Wearables, Apps, & the FDA: What does it mean for us & Apple?

Apple unveiled its smartwatch and ResearchKit, its foray into health tracking.

Will the FDA have anything to say about it?

And should Apple even play a role in our healthcare?

Twitter is tracking the apps on your phone

Just as an FYI, in case you didn’t already know this…

Gigaom

In its latest effort to improve its ad targeting, Twitter will start collecting information on what mobile apps its users have downloaded.

If you’re in the Pandora camp instead of the Spotify camp, Twitter will know. Harbor a penchant for celebrity gossip with both the TMZ and Perez Hilton app in your arsenal? Twitter will know. If you’re on a diet and you’re tracking your calories with an app, Twitter will know.

The company says it’s using the information to benefit you, by improving its recommendation engines on other Twitter accounts you should follow. As mentioned in the Twitter Analyst Call, an “instant timeline” for new users is also on its way. Information on what apps a person has downloaded could help Twitter build that.

The second purpose, one not mentioned by Twitter in its blog post, is the holy grail of free consumer web companies: Ad targeting. Twitter needs as much information…

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Meet Plague: An app plumbing the depths of viral networking

This sounds SO COOL. The collision of science, art and technology.
“In such an off-grid network, there’s no easy means of blocking individual users or flagging content. As devices get close to one another they link together, share their content and then disappear without a trace, truly emulating the behavior of epidemiological pathogen. It’s a fascinating concept in networking, but also one that’s a little bit scary.”

Gigaom

We use the term viral to describe the way information spreads across the internet, but a new social communications app has taken that concept to its extreme. Instead of using the word “virus” as a metaphor, an app called Plague developed in Lithuania is making the virus the model for how it spreads content from device to device.

Plague shouldn’t be confused with Plague Inc., the extremely twisted but highly addictive mobile game, but they share a similar goal: to engineer a virus that will infect the world. In Plague Inc. you’re stuck within the in-game world, though, while Plague spreads from phone to phone across the physical globe.

Every disease is a simple bit of content, whether text, a link, a photo or a video. When you unleash it, it immediately seeks out the nearest four smartphones with the Plague app installed, infecting them with your content. When…

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NYC to Host World Cup for Problem-Solving Startups This Month

“We’re not looking for the next Angry Birds or Yo,” Ms. Harris said. “We’re looking for the next solution to traffic gridlock, a pathbreaking health care app or the next breakthrough in testing water for unsafe chemicals.”
This looks like an amazing competition.

Philips launches wearable for chronic illness, to make the internet of things medical-grade

Who’s going to Structure Connect next week in San Francisco? We can’t but we’ll be watching for your tweets and blogs from the front lines.
This is a really interesting idea and also, since medical records are involved, this will be a great moment of improving cloud security. We haven’t checked in with the EMR development community, but they must be buzzing with preparing for the coming Internet of Things.

Gigaom

The people who most need fitness trackers and quantified self gadgets aren’t necessarily the ones using them. People who are chronically ill could benefit from wearable technology and the data those devices provide, but the gap between the consumer and the medical market looms large.

[company]Philips[/company], in partnership with Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, is trying to bridge that gap with a device targeted at people suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The disease affects former smokers and makes it progressively more difficult to breathe. Through a partnership between Philips and [company]Salesforce.com[/company], the proposed medical-grade device would send data to a certified cloud platform, and caregivers can then pull the data into a variety of apps.

Unlike your [company]Jawbone[/company] data, for example, the data coming from the COPD device would be usable by doctors, because the device would be certified by regulatory bodies and prescribed by doctors. And because…

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If We Build IoT, They Will Come. Right?

While we can’t reveal our must haves yet, we are excited to soon. We think what we are developing is right on target too, seeing as we are creating a tool with an emphasis on collaboration, as it has also been our thoughts that there isn’t enough. Creating a common open ecosystem to integrate apps, devices and communications protocols has been at the forefront of our process, so it’s nice to see that we’re right on target. At least, according to TechCrunch.

Do You Selfie?

The first line of this article is worth repeating verbatim: “In an act of clairvoyance, Hugh Dornbush and Alex Lasky snatched up the domain Selfie.com two years ago, when the word wasn’t yet a ubiquitous part of the lexicon.”

Because how often does that happen?

Selfie.com is also furthering the idea of the selfie and taking it from a still image to a 24-second video.

In our world of social media, we are increasingly connected and disconnected. The current world is full of groups of people huddled silently, staring at their phones. If Selfie.com takes off, will conversations, albeit mediated by video, return to silent groups? It certainly seems to be Selfie.com’s aim and it will be interesting to watch it manifest!

 

 

relayr Gets $2.3M To Foster An Internet Of Things App Ecosystem

IoT is an exciting space to watch. It’s exciting to think about the future (the good, the bad and the SkyNet) but it’s especially exciting to witness the present, the manifestation of those hopes and dreams about the IoT in clever kits and intriguingly-designed pieces like this. We just love it when smart meets art.

We’ll be keeping an eye on relayr and watching how their bigger vision unfolds and potentially intersects with ours!