Last week on Pro: wearable devices, LEDs and Yahoo’s rescinded WFH policy

It’s been a big week for big data and for GigaOM. We hosted our first internet of things meetup in San Francisco on Tuesday, with a packed house of 250 listening to our 5 speakers. Our next IoT meet up is slated for Boulder on March 13; register here to join us. We also checked out the Strata conference in Santa Clara, as we get prepared for our own Structure:Data show in New York City on March 20-21. If you haven’t secured your tickets yet, click here to register now – there are a limited number of spots remaining. Meanwhile, over on GigaOM Pro, our analysts took a deeper look at the potential motives behind Marissa Meyer’s new anti-WFH policies at Yahoo, as well as deep dive into the wearable devices market.

Note: GigaOM Pro is a subscription-based research service offering in-depth, timely analysis of developing trends and technologies. Visit pro.gigaom.com to learn more about it.

Cleantech: The growth and promise of the LED market
Ucilia Wang

Analyst Ucilia Wang takes a look at the LED industry, which is slowly making inroads into the commercial markets. LED is moving away from being a mere novelty or purely functional form of illumination and gaining popularity for residential and retail use. Wang provides a technical overview of LED design and engineering, potential additional use cases and applications for the technology, and which startups and major companies to watch as LEDs continue to gain a foothold in the mainstream.

Connected Consumer: The wearable-computing market: a global analysis
Jody Ranck

Last summer, we published analyst Jody Ranck’s analysis of wearable devices, and it’s back at the top of our most popular research content. While Google Glass is often cited as the seminal wearable example, Ranck also looks at many of the devices available to consumers today. At present, it’s a market largely dominated by the quantified-self movement, anchored by fitness products such as the Nike Fuelband and the Fitbit (see disclosure). Although the mobile and health sectors will see the biggest impact over the next 5 years, Ranck looks at current and emerging wearable technologies that will resonate across the enterprise, disability technology, fashion, gaming/entertainment, and augmented reality sectors.

Social: What Marissa Mayer’s ‘no remote work’ dictate means
Stowe Boyd

Analyst Stowe Boyd takes a theiry-based approach as he weighs in on Yahoo’s crackdown on WFH culture. Drawing on Edgar Schein’s  principles of organizational structure, Boyd looks at what impact Meyers’ latest policy will have upon Yahoo’s corporate culture. While the mandate emphasizes the importance of in-person collaboration and communication, Boyd worries that Yahoo is sacrificing innovation in favor of corporate micromanagement.

Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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