jugad2 - Vasudev Ram on software innovation: Internet-of-things

Showing posts with label Internet-of-things. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Google to acquire Nest for $3.2 billion?

By Vasudev Ram

Saw the news here on Hacker News, and then read the post on Google's site:

Google to Acquire Nest

Excerpt from that Google page:

[ MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – JANUARY 13, 2014 — Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has entered into an agreement to buy Nest Labs, Inc. for $3.2 billion in cash.

Nest’s mission is to reinvent unloved but important devices in the home such as thermostats and smoke alarms. Since its launch in 2011, the Nest Learning Thermostat has been a consistent best seller--and the recently launched Protect (Smoke + CO Alarm) has had rave reviews. ]

So it looks like the news is true - I thought at first it might be a joke of some sort.

TechCrunch article about it:

Google Is Buying Connected Device Company Nest For $3.2B In Cash

The Hacker News thread about the acquisition of Nest by Google, has someone mentioning how this ties in with the Internet of Things.

Coincidentally, I had talked just recently about the Internet of Things, in this post:

websocketd and Python for system monitoring - the JavaScript WebSocket client,

which in turn referred to this post:

PTC Acquires ThingWorx, Internet of Things Platform Provider

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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Friday, January 3, 2014

websocketd and Python for system monitoring - the JavaScript WebSocket client

By Vasudev Ram

In my previous post:

Use WebSockets and Python for web-based system monitoring ,

I said I'd show the HTML + JavaScript client code for the monitoring app in my next post. Here it is, in the file psutil_disk_usage.html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>
        Disk space monitoring with websocketd (Go) and psutil (Python).
        </title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h3>
        Disk space monitoring with websocketd (Go) and psutil (Python).
        </h3>
        <p>
            <div id="log"></div>
        </p>
        <script>
            // helper function: log message to screen
            function log(msg) {
                document.getElementById('log').innerText += msg + '\n';
            }

            // setup websocket with callbacks
            var ws = new WebSocket('ws://localhost:8080/');
            ws.onopen = function() {
                log('CONNECT');
            };
            ws.onclose = function() {
                log('DISCONNECT');
            };
            ws.onmessage = function(event) {
                log('MESSAGE: ' + event.data);
            };
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

As you can see, the code is pretty straightforward. You open the above HTML file in a WebSocket-enabled browser after running the websocketd command I showed in my previous post. (If you start the HTML page before the websocketd command, the client socket times out and disconnects, because it has nothing to read.

Here is the output of running the websocketd command at the command line:

And here is the WebSocket client running in the browser, showing the first two lines of disk space info pushed to it by the server:

Though it was coincidental, I realized that the websocket-based system monitoring technique shown (in this post and my previous post) may be useful for collecting system or sensor data from devices in the Internet of Things (IoT), as I mentioned in this other recent post:

PTC Acquires ThingWorx, Internet of Things Platform Provider

, in which I said:

[ One point of interest is the use of the IoT for system monitoring. Since many more devices will have some intelligence (i.e. a processor built-in) and network access, monitoring systems comprising of many such "things" could be potentially easier and more scalable. ]

For example, many IoT devices could send their data (on weather, traffic, etc.) to a server, which could use WebSockets as in this example to push the analysed / consolidated / summarized data to a WebSocket client running in a browser, for human consumption.

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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Thursday, January 2, 2014

PTC Acquires ThingWorx, Internet of Things Platform Provider

By Vasudev Ram

Saw this via Twitter.

PTC (Parametric Technology Corporation) has acquired ThingWorkx, a platform provider for the Internet of Things (IoT), for $112 million.

PTC on Wikipedia.

This press release by PTC gives more details, including what they intend to do with the acquisition, and the scope of the opportunity they see, which is very large.

Excerpt from the press release:

[ NEEDHAM, MASS., December 30, 2013 - PTC (Nasdaq: PTC) today announced it has acquired ThingWorx, creators of an award-winning platform for building and running applications for the Internet of Things (IoT), for approximately $112 million, plus a possible earn-out of up to $18 million. The acquisition of ThingWorx positions PTC as a major player in the emerging Internet of Things era. ]

One point of interest is the use of the IoT for system monitoring. Since many more devices will have some intelligence (i.e. a processor built-in) and network access, monitoring systems comprising of many such "things" could be potentially easier and more scalable.

I had blogged about ThingWorkx a while ago, here:

ThingWorx is working on the Internet of Things.

As I said in that post, Rick Bullotta, the then CTO of ThingWorkx, was earlier a vice president with SAP Research in the areas of future manufacturing and the Internet of Things.

A GigaOm post about the acquisition:

PTC cozies up to the industrial internet of things, picks up ThingWorx for $112 million

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The wine cellar of the Father of the Internet :-)

Vint Cerf’s futuristic wine cellar—and what it means for you | Ars Technica

Cool (pun intended) article.

Check out the tech he uses for the cellar.

Vint Cerf is considered to be one of the creators of the Internet.

- Vasudev Ram
www.dancingbison.com

jugad2 - Vasudev Ram on software innovation

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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Google to acquire Nest for $3.2 billion?

Friday, January 3, 2014

websocketd and Python for system monitoring - the JavaScript WebSocket client

Thursday, January 2, 2014

PTC Acquires ThingWorx, Internet of Things Platform Provider

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The wine cellar of the Father of the Internet :-)

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