July 31, 2011

Sometimes looking back at forecasts or roadmaps can provide valuable insights and better understanding of the present.

This document was produced by Nokia (back in 2006 !), which even though it has a rocky future ahead still sold 88 million phones in Q2 2011.

(See Original at the bottom of this post).

We will not go into controversial debates regarding the company’s recent strategic decisions, however when looking at their forecasts quite a few developments forecasted have become a reality today…….sometimes timeline was off by a couple of years, other times things happened a bit sooner than they thought. Overall,  it seems that back in 2007 the people responsible for imagining what the mobile world would look like 5 years later had a pretty clear vision…… Let us see some predictions right on target, some futuristic and some that may take some time to become a reality.

 

 

  • Watches, toys and other small battery operated devices will be able talk to mobile phones, thanks to Nokia’s innovative Wibree technology and its incredibly small power consumption

Wibree became Bluetooth Low Energy

 

 

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  • With Smart connectivity your mobile can seamlessly switch between radio connections to give you the best quality, fastest speed and/or cheapest available connection

 

……except that with Orange I doubt it will ever be possible to get the cheapest available connection (let us not talk about speed).

 

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  • Widgets bring a wealth of new applications to get you the information you need to stay up to date with from the Internet

 

Mobile is the promised land for widgets and social widgets will     probably grow quickly as well.

 

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  • Augmented reality Devices that deliver information based on context. “Tell me what that building is”, “bring me the website I was looking at last Friday” or “find me an excellent tune for getting ready to go out” are all commands that can readily be followed

 

Layar, Metaio, TAB Worldmedia and of course Wikitude Drive are brilliant examples of the power of AR………

 

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  • Mobile marketing will expand rapidly, offering businesses a unique opportunity to market products on a one-to-one basis.

Promoted Tweets, Facebook Messages, the list is too long for this posting.

 

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  • GPS enabled social networking on your mobile will soon enable you to track down friends who are nearby

 

Google Maps Leads the Way in Connected UK Mobile App Usage in June 2011 , applications like Four Square or Tweeps around keep growing….

 

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  • Data download speeds increase to tens of Mbits per second with long-term evolution (LTE or 3.9G) cellular technologies

 

Yep, LTE is getting out there; I think telcos skipped 3.9 G and went directly to 4G…

 

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  • Camera resolutions in mobile devices will reach 10MPix, 7x optical zoom and HDTV recording capability

Close :   Samsung Galaxy II is at 8 Mpix, iPhone 4 has  HD video recording.

 

 

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  • Devices can be made of materials that disintegrate at the end of life minimizing any impact to the environment

 

Ahead of time !! We all already have seen plenty of these devices with very short lifespans !!  Quality is one of our top priorities, and no we do      not intend to provide Senspods that you can plant in the ground so they disintegrate and bloom from flower seeds contained in the protective casing .….

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  • Integrated health sensors on you and on your mobile will provide diagnosis ‘on-the-go’ and alert you to any health risks, such as an increase in blood-pressure. Your mobile will be able to detect high pollen count areas or any flu virus lurking somewhere near you

 

Sensaris products and services provide heart rate, blood pressure, glucose, temperature, blood oxygen saturation , lung capacity and a number of new applications are in the pipeline…………..At the moment we have no direct virus but stay tuned………………

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Want to get some insight for the next few years ? Start reading articles like the one on Google Think Quaterly Innovation:

 

http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/quarterly/innovation/next-gen-innovators.html

 

We are working with our partners and customers to shape what mobile sensing will look like in 2016.Contact us if you want to keep your competitive edge and be among next gen innovators.
Nokia Roadmap

 

 

July 27, 2011

If you are interested in various aspects of air quality monitoring, there is a new book online edited by Nicolás A. Mazzeo.

Human beings need to breathe oxygen diluted in certain quantity of inert gas for living. In the atmosphere, there is a gas mixture of, mainly, oxygen and nitrogen, in appropriate proportions. However, the air also contains other gases, vapours and aerosols that humans incorporate when breathing and whose composition and concentration vary spatially. Some of these are physiologically inert. Air pollution has become a problem of major concern in the last few decades as it has caused negative effects on human health, nature and properties. This book presents the results of research studies carried out by international researchers in seventeen chapters which can be grouped into two main sections: a) air quality monitoring and b) air quality assessment and management, and serves as a source of material for all those involved in the field, whether as a student, scientific researcher, industrialist, consultant, or government agency with responsibility in this area.

The book can be downloaded at this website:

Online book

July 5, 2011

Crolles, France.

Sensaris introduces a new product for wireless applications. Our Bluetooth®/Wifi® bridge integrates two state of the art low power modules: a Bluetooth WT12 from Bluegiga® and the Wifi® Flyport from OpenPicus. The web server contained within the Flyport module hosts a web application dedicated to controlling sensors and monitoring their data.
Web developers do not need to know about embedded electronics anymore to develop in record time ground breaking applications and services for wireless sensors, either as standalone entities or in networks.

Using the Bluetooth®/WiFi® Bridge, our customers can:·
- Use the Sensaris mHealth and environmental devices with any Apple® mobile devices: iPad®, iPhone®.
- Connect Bluetooth sensors to devices missing the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile but with WiFi radios (e.g. Windows Phone 7 platform)
- Start working on Internet of Things applications with future proof wireless technologies and a wide variety of platforms: Android®, iOS, plug computers etc.
- Control and monitor multiple devices through the bridge via web applications.
- Send real time data to any remote server.

The first applications developed are for mHealth and environmental monitoring but many exciting applications are in the pipeline…………….

Bluetooth-WiFi bridge introduction.

July 1, 2011

News from the OpenSense project in Switzerland:

27.06.11 - Rather than installing stations on fixed towers, why not use mobile sensors spread out over the whole city to get better air quality measurements? OpenSense, a project run by four laboratories at EPFL and one at ETH Zurich, is studying the possibility of installing sensors on the roofs of buses and trams, thus taking advantage of already existing public transport and mobile phone networks. Testing is currently underway in Lausanne.

Measuring air quality using mobile sensors installed on buses, trams and taxis: this is the clever idea being developed in the OpenSense project. Using the data from these sensors, a person with asthma would know what time of day the pollution was at its lowest in the neighborhood, and thus pick this moment do his or her shopping, for example. Parents would know where to take their children to play on a summer day, because they would be aware of zones with low ozone concentrations…

This project, run by four laboratories at EPFL and one at ETH Zurich, is setting up a new infrastructure for measuring air quality that takes advantage of already existing networks, such as the public transport network. Mobile, secure, predictable, and spread out over a given area, buses are an ideal data collection base. The researchers thus have set themselves the tasks of designing climate and traffic-resistant sensors that can be placed on vehicles and organizing the networking of the information they collect, using mobile phones.

“The advantage of a sensor network like this is that you can collect more data in a much more evenly spread-out area than you can from the few fixed pollution measuring stations that are currently being used,” explains EPFL Professor and project leader Karl Aberer.

As a test, a box of sensors was installed on the roof of a bus that is part of the Lausanne Public Transport system and another was installed on a tram in Zurich. These devices are collecting atmospheric data, the presence and quantity of particulates and certain pollutants - ozone (O3), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitric acid (NO), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Towards practical applications

A second important objective of the project is to better involve and inform the public about the quality of the air they’re breathing. In order to more precisely determine the best and most concrete use of the data collected, a complementary study is being done with the Nokia Research Center in Lausanne (NRCL). It could be, for example, a warning service or a smartphone application for people who are more susceptible to variations in pollution levels – children, people with asthma, the elderly, or people with allergies.

Although the idea of the project seems simple, putting it into practice involves overcoming numerous scientific and technical difficulties. “Being able to precisely locate the sensors is very important for the reliability of the data produced,” explains Alcherio Martinoli, one of the four EPFL professors involved in the project. This localization can be done using GPS technologies. For EPFL professor Boi Faltings, head of the Artifical Intelligence Laboratory, it’s also a matter of “getting the sensors to take data only where it’s really useful.”

 

News Source

Initial project presentation:
Opensense project Overview