Live from CTIA 2013 aka the Internet of Things Conference

This year at the Cellular Telephone Industry Association's annual conference, the Internet of Things was the spotlight buzzword.  NewAer sat on two panels along side huge companies like AT&T, Verizon and Cisco to give our take on the IoT topic.  The first was with CTIA and the second with Fierce Wireless, a group that covers the industry.

After the question of "what are these things" we agreed they are sensors for heart rate monitors, wearable technology like the Nike Fuel Band and FitBit which collect data and exchange as low-bitrate devices.  For communication, they can attach to the Internet themselves via WiFi or "leach" off of a companion device to mostly push data to a website or device where their data can be visualized.  Some examples like Google Glass use WiFi when they are inside of a space to communicate directly, and use Bluetooth when they are only near a mobile phone.  This got me thinking about all of the "things" on the Internet since the dawn of the commercialization of the network.

The first “Internet Things” in the early 90’s were computers boasting dial-up modems, requiring monthly recurring payment for text access. AOL and Compuserve then brought the masses online in a hosted format with text and pictures similar to what we understand the Internet to be today, albiet much slower and with low-resolution graphics and postage stamp video. There was no shortage of concepts to explore the power of the web, from Microsoft's purchase of WebTV (making your TV an Internet Thing) to free PCs subsidized by virtual ads that plastered display frames while people surfed. The progeny of this work appear today as miniature devices, dubbed IoT. For the purpose of my life's work, IoT is a small device that leeches onto a larger device via Bluetooth LE, WiFi or other low-power feeds like Zigbee to gain access to the Internet to push or pull data via a smartphone app or web database.

You may sense some deja vu, and you're right; a big idea from a small Texas company explored the leeching gadget concept way back in 1997.  (That's pre-DVD, pre-flash drive and even pre-camera phone. The digital cowboys of Digital:Convergence worked with Forbes and Wired Magazine to launch the world’s first IoT device, the CueCat. This LED-glowing, feline-shaped, any-barcode-reading gadget was mailed to each publication’s subscribers, or could be picked up from any of the then-7,200 RadioShack locations. Its purpose: interactivate anything with a barcode, or geek speak for “scan the barcode on a magazine or product and be delivered to a website.”  This was a truly magical experience then. Remember, Google was just a garage project that was helping you “feel lucky,” Yahoo was the primary method of online research as a human curated directory, and “web portals” were the big idea at the time. There were software applications that could achieve similar results with USB cameras, which were again accessories, but this was the first widely deployed device whose clear purpose was to bring instant Internet from any household good....as long as it retained its barcode.

Many stories have been written about this device as a failure, a has-been, a waste of a strategic investor’s $205 million dollars – however, not a single VC was harmed in the fundraising, as strategic partners found great value in driving further content from their physical product reach. In fact, it was more than a dozen years ahead of itself. Today, smart phone cameras decode the same barcodes that this device read – ISBN, UPC, EAN - plastered to products for the retail supply chain. NFC is still a dream, RFID is used only by the supply chain industry and the QR code is arguably a failed marketing attempt outside of Japan.  And probably failed in Japan now. One bright spot: I'm addicted to the magical experience Shazam provides around music, partially because it reminds me of the NBC launch of CueTV, our attempt at audio decoding in the era of “Must See TV."  But I digress down a memory lane.

We attempted to build an operating system for the Internet with audio and visual codes that we called Cues, as the stimulus to enable the actions.  Audacious as it seems, the technology and patents created are still being used today, albeit inside of Android and iOS phones as software vs. our hardware, feline approach.

So if the iPhone has rendered so many secondary gadgets like GPS receivers obsolete, and iPad or Android tablets have taken the retail steam out of portable DVD players and digital picture frames, why do so many IoT gadgets appear on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter so often? Why do similar 'relics' continue to captivate consumers and investors when Wall Street believes they should catch dust in the garage?

The answer is two-fold. First, despite what marketing campaigns and current habits tell us, we do not want to, and will never want to carry a phone with us all the time, like when jogging or working around the house. Devices like the Nike Fuel Band or Fitbit collect data from our movement while awake and our patterns of restlessness as we sleep. They're developed with design in mind, and they're far sexier than strapping a smartphone to your wrist.  Or putting Glass on your face.

Second, we technologists dream of a more-than-smart house like the Jetsons'. For me?  I want the front door to unlock as I approach... my Nest thermostat knows I'm inside earlier than normal and turns the air conditioning down to a lower temperature without my body triggering a motion detector...and I want the convenience to extend outside of my house as I park my car at the airport for the fourth time in as many weeks. I don't worry about remembering where I left my car, because my car will remind my smartphone where I parked it.

All of these devices have WiFi, Bluetooth or cellular radios, each of which depend on pairing and communication technologies. I believe the next evolution of the Internet of Things will be built upon a discovery, and our team has a framework to make it happen.

In 2010 our team at NewAer, built an open, hackable engine to power those automagic actions above. We make wireless devices aware of another device. Our SDK can reside in iPhone applications or on laptops or Android tablets, enabling them to become “IoT aware.”  It’s a scripting language to empower applications, networks or devices to become intelligent with an easy framework for developers to code upon.

Our partners and investors are Alcatel-Lucent (the original Bell Labs), Deutsche Telekom (operating worldwide as T-Mobile) and Intel Capital, whose proceeds from their chip fabing company Intel likely powers the smattering of computing devices around you at this moment. These companies see us as a next generation network enabler to let devices reroute end points on networks.... like ringing your mobile phone calls on your conference room speakerphone when you're mid-meeting, or beginning a movie on your television, then finishing it on your tablet as you leave the house thanks to WiFi or Bluetooth 'fingerprints' changing, and the devices reacting to the new environment.

Our team is building our own showcase of next generation applications to help share any content to a device nearby, automate actions in a smartphone and prevent people from losing their stuff. We believe devices should be truly smart when they become IoT aware.

For us, a day living among the Internet of Things looks like this:

I urge you to think about proximity over location- we're a mobile society and someday soon, fixed geographies will be trounced by elastic location.  Lets build the future of IoT today.

We are inspired by our NewAer developers! (AKA You.)

We are a week away from the Techcrunch 2013 Disrupt Hackathon where we are sponsoring a $2k prize for the best developers that use our proximity SDK.  If you are considering using GPS location based service APIs, we'd like for you to take a look at our platform which consumes less power and is more accurate than GPS inside of a space, as high-resolution peer to peer discovery of devices.

Here's some info on the Disrupt Hackathon: techcrunch.com/2013/04/19/disrupt-nys-hackathon-api-workshops-to-feature-aws-box-evernote-facebook-foursquare-and-the-nyt/

At the recent LAUNCH Hackathon, where we debuted our SDK, team NewAer was on hand to help developers who used the platform and also get some great feedback from those using it.  We have made and deployed subtle improvements over the past few weeks, but for Disrupt, we are adding some significant features that we are excited to pre-announce.

Here's a list of what's new on NewAer:

New Features for Android:

• Cell Tower Scanning, set rules when you get or leave a tower (1000's of feet away)
• WiFi Bonjour Scanning, allows you to see Bonjour devices (on the local network)
• New Application Key Callback API, allows you to handle app key check failure gracefully
• New Group API, allows you to easily group devices and rules (for clustering of signals)

New Features for iOS:

• Devices now have signal strength measurements where applicable (BlueTooth LE)
• Independent enable/disable of scan and advertise by device family (BT, BTLE, Bonjour, WiFi AP)
• Improved low-power consumption for all device families
• New register application interface & callbacks - removed popups
• Sending events for developer to decide on messaging
• Bluetooth LE devices are now subject to a moving-average window on strength (eliminates chaotic behavior with signal strength)
• Better guarantee/handling of unique advertising names
• Report new devices instantly; report lost devices after de-flapping

Of course both versions get the usual various stability fixes, performance improvements, and some bug fixes.  Due to limitations of the different OS, we strive to make the releases on-par between platforms.  You will see that our adding things like Bonjour to Android and signal strength to iOS is an example of such.

At the LAUNCH hackathon, (where we kicked off our SDK) we were honored and surprised by the creative projects that came out of the event.  Some of our favorites were Sample Around, which won $5000 for a food sampling app that leveraged our proximity engine.  The "one I could use daily" was from the team at 85, who created an iPad menu app which noticed when you came back a second time to a restaurant and after welcoming you, gave you the ability to order the same thing again, or try something new based upon your last purchase!  A delightful idea!

Register to be a NewAer Developer and lets see what you've got to top those concepts!

Spring 2013 Press around Proximity...

For us, spring showers brought us March flowers, and that means the blossoming continues into April!

From what started with a shout of "we had a no-show, who can join us on stage" to a call from the huge router juggernaut and some ironically "light" reading, we've gotten some interesting press this spring as the world learns more of our engine powering proximity versus the stale notion of fixed location services.  We are chartering a new path where location is just extra "META" data around content.  From the old "LBS" days of check-ins, Facebook went META by placing location information alongside of your posts and Apple went this direction by placing pins on a map where you shoot your photos on the iPhone.  But we care about more than where you are, looking into what devices are around you and how you can leverage them.

NewAer and our SDKs are placed inside of your applications or network allow you to create true actions or reactions around a device, or group of devices.

But don't just take it from us.  Here is what others are saying...

We kicked all of this spring goodness off post CES with an impromptu presentation at our buddy Myles' SF NewTech meetup.  That video is here: SF New Tech 1/23/13 Event - NewAer

Nerd Stalker was there to give his review of the pitches here: www.nerdstalker.com/2013/01/recap-of-124-sf-new-tech-startup-night.html

Our "Context-aware computing" writeup in Cisco: newsroom.cisco.com/feature-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1157689

Light Reading "Proximity is where it's at" At Mobile World Congress: www.lightreading.com/blog/mobile-applications/proximity-is-where-its-at/240149330

Additionally, those of you attending the Venture Beat Mobile Summit on April 1st and 2nd can see us chair the session on "Mobile as your remote control."  But unlike your TV remote, our control happens with the phone in your pocket, not in your hand.

More info on Venture Beat Mobile 2013 is here: venturebeat.com/events/mobilesummit2013/

And since we are on a roll, you can also find us at the end of the month speaking on the Internet of Things with our friends from Deutschland and their MLOVE conference in Monterey.

The details on this conference in Monterey are here: www.mloveconfestival.com/usa/2013/

See you on the California Ocean side!

Lovegety and our interview at TechCocktail SXSW 2013

Every March, the East and West coast nerds make their annual pilgrimage to Austin, Texas (AKA neutral territory) for what I affectionately call "Geek Spring break."  These past SXSW Interactive conferences have debuted social tools that have become huge hits, and I'd venture to say that even the ill-fated $41 million dollar investment and user interface blunder mobile app Color would have been successful had they launched just weeks earlier than they did in 2011, if they had launched at SXSW.  When I asked then CEO Bill Nguyen why he didn't launch then, he said "what's that?"  To be fair, he's got a family and said he doesn't like events crammed with people, but his team should have known.

This year, there were no real stand-out applications, and some press have also said the event has "jumped the shark" due to no break-out applications   There were further notions that the events were more party and less substance, but we didn't feel that way when attending the demo events events like  those that our friends at TechCocktail host.

We caught up with an old friend and former "Cranky Geeks" producer Carlos Rodela there and had a nice chat about our software platform.  He even brought up a very rare 1998 "radio wave capturing" hardware based Japanese product - the Lovegety which could be built today as an iPhone or Andorid application easily  using the NewAer SDKs.

Here's the video, and if you are so inspired to automate love like the Japanese, then download our SDK around proximity detection!  Our team developed a similar app at the LAUNCH hackathon for connecting with like minded people in just a couple days.  More on that story in the next blog post.

Check out the interview from Carlos and Dave at SXSW.

NewAer ProxPlatform SDK is live!

What we have seen with the rise of general purpose computing is simply astonishing. In the course of less than a century, we have gone from an unreliable computer needing 1800 square feet and 150 kW of power, in order to calculate at just 5kHz, to a computing device which fits in your pocket, is powered by a battery, operates in the 1+ Gigahertz range, has vastly more memory, and lasts for years - as long as you don't drop it.

What is even more amazing is not just their computing power, but the embedded wireless radios and multiple sensors within. The radios connect to an amazing network of computers that all talk to each other as well as to other devices in physical proximity, and even the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites in orbit around the planet, which like to draw down precious battery power.  And while the Internet that these devices connect to is an amazing invention as well, it makes a smartphone the stuff of science fiction from just a few decades ago.

We at NewAer are into sensors, which allow this device to detect all kinds of interesting things, including acceleration, changes in orientation, magnetic North that Columbus could never dream of. Your proximity to another similar machine, ambient noise and light, lately even barometric pressure. All of this computing power, and all of these sensors, and all of the power of the Internet, all in your pocket. Simply astounding.

For a number of years now a friend of NewAer, Robert Scoble and other pundits have been saying that these devices are understanding more and more about us and what we are doing every day. We live in this world, as I leave my home without my keys or wallet more than I leave without my phone. They call this "context awareness" and we find it extremely exciting. It holds the promise to take the combination of our pocketable computer, its network and sensors, then turn them from a "smartphone" into a truly "smart" device. One that is able to automate in simple but powerful ways as we go about our day. One that knows enough about us to be an unobtrusive, context aware assistant that we love and simply can't live without.

The first wave of context awareness was simply presenting an app the phone's location via GPS. Mapping applications on your phone allow you to get directions from where you are, to where you want to go. Others allow you to "check in" at a particular location, and still others allow you to share your location with friends and family. Since context is generally thought of as the circumstances that are relevant to a particular event, certainly detecting the location that something happened is a big piece of the "context puzzle".

Unfortunately GPS doesn't work well indoors, and so location has been augmented with additional systems that can deduce location based on the visibility of terrestrial radio signals, such as cell towers and WiFi access points, using large Internet connected databases. But location is really just the first piece of the puzzle. We think that moving the blue dot on a map inside of a space is boring, frankly.

The next pieces of the contextual computing puzzle are largely unsolved, leaving the promise of a "smart" phone unsatisfied. Which is why we are so excited to be developing a platform to enable others to leverage this sensor network and action engine!  We believe that NewAer is offering one of the next big puzzle pieces of context in the form of "proximity" detection.

NewAer has developed a ProxPlatform SDK, which enables the devices to detect other devices nearby. This SDK allows application builders to easily power the next wave of context aware applications, which behave differently based on location, and also based on what devices are nearby.  All while your phone is in your pocket or purse; without you needing to wake it up or interact with it yourself.

Want to always remember where you parked your car, without having to remember to open the "Where did I park my car" application? Using the NewAer ProxPlatform an application can easily detect the loss of connectivity with your bluetooth equipped vehicle and drop a pin on a map.  Want to automatically forward your calls to your laptop when you are near it? It's easy with the ProxPlatform. The possibilities for smarter, context aware interactions are endless using the SDK.

NewAer's SDK offers robust, low latency proximity detection. Our simple API allows your application to detect devices which come in and go out of radio range. In addition, our Android SDK offers a pluggable rules engine. Developers can easily write simple action plugins which can be shared between applications which are part of the ProxPlatform ecosystem. This means that you don't have to include the full scanning engine to be part of the NewAer application ecosystem. You can include our very small plugin SDK in your application and allow other applications to automate actions using our platform.

This SDK comes bundled with a number of plugins for playing music, vibrating the phone, and our roadmap includes adding many more for even more powerful features soon. We also look forward to seeing what kinds of actions you can come up with. NewAer's SDK offers the next big piece of the context puzzle. We have worked hard to make a simple but powerful API for application developers to use. Finally, our smartphones today are powered by limited battery packs.

As users, we have become acclimated to the nightly charging routine, but are still frustrated if our device doesn't make it through the day. Thus, NewAer has focused a great deal of time and attention on keeping power draw for the platform to a minimum, while keeping the latency of device detection low. This is a delicate balancing act requiring considerable time and attention, not to mention optimization.

We are very excited to be able to offer this power optimized SDK to developers, and we look forward to seeing all of the context aware applications our technology unlocks. The age of context is just beginning and NewAer is key to the next wave of context awareness. We don't turn on GPS, do not keep the CPU awake unless we need to, and typically see a lower power draw of around 4% on the Android battery meter. That makes us proud for not making you sacrifice battery life while still getting the power of our engine.  Incidentally, this is about the same draw as the active wallpaper Android supports, so by removing your "fish tank" you will be at a net-zero end-result with our addition.

Sign up for access to the NewAer ProxPlatform SDK today. Happy hacking! Now what are you waiting for?  Our plumbing of the next evolution of contextual computing awaits you and your apps.

-Nick Palmer Technology Lead and the NewAer team

A new and exciting year for proximity!

As we built our first version of the then spelled NeuAer Proximity Platform in 2010, we knew that we were onto something. We became the forerunner of the next generation of location-based services. Creating a technology that would work both indoors and out, as a licensable engine to allow other developers to leverage what were formerly “stray” or ambient radio signals.

When we won Best Technology at Jason Calacanis’ LAUNCH competition in 2011, the tech community told us that we had a hit on our hands. Investors swooned and before we knew it, unsolicited term sheets for convertible notes were arriving in our in-box.

As a bootstrapped company, accepting early money from outside investors would have removed some of the fundraising pressure and provided breathing room to grow faster. However, we respectfully declined each offer and decided to grow with customers, albeit slowly, while looking for the right strategic investors.

We are happy to write that our first commercial license came in 2011 and we closed an investment round in 2012 with huge companies considered to be the right strategic matches, that could leverage our vision within their own products or services.

First to the boardroom table in our series seed (which is investor speak for pre-series A) was Intel Capital, the investment arm of the Intel processor empire. With their investment we are bringing our engine into more than just smartphones by building next generation collaboration platforms for laptops and mobile devices.

Rounding out the investment was T-Venture, the investment arm of Deutsche Telekom, which is the German based giant behind the T-Mobile carrier group worldwide. Watch for future news from their business units on these blog pages.

As for 2013, we are off to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, known by many of us as a gadget heaven, to demonstrate integration that we have been working on all summer. With phone networks moving to 4G or LTE today, the next generation of voice & video calls will be made on VoLTE (Voice over LTE networks.) Our technology taps into this next generation carrier infrastructure of Alcatel-Lucent via their IMS platform and its API capabilities. This collaboration came into place as a member of their “ng Connect” program. We will be demoing in their booth in the South Hall #31412. Look for us in the inner ring of the Alcatel-Lucent partners if you are there!

Finally, we are going back to our competition roots, sponsoring the hack-a-thon of the same conference where we debuted, LAUNCH on March 2nd in San Francisco. This is where we will launch our SDK that goes inside of YOUR applications, or devices, debut our second-generation API “action engine” in the cloud and a few other tricks that we have been working ourselves. Best thing for you developers out there, is that we are giving away a $2,000 prize to the team who builds our favorite application on the NewAer platform.

What a fast few years it has been. We are excited to have our partners, customers and new investors in the now easy to pronounce NewAer, Inc. and are off to the races. If you are in the industry, come say hello to us in Vegas at CES or Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. We can give the run-down on why proximity beats location-based services in power consumption and speed for your own applications, devices or services. Happy New Year, everyone, and developers, we will see you at LAUNCH!

Post SXSW Interactive 2012 Wrap-up!

As I write this, we have been back just a few days from more than 16,000 miles of travel that started in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, made our way through San Francisco for the LAUNCH festival, and finally to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest Interactive.

Each of these brought us great meetings with new partners and a lot of lessons learned about the state of the mobile nation. At MWC, we saw handsets that are getting thinner, with larger screens and better audio like the HTC One.

The LAUNCH conference brought us old friends from last year, and new up-and comers like the 2012 winner of our 2011 Best Technology honor Captricity which takes paper forms and turns them into digitally readable documents.

Finally, at SXSW we hooked up with friends from the East & West coast, and all over Europe as well, to see the latest social software and applications that were breaking weeks before the conference.

The hype in Austin this year was around apps that would alert you to when you are in range of your friends or people whom you should meet. These used GPS satellites in the sky to setup "geo fencing" to compare your approximate location with another user of the same app. Leveraging GPS is easy, since all smartphone operating systems have the technology as a built-in API to plug right into your app. The problem though, is that GPS radios need a clear view of the sky to operate and because your body is made mostly of "radio blocking" water, trying to get a signal from a transmitter in outer-space is a difficult feat. Additionally, when you are inside a building, receiving GPS signals is next to impossible due to construction materials or even the metallic window tint or bonded coatings on some glass.

We dig a bit deeper into our solution around our Proximity Platform as a substitute for GPS based APIs through this story that we wrote for VentureBeat.
Why GPS-based smart apps failed to go viral at SXSW.

Take a look at the story and drop us a line through our contact page if you want to work with our API on the Android or iOS mobile operating systems! Although we are glad to be home now, we certainly will see you at the next mobile conference!