The wisdom of The Internet of Things strategy has, perhaps, been best demonstrated in my personal life by the fact that I now accept being tracked via my smartphone. For me, the benefits greatly outweigh any nebulous privacy concerns. The smartphone that is now my constant companion serves also as my personal radio-frequency identification chip,…

Since the concept, The Internet of Things, was conceived by Kevin Ashton in the late 1990s, much has changed with regard to the technologies available for realization of his vision. Ashton worried that the majority of data available via the Internet was filtered through the people who created and input that data, causing a bias…

Advantech recently announced one of the most intriguing approaches we’ve seen to system development, a new program that allows Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) and OEMs to design highly customized, application-specific systems using readily-available off-the-shelf components. This rapid system-customization approach has been dubbed “C²OTS” by Advantech for “customized commercial-off-the-shelf.” As described by Advantech, “C²OTS gives OEMs…

Like most of us, I get so caught up in day-to-day job challenges that it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture, and I got a reminder of that bigger picture recently while watching a favorite medical drama. There in state-of-the-art, make-believe operating theater was an actor using a touch-panel display that looked awfully…