The Smart Home Was Supposed to Be Simple But…
August 28th, 2018Timber Skyscrapers, Smart Paving, Weather Resistant Outdoor Spaces… Google’s Smart City Project in Toronto
August 20th, 2018
The Hot & Cold of it: Alphabet’s Project Malta Energy Storage Set to Spin-Off
It was almost exactly one year ago that X, Alphabet’s secretive “moonshot” development division, released the details of its energy storage concept code named Project Malta. Led by Nobel Prize–winning Stanford physics professor Robert Laughlin, the technology is said to offer vast cost and functionality improvements on lithium ion batteries and pumped hydroelectric for grid-scale […]

The Collision of IT & OT is Shaping the Future of Buildings in the IoT Age
The Internet of Things for Buildings (BIoT) is simply so vast that it would be better described as an ecosystem than a business sector. An ecosystem is a community of elements, which interact with each other and their physical environment to create balance and functionality in a system. Where one business could potentially serve and […]

Android Things Swaps Openness for Rigidity to Bring Order to the Internet of Things
“What everyone refers to as the Internet of Things (IoT) is a huge group of small devices that are all proprietary, don’t work very well with each other, and use software that’s old as Methuselah and riddled with security holes. It’s completely broken and it’s a wonder that some products have been as successful as […]

Would you Live in a Smart Home Built by Amazon, Apple or Google?
Through product development and acquisition retail colossus Amazon now provides consumers with almost every element of the smart home, aside from the bricks and mortar itself. This situation led customer experience futurist, keynote speaker and author, Blake Morgan to ask, “would it make sense that Amazon take it to the next level and simply start […]

We Already Have Plenty of Sensors in Buildings – The Occupants Themselves
We try to flood buildings with sensors that see, hear, and even smell the indoor environment. The gathered data can then be used to better understand the problems and opportunities a building presents. However, the approach by Boston-based firm CrowdComfort highlights the fact that we already have plenty of sensors in our buildings – the […]

AI Set To Spawn A New Era In Data Driven Healthcare
Google has been continually improving its artificial intelligence (AI) portfolio, and considering “search” still makes up 80% of Google’s revenues it would be logical to assume that the firm is improving its AI portfolio to improve its search capabilities. However when you consider the development of AI you realise that Google is actually using search […]

New Campuses of Big Tech Companies Offer a Glimpse into the Future
Companies like IBM and Cisco, Microsoft and Apple, Google and Amazon, have been at the center of society’s digital transformation. Each one competes over its space in the market, and increasingly in the smart building age, each one competes over the quality of its space. New headquarters create a buzz around the company but also […]

“Alexa, Would You Like To Go To Work With Me Today?”
Virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri or Google Home, have become an increasingly common sight in homes across the world through smart speakers. Like cyber personal assistants they are connecting with residential systems, such as lighting and thermostats, to automate and simplify the way we run our homes. These assistants have also […]