Internet of Things Applications

The world’s best athletes are currently on display at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil, and some are using wearable technology powered by the Internet of Things to help them go for the gold.



United States sprinter Allyson Felix has reached Olympic glory already, taking home gold medals in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the 2012 Olympics in London, but she is still looking for a leg-up on her competition. According to a report from The Huffington Post, she is just one of several athletes embracing wearable IoT technology as they look to improve their training and boost their performance in the games.

Felix trained for her upcoming track-and-field events with a pair of 3D-printed shoes designed specifically for her feet. The sneakers not only conform perfectly to her foot but provide Felix with feedback on her performance.

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It’s not just American athletes, as South African track-and-field star Willem Coertzen trained for Rio using a Hexoskin smart shirt. The shirt, like the Solos eyewear, can measure information like heart rate, speed, breathing patterns and other biometric indicators.

Wearable technology is having a significant impact on the space, as can be seen in the PYMNTS.com Internet of Things Tracker. The latest tracker features several news stories about companies investing in wearable technology in products ranging from speakers to athletic gear.

See more at: pymnts.com

The Internet of Things may just hold the key to the future of banking, says Jacqueline Guichelaar, head of infrastructure and service delivery for Lloyds Banking Group. With the topic of transformation dominating banking industry conversations amid the race towards a digital future, it’s clear that the Internet of Things is driving that change.



The status quo simply cannot continue and the major new force that is IoT is serving to transform the industry from the inside out, pushed by the twin drivers of heightened customer and regulatory demand.

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The Internet of Things enables a whole new level of personalised banking - indeed, the possibility of branches becoming equipped with sensing technology that can recognise customers as they walk in and respond to their own particular needs suddenly becomes a tantalising reality.

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Hand-in-hand with the likes of the cloud and big data, IoT is set to be implemented on a massive scale, creating major new business opportunities as we continue to embrace a world that’s connected like never before. It could even serve to be the differentiator that separates the winners from the losers in the race for true banking innovation.

Change is now a must - and IoT is set to be the key competitive advantage that helps tomorrow’s market leaders set the pace.

See more at: finextra.com

Gone are the days when the only internet-connected devices we had were our phones and computers. With the passage of time, more and more home appliances and products are being added to the list of devices that are connected to the internet, or the so-called “Internet of Things” (IoT).



The list includes but is not limited to smart thermostats, security cameras, washing machines, smart kettles, smart refrigerators, etc. Some offer smart optimization of resources on the basis of your data while some offer remote monitoring from a distant location.

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SMART HOMES – A SERIOUS THREAT TO PRIVACY! We have finally managed to make our homes “smart,” but at the cost of our privacy and security. Every home device connected to the internet is a security threat, as malicious actors can use it to spy on you and steal information about your lifestyle and personal life. Marketers can use this information to target you with unwanted ads. At the same time, government agencies and third-party party firms can steal and sell your data.

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MR. ROBOT – THE TRUE DEPICTION OF SMART HOME HORRORS If anyone still wants to see how this heavenly technological blessing can turn into a disaster, just watch the TV show Mr. Robot. The show depicts how most people carelessly use web-enabled devices when they are generally cautious of their home privacy and security. It also portrays how technology can be disastrous if used without any reasonable security measures.

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These tips will not guarantee 100% security for your devices, but it will surely boost your devices’ security and ultimately, help you to guard your privacy. Be safe, everyone!

See more at: tripwire.com

We’ve been reading about how Internet of Things will revolutionise the tech world. But it also has a fair share of drawbacks, especially security concerns. Bruce Schneier, a security technologist, author and the CTO of Resilient Systems, now warns about the outcomes of IoT and how software hacks could get worse. “On the Internet of Things, integrity and availability threats are much worse than confidentiality threats,” he writes.



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Talking about interconnections, he explains how systems will become interconnected, leading vulnerabilities in one resulting into an attack on another. “Vulnerabilities on one system cascade into other systems, and the result is a vulnerability that no one saw coming and no one bears responsibility for fixing. The Internet of Things will make exploitable vulnerabilities much more common. It’s simple mathematics. If 100 systems are all interacting with each other, that’s about 5,000 interactions and 5,000 potential vulnerabilities resulting from those interactions,” he adds.

Finally, our devices are getting autonomous. This also means attacks can take place automatically and ubiquitously. We’ve already seen Fiat Chrysler recall 1.4 million vehicles to prevent hacking. The report explains how, in future, the governments could face large-scale issues due to IoT. He also adds that governments should in fact play a larger role by ‘setting standards, policing compliance, and implementing solutions across companies and networks’.

See more at: firstpost.com

A match lasts a few seconds, after which it’s just a splinter of burned, useless wood nobody would bother keeping. For an entire generation, this ephemeral quality is precisely what the internet now symbolizes: a place that can provide simple but powerful tools, allow you to express yourself, and then, immediately, it disappears, not by accident, but because that is how it was designed.



A good article in The New Yorker called “Snapchat, Instagram Stories and the internet of forgetting“, discusses the launch of Instagram Stories, which in many people’s view is the best copy of Snapchat ever created – at the third attempt following the previous failures of Facebook Poke and Slingshot – and proof of how the internet is moving from being a place where we store things permanently, where we store our memories, to one of expressing ourselves in real time, and that once published, disappears within 24 hours. After initially looking as though young people would only use Instagram Stories to ask for follows on Snapchat, now the app is becoming more popular and winning over users from a wider age group than Snapchat has attracted, while the founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, openly admits that the concept is Snapchat’s and that copying is seen in Silicon Valley as valuable.

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Things changed with Snapchat. Nobody really knows if the change was about not wanting reminders of things we’d done popping up 20 years down the road, or whether it was about doing something different to our parents, or about privacy, or perhaps a mix of all of them from the perspective of a generation that has become perfectly used to carrying a camera that is essentially a powerful computer around, but the truth is that young people discovered a new way to use the internet, a way in which the value was in the moment, the conversation, the joke, the wink: like a conversation at the bar, which nobody imagines anybody else is listening to, and much less recording. The youngest generation feels more comfortable without anybody eavesdropping on them, and decided to use a new communication channel for fleeting conversations.

See more at: forbesc.com

Ever since personal computers began to creep into our lives in the mid-to-late 1970s, people have been talking about home computers and home computing. Microprocessors and high-tech sensors were going to be embedded into everything, and we were going to live in smart homes, drive smart cars, and rely on robots and other devices to do all the things that we either could not do well or did not want to do. As we were told in grammar school, things would continue to get easier and we would live happily ever after.



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In his book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler told us that for every modern convenience, there is an equal and opposite inconvenience. If you watch the news, you might think that Alvin was right. While new technologies and products come with great benefits, we have learned that these benefits often come with new problems that typically fall into at least three categories:

1. Greater complexity. Many of us have discovered that our new cars are sometimes smarter than we are. Learning how to operate them is not a trivial exercise that can cause problems when we rent them at an airport or receive a loaner when we bring them in for service.
2. Bad guys can take advantage of the same benefits. As products become more complex, they come with vulnerabilities that hackers and people with bad intentions can use against us. Identities are being stolen, credit cards are being hacked, and evil forces are penetrating security systems to steal or manipulate whatever they want.
3. More can go wrong. As products get more complex, there are more things that can go wrong with them. And, when they break, they are not so easy to fix. Is the problem in the hardware? If so, where? Is it a bug in the operating system? Is in the applications software? Is it operator error?

One thing we know for sure is that operators are making more errors. Distracted drivers cause 40% of traffic accidents, and according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, (NHTSA), they cause 10% of all fatal crashes and 17% of injury-causing accidents.

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No matter what the obstacles, the IoT is likely to charge forward because of its potential to save and improve lives, give users piece of mind, and save time. After all, people want to be able to (1) check on the kids when they leave them with the baby sitter or find them when they get lost in a department store, (2) make sure they locked the door or turned off the oven, or (3) notify the doctor right away if they are experiencing a life threatening event. For companies that want to sell their IoT related products and buyers that want to use them, the IoT holds great promise. The more buyers and sellers know about the benefits and potential pitfalls, the more likely they can enjoy the benefits without suffering serious consequences. Since the IoT can do a lot of great things, it is important for buyers and sellers to better understand it so they can help to overcome the obstacles for the greater good.

See more at: huffingtonpost.com

South Korea has launched its first commercial, low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) network aimed at making the country even more connected.



The network would allow smart devices to talk to each other via the network.

Phone carrier SK Telecom is behind the initiative, which uses technology that will allow it to reach 99% of the country's population.

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In a statement it said the price plans are "highly affordable" and cost one-tenth of its current LTE-based IoT services which will ease the cost burden of startups and small and medium enterprises.

The IoT can help appliances like fridges or printers tell its owners when it needs to be refilled, help customers locate lost smartphones and even monitor pets.

See more at: bbc.com