Sunday, May 20, 2007

News I just spotted it--the annual press release "news item" from the friendly folks who sell men's dress clothing. I've seen this News for years--business casual is over, men are buying suits and ties again. Sales will be up for the entire men's clothing supply chain. Today's Dayton Daily News. I've also noticed over the last few months the newspaper's response to losing so much revenue from classified advertising to Craig's List and other such services. When they bundle the paper on Sundays, they enmesh the Lifestyle section in the classified section such that you must disassemble the classifieds (and hopefully stop and look) in order to get to this well-read section. 8:17:05 AM    comment []

Smart services There has been a flurry of press releases regarding the movement of the M2M space toward "smart services." There's a creative PR firm that hands out titles such as "senior fire starter" that has hit the M2M hype trail. Steve Pazol's company nPhase has been pretty quiet since it sold to Qualcomm. But suddenly it has discovered Smart services and briefly declared that M2M was dead. I don't know if Peggy will change the name of her magazine because of that abortive press release. Smart services describes a system where embedded intelligence in a machine (filler, machining center, Coke dispenser, vehicle) communicates not to the owner of the machine but to the manufacturer. The manufacturer can use the information for designing the next generation machine. But the real purpose is to sell services to the owner. Or perhaps avoid warranty expense by proving misuse of the product. In manufacturing one of the reasons for low adoption should be obvious--open, always on communication to the outside world is a security hole. But the thing that puzzles me, and has ever since I first heard of the phrase, is why tie it to cellular service as the broadband. I believe that the M2M term was invented by cellular manufacturers and providers as a way to sell more boards and services. But cellular is very expensive broadband--and not all that reliable. There was a lot of talk of the technologies that drive smart services (not the broadband, but the sensor level intelligence) at last week's meeting of the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems, but not one research paper discussed cellular wireless. There were two or three papers on 802.11 and 802.15.4 wireless. Smart services will evolve into some kine of useful application in manufacturing. I'm not entirely sure what it will look like. More likely the current M2M people will make their living from other markets than manufacturing (on-vehicle, retail, dispensing machines). 8:07:31 AM    comment []