It turns out there’s a lot going on in the ‘Internet of Things’ space in our state. There’s also a ton of excitement and anticipation about where all this new technology is headed. Must be time for a conference! A group of technologists and early adopters in the Twin Cities decided to do just that, and are off to the races with plans for “IoT Fuse” in March — aptly described as “A Conference to Spark the Internet of Things.” Here’s the latest news from the team about the event:
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[Note: This post first appeared earlier today at Minnov8.com, where I am a contributor. Image credit: Telegraph UK.]
Basically, app discovery is a bitch, and the App Store is no longer the answer. That is the gist of a report on “2015 App Store Competition” published a couple days ago by an analytics firm in Berlin called Adjust. (PDF of the full report here.)
Minnesota developers are of course not strangers to this problem. It’s especially painful for startups looking to get traction in today’s “mobile first” startup environment — and moreso if they don’t have Silicon Valley sized funding rounds. I asked a couple of experienced mobile industry players here in Minnesota for their reaction to this news. But first, more on the report.
Think of it as the morning after. Actually, it was the Monday following the week when 2015 International CES ended, on a Friday. I was scrolling through my email, trying to decompress — feeling some pride in surviving multiple weeks of being blasted with hundreds (thousands?) of PR pitches from an absolutely cuh-razy variety of exhibiting companies, from all over the globe. The blisters on my feet weren’t hurting so bad anymore. Whew! Things were finally starting to… slow… down.
Part of this decompression process is always trying to form in my head my overall opinion of the show — this after writing a couple of posts (and shooting a ton of photos), but no one person can ever really write enough posts to describe their entire experience at this thing. Which begs the question, how the hell do I summarize yet another year of this massive tech-product sensory overload? It is not easy netting it out!
I didn’t go to the CES show looking to buy anything. I was already spending enough money getting there… and, um, making cabbies rich once I arrived. But the chance to listen to Neil Young’s Pono music player at the Showstoppers press event at CES on Tuesday evening last week convinced me to open my wallet. The experience was just so amazing.
Understand, now, I’m no audiophile or crazy-geeky music connoisseur. But I do know when I hear something that’s like nothing else. So I decided pretty instantly — yep, I’m a buyer! At $399, it’s a bargain to be able to have on-demand music experiences that rise above anything else, as Pono does. And as I considered the cost, I figured, hey, how many people paid this much and more for iPods back in the day? (Even though I admit I didn’t.) So, price is especially relative in this case.
Compare your iPod to the Pono sometime, if you can find someone who owns one, or if you can find a demo unit in a store. You will be convinced. Or compare it to the sound quality of any of the various modern smartphones out there today — those sure haven’t improved music listening much at all since the iPod, in any way I’m aware of.
Well, actually, I didn’t crash it (I had a press pass), but I did stumble in late… 🙁 Would you believe, just as it was wrapping up? Damn long cab rides! But there were still lots of people milling about on stage, and both the vehicles were still there. So, I grabbed some photos, and the press kit on my way out.
The red car is the Golf R Touch, which was attracting the most attention, and the white car is an e-Golf, their electric car, which looked lonely in comparison. (But who needs that now with cheap gas, right?!) They showed a “Connected Golf” version of that car, which is a set of features that seems to be their major focus at CES.
As a big VW guy myself — I’ve owned or leased six or seven of them in my lifetime, and I’ve been driving them exclusively for 10 years now — I just had to find out what was new.
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