important to identify quick-win priorities by starting with a fresh diagnostic audit of technical and editorial factors hindering website rankings. With the above clients, we analyzed, planned and executed proven strategies and tactics to improve current operations. This often required top-down support with CEO and senior management, marketing, IT and merchandising to make the necessary changes over time.

I’ll be submitting a new article every Monday with theme and story behind Traffic Acquisition. I believe the main thrust for all ecommerce business is to acquire and maintain new customers year-over-year. Consistent growth in both online traffic and in-store foot traffic provides the brand with a future and brand identity that consumers trust.

I’ve laid out an editorial calendar to unfold over the weeks to come, providing the various tactics that lead to successful enterprise SEO operations and new customer acquisition.

In the first series of 7 articles over the next 60-days, will share many topics that include  the information I’ve gathered over the past 10 years about In-Store Vs. Online Ecommerce, Local Market Coverage, Hyper-Local Issues, Store Locators, Internal Team Building and Future SEO.

Key Performance Indicators

Below are a few examples of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you’ll want to consider tracking while performing SEO.

To get started, some of my recent SEO results include:

1)    Relevant organic search visitors at a cost of 1.2 cents per visitor

2)    Each online store coupon redeemed, brought in $25 revenue and cost $2.60

The above results were provided by one of my brick and mortar ecommerce clients for the month of December 2013. The client is in the apparel business and owns 826 store locations throughout the US.

Organic search visitors are historically known for being loyal customers that tend to convert well at a low cost-per-visitor. Check with your Paid Search department; I’m sure the cost-per-visitor is at least 10x when buying paid search ads. You might also check with your Direct Mail department; it’s possible the cost-per-mailed-piece exceeds 10% of the cost-of-revenue generated.

What about pure-play ecommerce sites, e.g., no physical storefront locations?

1)    150% growth year-over-year organic traffic for 5 consecutive years

2)    From $25k/day to $350k/day growth in organic traffic revenue

Regardless of whether your business is a pure-play internet company or a brick and mortar business, the plan for SEO is almost identical. I’ll be providing future articles in a way that allows you to build your way to the top and/or maintain your current top organic listings in major search engines.

I’ll start from the beginning with 3 important points and move on to the more advanced strategies and tactics as we go through the coming months here at Ecommerce Consulting. However, if you have any questions or want to skip to the middle or advanced, please feel free to email me directly at Paul.Bruemmer@gmail.com.

SEO Best Practices

It’s best to start with SEO Best Practices, and the most reliable SEO resource available is Google’s SEO Starter Guide. I recommend everyone, advanced or beginner, download a copy, read it and follow Google’s guidelines.

Google’s SEO guidelines are great; however, much is left open for interpretation when it comes to linking (to and from other websites). Google’s entire Intellectual Property (IP) value has been historically based on linking algorithms, and therefore, they will do whatever they want when it comes to protecting their IP. In other words, the rules can change or be interpreted differently, depending on the situation. For that reason, you need to exercise extreme caution with any link building projects.  

Title Page

The single most influential ranking factor in SEO has been the Title Element of each individual HTML web page. Each page should have its own unique Title and as a starting point, it’s worth the time and effort to make sure this feature is available to you.  Much more information about the Title Element is available in Google’s Starter Guide.

Site Speed

Although recent testing shows Site Speed is no longer a big SEO factor, I believe Site Speed and Page Load Time will always pay out dividends when it comes to search engine rankings — especially for ecommerce sites. Search engines are increasingly taxed by the huge number of websites, documents and data being created on the internet. Therefore, it makes sense for your site to be one of the fastest and easiest to crawl, and thus, easily found. Pingdom is a reasonably reliable free tool for a website speed test. More technical information on how to improve site speed is available through Google Developers.

People, Ubiquity, and the Internet of Things: The New Mobile Context

via UXmatters http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2014/01/people-ubiquity-and-the-internet-of-things-the-new-mobile-context.php

By Steven Hoober and Mudassir Azeemi

Published: January 13, 2014

“We like to distinguish between the environmental and situational contexts of people regardless of the device. … Interactions in all … contexts are important….”

In the days before the iPhone, when only a relatively few of us thought daily about mobile devices, mobile apps, and the mobile Web, we often heard the term context bandied about. Every design discussion revolved around the fact that mobile phones could go with us anywhere; therefore, anything we designed to work on them should work everywhere. The environmental context—whether indoors, outdoors, walking, or on a bus or train—mattered a lot.

Of course, all of this has changed now—and not because the context of mobile phones has stopped being ubiquitous. But we’ve moderated—though we’d hate to say forgotten—our perception of how important it is to consider the user’s environmental context. A few years ago, various industry luminaries began to say that context doesn’t matter. Their argument wasn’t quite that users don’t matter, but rather that, since people use their devices so heavily—and often so deliberately—we can often assume that people sit in chairs or lie on couches, focusing on their device. We no longer worry about the kinds of people who ride the bus to work.

We like to distinguish between the environmental and situational contexts of people regardless of the device. Sitting at a desk is different from being slouched in the living room or repairing a truck. Interactions in all of these contexts are important, whether they happen on a notebook or desktop computer, a mobile device, or bit of paper.

Context via New Technologies?

“A key tenet of our digital life is that software controls everything digital. The principle behind the Internet of Things is that we can sensorize and connect every dumb thing and, thus, reap the benefits of digital in the real world.”

A key tenet of our digital life is that software controls everything digital. The principle behind the Internet of Things is that we can sensorize and connect every dumb thing and, thus, reap the benefits of digital in the real world. Now, we’ll be able to control everything with software. If we can digitize, search for, and analyze everything, we won’t lose things anymore, and trends won’t remain undiscovered.

Despite the term’s Internet of Things (IoT) existing since 1999, only in the last few years has this been a real possibility. Now, it’s easy to get excited about the IoT, so people are waxing philosophical about its current state and the possibilities the future might bring. Robert Scoble has even written a whole book on the world of connectivity, sensors, and so forth. He refers to this trend as the Age of Context.

The technologies he mentions—such as wearables, big data, sensor proliferation, and location awareness are indeed great, revolutionary things that we should all be aware of. Such products cannot fail to impress us; products like Nest’s thermostats and smoke detectors and Apple’s iBeacon service to enable better interior-location awareness, not to mention smartwatches and exercise bands.

The Internet of Things is far enough along that we’re well into the first wave of copycats. There are now many Internet-connected light bulbs, and every big thermostat-maker has a connected, smart version. A reporter covering CES said, “I would estimate the number of fitness and data-tracking wristbands at … infinite.”

But we are still mostly disappointed by the IoT—and low consumer usage seems to bear us out. We have the technology, but we keep using it in narrow, short-sighted ways. In fact, hardly anything we see is truly Internet connected. While you really can control that light bulb from your phone, more often than not, you can’t control it from nothing else. Is this really being Internet-connected? As Liat Ben-Zur said way back in May 2013:

“So what’s the problem? Aren’t all these hot, new connected IoT devices connected up to the cloud? Well, that’s the problem. We are oversimplifying the landscape. Each specific device seems to connect to its particular cloud service. There isn’t really one cloud. Every manufacturer has their own cloud service, and often these clouds are closed, proprietary environments. Devices that live in their own siloed cloud cannot speak to one another, meaning they cannot benefit from the data, context, or control of nearby IoT devices.”

You can discover this for yourself. Find anything that connects by Bluetooth to a smartphone. Almost all products work exclusively on either iOS or Android. Check out how you can use the data on your smart, connected widget. It either connects to your phone alone or, at best, to a proprietary database with no open API. These technologies don’t define context themselves. They are enabling technologies, not the end goal. The problems that we have today are endemic.

Where Are the People?

“Some … organizations … are trying to take advantage of the new world of sensors and connectivity by gathering and exposing more information; but not always in a very consolidated, much less a user-centered manner.”

We all know that there are sensors, even if we’re amazed at what we could do with them. But how many people are building ecosystems? Are these technologies getting built because users need them or just because we can build them? What makes you choose a particular technology or platform? The CEO of the big chip maker ARM, Simon Segars, said recently, “Most IoT applications are so narrow, with one device only talking to one service.... We need these items to talk to each other more, in order to prevent an Internet of silos.”

Some of the organizations that we’ve worked with are trying to take advantage of the new world of sensors and connectivity by gathering and exposing more information; but not always in a very consolidated, much less a user-centered manner. Just as an example, one client is launching two different Bluetooth-connected devices—that is, a single company has two totally different devices that are unaware of each other and require different apps on the mobile device to connect to the Internet. Naturally, their data is stored in two different databases that don’t connect to each other either.

Every organization and many individuals want the benefits of information awareness, so they either tolerate poor solutions or come up with their own. As you can see in Figure 1, a trucking company hacked together cable from the J1939 diesel-diagnostics connector and plugged it into to a Galaxy Tab, so the driver and his company could log progress, track vehicle use, and reduce paperwork.

Figure 1—Prototype connection dongle and cable for a tablet, connecting a truck, a driver, and his company

Such tracking systems will soon be required by law, but it’s just on the cusp of being easy to do, by adding a radio or cable. The smartness of trucks, which have been full of computers and sensors for years now, and the smartness of mobile devices can work together.

Context Is About Ecosystems

“But what people really want are seamless solutions. They don’t want to think about technology. The power of the IoT is in seamless communications….”

But what people really want are seamless solutions. They don’t want to think about technology. The power of the IoT is in seamless communications, not constant pairing with Bluetooth devices or reading the side of a light-bulb box to figure out what mobile-phone operating system (OS) it’s compatible with. Tactically, if your first design task is to decide whether to create a Web site or an app or which OS to support, you’re doing it wrong. People switch operating systems and households are mixed. Design a solution as a service, with APIs, data storage, and concepts for how people will use it before picking the colors for its buttons.

We haven’t discussed Google Glass yet—basically because for now it’s so niche and one off that it’s hard to say much about it. But one key part of Glass is really becoming a universal service. Google Now is on Glass, but is also an increasingly seamless part of Android and is available for iOS. Plus, the Google Web site makes me suspect that they are going to launch it there sometime. The primary user interface for Google Now, shown in Figure 2, is a series of cards presenting information that is based on your context and past behavior. Sometimes, it gets confused—for example, offering me a 7-hour walk home from the airport.

Figure 2—Google Now

Google Now is a service that is embedded in the current Android OS. In one way, it’s a search-portal home page like Yahoo!—and not quite like anything Google has done before. It is even tying into other services, allowing you to send an SMS just by talking to this one voice-enabled, sensor-aware portal. But it is most interesting in the way it proactively does things based on what it knows about you.

The way it monitors all that you do using all Google services is cause for worry in some. It seems to know everything about you. But, if anything, we are disappointed that it knows so little. We are regularly enticed to go visit a favorite restaurant that is 2,000 miles away, perhaps when we’re in the middle of a meeting. Google Now’s connection to location, calendars, and users’ recent behavior is pretty tenuous, so it’s not as smart as it should be.

Steven’s wife, Alison, in a fit of nerdiness, set up IFTTT to notify her when the local weather gets near freezing—so she can be sure to seal up the greenhouse and put the heater on—despite the fact they have digital thermometers strewn about the house, not to mention many mobile phones and tablets. Even if they spent the not-inconsiderable time and effort to set up a greenhouse thermometer that connected to the Internet, it would be just one more thing that Google Now is unaware of. In an ideal world, Google would use the knowledge that we know they have: that Alison is a serious gardener and has a greenhouse and the weather data to push notices via Google Now that it’s going to be freezing tonight.

Nest thermostats connect to local utilities via the Internet and adjust automatically in sync with a demand-response scheme. Setting aside any concerns about your electrical utility rather than you having control of your house, that’s all it does. There’s little awareness or notification, and there’s not really a proactive control measure for the user to do anything about this.

Even with such coordination, why isn’t the data on the Internet tied to our accounts, so right under the Weather card in Google Now we could see a Home card with thermostat settings, trends, and the utility’s demand-response points? Nest lets you establish a relationship to their physical thermostat in the app settings and provides useful visibility to trending data. But the Nest shown in Figure 3 is not connected, as you can see on the right, and a user cannot connect it from the app.

Figure 3—This Nest is not connected, a problem which cannot be corrected from the app

Half the time anyone pulls up their Nest app in front of me, it’s in an error mode like that shown in Figure 3. Most or all connected devices such as Nest, Pebble, ChromeCast, DishEverywhere, Smart TVs, and BD players aren’t very good at staying connected, so require users to walk over to the device and push buttons or pull cords out of the wall. Wireless connections are inherently unreliable, so devices and software need to be less brittle, especially if a key reason for their existence is place shifting, or remote operation.

Merging the Digital and Real Worlds

“So far, sensors have mostly been about the environment, a fairly general understanding of what a user is up to, or location. But what if your mobile device could listen to your conversations?

So far, sensors have mostly been about the environment, a fairly general understanding of what a user is up to, or location. But what if your mobile device could listen to your conversations?

Actually, such technology is not new and works great. Shopkick, for example, can turn on your phone’s microphone, detect when you enter specific stores, and deliver customized offers. Other apps have listened to conversations to determine who is nearby and establish social networks based on proximity.

Once again, setting aside privacy issues, imagine such capabilities being truly integrated and presenting or hiding content to the user more natively. When you were out for dinner, your phone could hide content, making it harder to pay attention to your phone rather than your friends. When the phone heard a lull in the conversation, it could present content relating to your previous discussions or news of general interest to kick start your conversation. Do we really need to move to a world where you check your iPhone at the door of a restaurant to get a discount?

Connectivity and environmental awareness can provide opportunities to fix current digital-only problems as well. If you started reading something tedious like a spreadsheet on your mobile phone, why should you have to continue this way when you get somewhere with a bigger monitor? Why couldn’t it pop up a notice, as shown in Figure 4, and let you send the current version to your computer, a conference-room projector, or the TV in your living room?

Figure 4—A design for a mobile app that detects nearby screens and pushes your mobile content to them

Design for People

“We seem all too ready to commit wholly to design principles that are antithetical to the traditional openness of the Internet and the Web—not to mention setting aside solving real user needs with all these new, only slightly connected Things.”

Looking at most boxes that say smart on the side, we seem all too ready to commit wholly to design principles that are antithetical to the traditional openness of the Internet and the Web—not to mention setting aside solving real user needs with all these new, only slightly connected Things.

But it’s still the early days of the Internet of Things. There’s much that we need to build and time to argue for the user and what is the best use of data to ensure that everything can connect. But it is not certain how this will happen. As Matthew Drake said recently, “There are no standards for ubiquity and real-world interactions.” Things like Revolv are trying to bridge this gap and create interoperability, but they are doing it themselves. Every time another service emerges or existing ones change, they’ll have to notice and update their service.

Hopefully, things will settle down and standards will emerge, but for now, let’s try to agree on a few basic principles of contextual awareness for ubiquitous products and the IoT:

• Users will access information according to their situation, by using whatever device is within reach.
• Situational empathy is necessary. Don’t interrupt, intrude on, or annoy users.
• The level of intrusiveness that is necessary or permitted should change depending on users’ context.
• Always allow users to override device behaviors and tweak inputs or configurations to get the results they need.
• Provide your data or service as fully as possible, everywhere, for everyone.

There’s a lot that we can do as designers of digital systems. As we make our products more ubiquitous, invisible, and connected, we must avoid getting caught up in gee-whiz technology solutions and continue to design solutions for real people.

Notes and Further Reading

• Hamburger, Ellis. “Aviate: An Always-changing, Intelligent Home Screen for Android.” The Verge, October 15, 2013. Retrieved December 4, 2013. “To the founders of Aviate, you shouldn’t even need to open Google Now. The apps and information you need should already be sitting on your home screen as soon as you need them. ‘What is the right product to bring contextual info to users?’ asks Montoy-Wilson. “We decided it’s not an app with push notifications. It needs to live and breathe within the context of your phone….”
• “What caused Robert Scoble and others to switch from iOS to Android? Why did Scoble renounce his ‘Apple Fanboyism’?” Quora, March 4, 2010. Retrieved August 13, 2013. Robert Scoble himself responded, in part, “My view started shifting last year when I saw a new series of trends that, bundled up, bring us contextual computing. (I’m writing a book on those trends with Shel Israel, titled Age of Context that will come later this year.)”
• Gartner Press Release. “Gartner Says Personal Worlds and the Internet of Everything Are Colliding to Create New Markets.” Gartner, Inc., November 11, 2013. Retrieved December 14, 2013. “In 2009, there were 2.5 billion connected devices; most of these were mobile phones, PCs, and tablets. In 2020, there will be over 30 billion devices connected, of far greater variety….”
• Ben-Zur, Liat. “Connecting Things to the Internet Does Not an Internet of Things Make.” All Things D, May 8, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
• Mims, Christopher. “2014 Is the Year of the Internet of Things—No, Seriously, We Mean It This Time.” Quartz, December 5, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
• Lee, Nicole. “ARM Report Claims the Always-Connected ‘Internet of Things’ Is Already Here.” Engadget, October 28, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
• Scoble, Robert. “Luminaries Take 5; Robert Scoble on The Age of Context.” YouTube, July 10, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
• Scoble, Robert, and Shel Israel. Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data, and the Future of Privacy Paperback. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
• Fehrenbacher, Katie. “Nest Unleashes the Power of Its Smart Thermostat with Data-driven Services.” Wired, March 4, 2010. Retrieved April 22, 2013. Overview of Nest’s coordination with power companies.
• Johnston, Joe. “It’s All About Context: Designing the Contextual Interface.” Medium, December 9, 2013. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
• Johnson, Ben. “Everything You Need to Know about CES in 10 Questions.” Marketplace, January 10, 2014. Retrieved January 11, 2014.
• Elgan, Mike. “Snooping: It’s Not a Crime, It’s a Feature.”Computerworld, April 16, 2011. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
• Kassner, Michael. “Smartphone Apps: They May Be Listening.” Wired, April 18 2011. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
• Lewis, Matthew. “WTF Is an iBeacon?” Punch Through Design, August 2013. Retrieved December 15, 2013. This is the one and only explanation of iBeacon that isn’t totally misinformed and misguided. You need to know this sometime, so read it now or bookmark it for later.
• EOBR.com,, 2010. Retrieved December 12, 2013. A trucking-industry Web site with all sorts of info on the EOBR mandate, including quite technical discussions on the bandwidth of mobile networks.
• Robles, Patricio. “The Emergence of API-First Development.”ProgrammableWeb, January 9, 2014. Retrieved January 11, 2014.
• Etherington, Darrell. “Secret Handshake Lets You Pay with Hand Gestures and Leap Motion: No Phone or Card Required.” TechCrunch, September 8, 2010. Retrieved March 5, 2013. The Matthew Drake quote in the article about lack of standards in ubiquity is from a presentation at MoDevEast 2013. This is not the same thing as IoT, but it’s a nice example of combining systems.
• Hodgkins, Kelly. “Would You Check Your iPhone at the Door of a Restaurant for a Discount?” Tuaw, August 21, 2012. Retrieved December 9, 2013. A restaurant in California ran a promotion last year offering 5% off the price of the meal if you checked your phone, to encourage diners’ focusing on their meal and dinner companions.
• Burns, Matt. “Meet Revolv: The Missing Link to the Modern Smart Home.” TechCrunch, December 10, 2013. Retrieved December 10, 2013. Think of Revolv as a programmable remote, but for your whole house. Instead of every connected gadget’s doing its own thing, this gathers all of their sensors and lets users manually program actions based on them.

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