Here Scott McGregor, CEO of Broadcom, shows me some new wireless devices, based on Low Power Bluetooth, which will be the “hub” of a new kind of “personal cloud” that will connect sensors and wearable computers to our smartphones of the future. These devices can support hundreds of other wireless devices, each with sensors, lights, or controllers for things on us or around us. This has deep implications for our contextual future (I’m writing a book, titled “Age of Context”).
These new devices will cost less than $ 10 (wholesale) and run on a small battery for a year or more.
On this topic, I think the personal cloud is going to be hugely important at the Techcrunch Disrupt event coming up in September: don’t miss our Techcrunch Disrupt Google Glass developer contest. We’re giving away $ 10,000 to try to help developers take advantage of what Scott’s showing us here. Details on that are here — entry ends September 5 and we’ll announce the winner at the end of Techcrunch Disrupt, which is in San Francisco September 7-11.
At Techcrunch Disrupt we’ll be doing interviews all three days in our studio (which will be right by the front door). If you haven’t gotten your ticket yet for Disrupt, use this link to get a discount and use ScobledSF13 as the code.
++++++++++
Y Combinator company, Estimote, shows why Low Energy Bluetooth is so important as an enabler for the future of the personal cloud.
+Estimote was one of the hot new companies to come out of the latest batch of Y Combinator, the famous Silicon Valley incubator.
Here you see its new product, Estimote Beacons, which is a small, wireless device, sometimes also called a ‘mote.’ When placed in a physical space, it broadcasts tiny radio signals around itself.
Think about it as a very small lighthouse. Smartphones that are in range are able to ‘hear’ these signals and estimate their location very precisely, as well as communicate with the beacon to exchange data and information.
Here you hear cofounder/CEO Jakub Krzych.
This company is hugely important for the contextual future that’s coming quickly.
The post Here comes the age of the "personal cloud" appeared first on Scobleizer.