Amazon
The real world just got a little more push-button.
This week Amazon quietly listed customizable AWS IoT Buttons for sale on its site, customizable versions of its Amazon Dash buttons. The Dash buttons take the company’s “one-click” ordering quasi-offline by letting you let you order products such as pet food, toilet paper, or caffeinated beverages by pressing an internet-connected physical button. The idea is that you’ll stick the little buttons wherever you store the product, so that when you’re running low, you need only tap the button and—badda-bing—your order is in progress. Amazon sells more than 100 different buttons today, but until now there’s been no way to create your own.
Amazon pitches the new AWS IoT buttons, which cost $19.95 and should be in stock May 151, as a way for developers to learn how to use the company’s various cloud services, including its “IoT” offering for powering Internet of Things devices. “You can click the button to unlock or start a car, open your garage door, call a cab, call your spouse or a customer service representative, track the use of common household chores, medications or products, or remotely control your home appliances,” the Amazon site boasts.
The possibilities are many, but it’s not clear how useful any of them actually are. Amazon doesn’t indicate any plans to expand its platform to enable non-programmers could make their own buttons, or to allow companies to offer their own Dash buttons to sell to customers (though Amazon does plan to offer the buttons in bulk).
But other companies are already thinking along these lines. The startup IFTTT (short for “if this, then that”) doesn’t offer physical buttons. But the company already makes it possible for consumers to create single-purpose icons on their phones that can be set to, say, send the words “running late” to your spouse or company chat room. And of course there’s the perennially mocked Yo, which lets you send the word “Yo” to a friend with a single click. Amazon’s Dash Button are another example of this radically simplified way of doing things. With its programmable buttons, Amazon is offering another glimpse of the potential push-button future of tech.
1Update 9:05 PM ET 5/13/2016: Amazon has removed the pricing and availability date from the AWS IoT Button listing, and Amazon CTO Warner Vergels has tweeted that the buttons are already sold out.
Tom Siebel has a history of placing winning bets. He was an early employee at Oracle, which is still the most widely used enterprise database in the world. He later founded Siebel Systems, a business software company that inspired followers such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. He sold that company to Oracle in 2006 for $5.8 billion.
His latest bet is that the much-hyped Internet of Things is finally going to take off. But he’s not interested in the plethora of “smart” gadgets aimed at consumers. Siebel wants to connect manufacturing equipment, medical devices, and all the other commercial equipment used by the world’s largest companies. Maybe the way the Internet of Things really grows isn’t so much by letting you control your thermostat with your smartphone; it’s by connecting the physical infrastructure of businesses to help them turn a profit.
This week, Siebel’s latest company, C3 Energy, changed its name to C3 IoT and branched out from its focus on energy utilities to commercial enterprises such as manufacturing, mining, transportation and health care.
C3, which Siebel founded way back in 2008 but has spent most of its existence in research and development, already offers fraud detection software; tools for predicting when equipment may be about to fail; data storage and analysis tools; and a cloud platform that companies can use to build their own applications. Up until now, the company has focused solely on the energy sector, winning customers such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Enel and Eversource Energy. Siebel describes the energy industry as an “early adopter” of the Internet of Things. Utility companies, for example, have installed 50 million network-connected “smart meters” nationwide, according to an Edison Foundation report. Now the company is hoping to offer those same tools to companies in other industries.
If other industries follow suit by using sensors and other network connected devices to improve their efficiency, they could have a larger economic and environmental impact than the “smart home” gadget market. For example, as much as we may fret over our personal carbon footprints, the commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors accounted for a combined 83 percent of all energy use in the US. In 2011, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
Siebel isn’t the only one betting that the industrial Internet of Things is going to be big. Research firm IDC predicts that Internet of Things-related spending will reach $1.7 trillion by 2020, much of it coming from the commercial sector. There are already dozens of companies hoping to soak up some of that money by offering cloud platforms for the Internet of Things, including IBM, Microsoft, Amazon and even General Electric. Siebel hopes that C3 will have an edge over its competition because it’s already proven itself as ready for large-scale industrial use through its work in the energy sector. Maybe that will be enough to get the industrial world to go all in with him.
Ever worry that you’ll miss an appointment or important email because you’re too engrossed in the latest Real Housewives or that Law & Order marathon you just couldn’t miss? Comcast and IFTTT are coming to the multitasking rescue. The pair have teamed up to let you to send a variety of notifications, from Gmail to Pinterest to LinkedIn, to your television via Comcast’s X1, its answer to smart TV set-top boxes such as Roku and Apple TV.
IFTTT, short for “if this, then that,” helps non-technical users automate their lives by integrating a variety web services and gadgets without the need to actually learn how to code. You can just log in to the company’s site and begin connecting services together.
For example, you can use it to send yourself text message reminders; automatically back up your Instagram photos to Google Drive; or, controversially, to keep digital tabs on your spouse or partner. IFTTT has been working to become the center of the smart home and the “Internet of Things.” In that sense, IFTTT could help the TV, historically the most important screen in most families’ homes, become a hub of activity in the house of the future. Dishwasher done running? Doorbell ringing? Time to put the kids to bed? Just keep an eye on the TV set.
Of course it’s easy to see this going wrong. No one wants to see notifications for email spam during a dramatic season finale, and you don’t want your friends to see your embarrassing calendar reminders during the big game. For most of us, our smartphone screens have supplanted the TV as our notification source. But it makes sense to occasionally just turn our phones off and enjoy a movie while enabling only the most important alerts to interrupt our viewing pleasure.
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