To connect devices to the internet, developers shouldn’t have to keep reinventing wheel. That’s the message from Hugo Fiennes, the CEO and co-founder of Electric Imp. Electric Imp is a startup building a card that brings all the connectivity needed to connect a device to the internet. It also has a cloud backend that lets people build apps that will take advantage of that connected device.
At the GigaOM internet of things meetup last week, Fiennes showed off a candy dispenser that was connected to the web. When someone tweeted @electricimp or #electricimp it would dispense candy in an amount that related to the number of Twitter followers the person tweeting had. As you can see in the video below, it was a feature that Fiennes quickly had to turn off.
But outside of novelty devices, Fiennes’ argument was that so far the internet of things hasn’t taken off — not because it wasn’t cheap enough, but because people building products weren’t focused on enchanting the user (and connectivity was hard). Check it out.
Watch this video for free on GigaOM
If you liked this talk, check out the others on defining the internet of things, the future of our devices, how to design apps for the internet of things and security. Or come to our next internet of things meetup in Boulder, Colo., next week.
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