Doc Brown would have loved Inventables. The Chicago-based "marketplace for technology and materials for developers and designers" sells everything from Sugru (air-curing silicon molding putty that's all the rage with geeks) to circuit board blanks.
All those people who are prototyping Quantified Self devices for their Kickstarters need a place to buy sensors and CNC milling machines. Or maybe they're building a Quantified Pet product, like Whistle, and need sensors for that. (The recent BBC documentary "Secret Life of The Cat" used GPS collars and cat-cams to give us kitty-POV!)
The fact that this is the Year of The Cyborg Tipping Point and The Year of the Internet of Things means it's not all apps and Big Data. We're as interested in gadgets as we are in code right now, and buying devices like it's 1987 and we're Gordon Gecko in a Sharper Image store. Gordon Gecko would have enjoyed the Quantified Self movement - now with meetups to discuss Chemical Body Count Loads!
The Digital Home World Summit kicks off tomorrow in London. Aimed at digital home service and technology businesses, the agenda includes fascinating topics like "Achieving healthcare reform through remote healthcare projects" plus the more pragmatic "learn everything you need to know about progress in unifying standards and achieving interoperability between devices".
Apparently it's not enough to wire your body, your pet, your keys, your pipes and your house; you need sensors for your plants too. For realz, costs €89-189. I can kill plants by looking at them, but I can't imagine wanting this. It's like a horrible narcissistic Munchausen-syndrome FitBit for the Floronic Man.
We'll see what data we actually want and need in a few years, when this all shakes out. Meanwhile, we're keeping an eye on sensor fusion and the next stage of IoT: remote emotive computing.
