Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) is a gadfly, but he’s also smart and dialed into technology and trends.
If you can get past the jargon, his long-winded post about Mobile 3.0 and the future of the phone is definitely worth a read.
Scoble’s point is that smartphones have a number of sensors on board, and these sensors can provide a ton of useful (and creepy) information about you, what you’re doing, where you’re going, how you’re feeling, etc.
I tend to agree that the future direction of mobile will use these sensors to add value to smartphones. I also think our smartphones will become the means for interacting with the world around us, a la the Internet of Things.
In our robots demo at Kscope, we showed how a text message could control Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots. We chose text (and phone), since everyone in the room had that capability. Assuming smartphones continue to replace feature phones, we can assume that everybody in the room has an accelerometer.
And assuming that the smartphone OS allows the right access to data from that accelerometer, we could approximate punches based on accelerometer data, e.g. type of punch (jab, cross, hook, uppercut), which hand threw the punch, where the punch was aimed, etc.
Pretty fantastic stuff.
And there are tons of other applications, especially as smartphones add sensors, e.g. did you know that the Galaxy Nexus has a barometer on board? Insert joke about pressure changes and Chet (@oraclenerd) who carries a Galaxy Nexus here.
Sensors everywhere is one reason why I’m so bullish on Internet of Things. Plus, it’s freaky cool, sci-fi stuff.
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