Xceedas

Xceedas
xceedas

Tuesday 28 April 2015

Internet of Things Explained

It is predicted that all devices will be generating a huge amount of data chatter in the near future. An eight hour flight generates about half a TB of data. Smart devices, embedded and wearable computing will added to the data of the Internet. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the interconnection of uniquely identifiable devices.  The scale of inter-connectivity will be huge. Machines will fuel data growth.

A person will generate a huge amount of data on a day-to-day basis due to the wearable devices (medicinal, entertainment and security). All this data needs to flow back to some systems where reports would be generated and actions would be taken. The following image from SurveyAnalytics gives a very good description of the IoT. According to Gartner, there will be nearly 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020. ABI Research estimates that more than 30 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to the Internet of Things by 2020. 


 
This will become a new age of intelligence with many considerations. 
 
Space Considerations
The amount of data that will be generated and stored will be unimaginable. Typical households will generate PBs of data.
  • 1.Where will all this data be stored? On the cloud? On premise?
  • 2.How much data will be archived and where?
  • 3.Will the consumer pay for this space? 
Security Considerations
How will the data be secured? How will the devices be secure? Will today's authentication and authorization methods be enough or will new security models emerge?
 
Regulatory Consideration
Challenges involving governance and regulatory compliance will be need to be mitigated. New paradigms of governance will emerge. 
 
Environmental Considerations
Disposal of electronic goods is today itself a problematic area. With new semiconductor devices, environmental impact needs to be considered.
 
The following are some of the use cases that come to mind: 
  • 1.Health and Life Insurance: Already many people track their exercise, diet and weight into many different applications. Imagine a cloud based service that tracks this based on some wearable device. These services can become the source of data for Life Insurance companies.

  • 2.Supply Chain Management: Effective Supply Chain management due to real-time data availability.

  • 3.Manufacturing: for example, production data; machines sending daily production reports to managers at the end of the day. Machines could also send data for preventive maintenance and machine safety.

  • 4.Parking Spot search: Sensors will provide data on empty parking spots.

  • 5.Smart Electric meters, smart washing machines, smart refrigerators with sensors that will enable application makers to utilize the data for efficiency and effectiveness in their solutions. There is already a solution built by Nest: to control the temperature of your home using your mobile phone. Details at: https://nest.com/thermostat/life-with-nest-thermostat/.

  • 6.Smart Cities, Smart Buildings and Smart homes.

  • 7.Disaster Management: Sensors from within the ocean and below earth surfaces, sensors from space can help in disaster management.

  • 8.Farming and Dairy: Sprinklers can be turned on and off automatically based on weather conditions as well as can be remotely monitored. A Dairy can have n number of use cases where the data from the sensors on animals can be used effectively as in applications.

  • 9.Hotel Management, Event Management, Remote monitoring.

  • 10.Banking: When you step into the bank, your mobile will already send information to the banking application on your identity. From there on, multiple applications can be thought of.
The possibilities of solutions and services are endless. The opportunities are tremendous.
  • 1.Managed Services

    • Data and Analytics
    • Mobile and Cloud Computing
  • 2.Network Services

  • 3.Enablement Hardware

    • Wireless and embedded systems
    • Smart Sensors
  • 4.Data recovery services

    • Data Archival Services
    • Disaster Management Services
  • 5.Value added applications
It will become probably impossible to remain private.

Facebook Introduces Video Calling in Messenger


Facebook has officially announced Video calling feature on their messenger app via both Cellular, as well as Wi-Fi networks. Now you can have face-to-face conversations with your friends and relatives, via Messenger.
 
You can start a video call from any conversation with simply tap the new feature symbol at upper right corner and feature call will begin. Video calling in Messenger is available for calls made from a mobile phone to another mobile phone, even if one person is on iOS and the other person is on an Android device.
While Messenger already offers people the ability to make voice calls, video calling will expand Messenger’s real-time communication features, enabling the more than 600 million people who use Messenger every month to reach others wherever they are, from anywhere. Its fast, reliable and high quality video calling, works just fine even if you are on a not-so-good internet network.
As of now, video calling in Messenger is launching for people on iOS and Android in Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, the UK, the US and Uruguay. Facebook says it will be rolling out to other regions and locales over the coming months.

Thursday 23 April 2015

Facebook video is on course to steal YouTube’s video sharing crown

Facebook video is big and it’s getting bigger. For the first time, YouTube really needs to worry about losing its position as the king of online video.
Facebook video, which is relatively young in comparison to YouTube which launched in 2005, is now delivering 4 billion daily viewers. That’s up from 3 billion views every day, which was announced in January 2015. Facebook has had the ability to upload video for a number of years, but didn’t get serious about it until 2014 when it adjusted its algorithms to weight video more heavily.
By contrast, YouTube reached the 4 billion video views daily mark in 2012, about eight months after it had reached the 3 billion mark and seven years after it launched.
YouTube should be scared of Facebook. It’s building a video powerhouse that Google may struggle to match, because it hasn’t managed to successfully build out a social graph like that of Facebook.
It’s only a matter of time until there are people that are dedicated “Faceviders” just like there are fanatical “YouTubers” who regularly upload videos to YouTube of their lives, or topics that are interesting to them.
Perhaps the days of being a YouTuber are numbered.
There’s a number of reasons to give your original videos straight to Facebook. First, it gives you almost guaranteed exposure right now. Add a video to a public post and the Newsfeed algorithm will shine in your favor and show it to a significant amount more people than any other type of post (like a photo or text-only update).
Take, for example, this video shared by Vox on Facebook. The page itself has 225,000 likes, but the video received over 1.1 million views since when it was shared on April 10. By contrast, the same video shared on YouTube has only received 85,000 views. That’s a serious amount of reach.
Facebook’s social graph is a potent advantage over YouTube. Videos come straight to the users, in their Newsfeed, where they’re already spending most of their time on the service. They don’t have to leave Facebook’s walled garden to find content.
Google Plus, which is deeply integrated into YouTube, can’t possibly hope to ever have that kind of reach. People don’t sit on Google Plus refreshing their feeds all day to find out what their friends are up to, they do it on Facebook.
There is a big risk for those adopting Facebook as their primary place for sharing video, namely the Newsfeed algorithm. With YouTube, you upload your video and it’s there for the world to see. Those subscribed will get notified and getting the word out to others is up to you.
On Facebook, the algorithm can drive huge traffic to your content, but it also could eventually fade to a pittance as the site becomes saturated with content.
The opportunity for videos to travel further than your own reach – like in the Vox example – is likely worth the risk. The big unknown is how long Facebook will stick with its current algorithm. There’s always the chance future changes will put some creators out in the cold. Just ask Zynga about its horrible year in 2012.
Facebook doesn’t have any way for creators to monetize videos right now, but when it finally delivers that, early adopters will win big.
Very soon you might just look to Facebook for those funny cat videos before you even think of YouTube, which is the first time a competitor has posed such a sizable threat to Google’s service. It’s unclear what Google will do to win those users back, as Facebook continues to quietly steal them away.

credit to  http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2015/04/23/facebook-video-is-on-course-to-steal-youtubes-video-sharing-crown/