Weekly Digest #11: Facebook Analytics Accessible Offline, Internet of Things Used in Transport
June 20th, 2016
Several projects that deal with big data became open-sourced last week. Yandex made ClickHouse, their own DBMS, available to all, while IBM opened its Data Science Experience, a cloud software development framework. Digital health technologies turned to figuring out diabetes while Internet of Things finds its purpose in transport sphere.
FIGHTING DIABETES
Diabetes is also known as the "Sickness of XXI century." Young people begin to suffer from it due to fatty foods and sedentary lifestyle. Because of this, numerous startups that work in the digital health area are specifically targeting diabetes patients and trying to improve their quality of life. Recently, Israeli HelpAround app developers presented a new version of the application and announced that it now uses IBM Watson via a new API toolset.
HelpAround: Find people who have the same disease as you do and in a case of emergency get help from them - from a test strip or insulin shot to psychological support.
The purpose of the app is to find people who have the same disease as you do and in a case of emergency get help from them - from a test strip or insulin shot to psychological support. IBM Watson’s abilities allow to analyze patients’ questions and answer them in real-time mode.
Besides that, HelpAround app helps to quickly get in touch with the attending physician or a clinic. Geolocation feature will help to understand where the person is located (whether in his / her hometown, on a vacation in another country, or on a train, for example). Thanks to this data it will be much easier to find a doctor nearby in virtually any place on Earth. Authors of HelpAround project compare it to the popular WhatsApp, but for people with diabetes.
Patients' monitoring: good niche to target
Digital health sector and all its accompanying businesses are expected to experience a rapid growth. This fact is supported by numerous studies. In the latest report by Allied Market Research called "World Internet of Things (IoT) Healthcare Market – Opportunities and Forecasts, 2014-2021", the authors say that the IoT section of the medical devices, services, and applications market volume will reach $136.8 billion by 2021.
Prior to 2021, this market will demonstrate the annual growth of 12.5%. The major share of the medical Internet of Things market will be dedicated to software and web-services that help to monitor patient’s status. These will include remote monitoring, hospital patient monitoring, and telemedicine services. By 2021, this market volume will reach $72.7 billion, i.e. almost half of the entire digital health market. From a technological standpoint, the medical IoT market growth will be stimulated by the availability of wearable smart medical devices, cheap sensors, and their widespread use. An additional incentive for the growth will be the emergence and spread of such solutions as “smart” clothing, “smart” contact lenses, glasses, etc.
Scaling IoT-networks becomes easier with Nokia
So many large companies are stepping up to begin activities in Internet of Things segment that it might seem as if this is a 100% successful endeavor. In reality, IoT indeed is advancing incredibly quick, but whether it is always a guaranteed success - there are more questions than answers.
Nokia decided to join the IoT league too. They presented their own platform called IMPACT (Intelligent Management Platform for All Connected Things). According to creators, IMPACT is a secure system that allows scaling IoT-networks. IMPACT can aggregate data, process events, manage devices, analyze their interactions, and ensure the network elements’ security. Nokia developers claim that IMPACT is compatible with any devices, protocols, and applications, and allows to combine different services. Another advantage of using the platform is the Motive Connected Device Platform (CDP) that supports over 80K of sensor and device models made by over 100 leading global manufacturers. At the moment, CDP is used to manage more than 1.5 billion gadgets in IoT-networks. IoT-networks’ security in IMPACT is provided by Lightweight M2M protocol.
IBM's Data Analytics are open-source
IBM made Data Science Experience - cloud software development framework - open-sourced. This tool is designed for the big data analysis and is designed for Apache Spark. The instrument can be operated in almost real-time mode and provide high performance for big data analysis. DSE is available on the IBM Bluemix cloud platform and can operate with 250 sets of complex data and open-source tools simultaneously. One of the uses is for complex analytical computations.
Data Science Experience allows using various data sets, visualization tools, forecast algorithms, and machine learning instruments. Besides, it allows developers to get access to IBM Watson abilities.
Analyze your Data with ClickHouse
Another useful tool for developers appeared last week. Yandex made ClickHouse (its database management system) open-source. This tool is designed to work with a large number of various events and allows to store and process a big amount of data as well as create various analytical reports.
Originally, ClickHouse was created to assess the website traffic and analyze visitor behavior (including evaluation of advertising campaigns effectiveness). At the moment, however, ClickHouse can be used for processing monitoring and telemetry data. Another use for the tool - tasks connected with informational security. ClickHouse can be easily scaled to petabytes of stored data and allows to record trillions of events. It supports SQL-queries, allows to upload data in real-time mode and analyze it. What’s not to like?
Earning Bitcoins on Every HTTP-Request
21 Inc. made Machine-Payable Web, a bitcoin mining tool set, open-source. Thanks to this software package, computers will be able to earn bitcoins without having to use a special device made by 21 BitCoin Computer. The user can now organize direct payments between computers, get bitcoins on any device, add cryptocurrency to any app, and, most importantly, earn bitcoins on every HTTP-request. At the launch of the Machine-Payable Web software, it was available only for Linux and MacOS, a Windows version is expected to appear soon.
Smartphones as Access Cards
Nedap Identification Systems that sells long-range identification technology and enables access control is launching a new product which allows using smartphones as virtual access cards. Entities Mobile Access Control platform consists of readers, applications, and a cloud server. Virtual account data is stored in the MACE app on a user’s smartphone and are transmitted to the reader via Bluetooth, Near-Field-Communication (NFC), or by reading a QR-code. After reading the credentials, they are compared to the database information, located on the cloud server. MACE app is available for iOS and Android platforms. Nedap debuted the system at the Fire and Security Exhibition and Conference that took place this week in London.
Your sneakers just became smarter...
There was a rise of sports-related Internet of Things in the last few weeks. For example, Lenovo presented “smart” sneakers with soles by Vibram, a well-known mountain climbing shoe manufacturer. The sole contains an Intel Curie chip that can count steps, monitor heart rate, calculate the walked distance as well as burned calories. Built-in GPS module will help to create a route and the shoes will direct you on your route using vibration as you walk or run. The shoes are synchronized with the user’s smartphone via Bluetooth and the data is then transmitted to a cloud storage. Recharging the chip is done using a wireless device.
Use your shoes as a game controller. The future is nearer than you thought.
Enjoying sports and tracking your fitness activities are not the only functions of the Lenovo smart shoes. You can also use them as a game controller. The player can participate in running games and shoes will help to perform actions like running, jumping, and other. However, at the moment the technology exists only as a prototype and there are no games available in which to use such sneakers for now. However, it’s just a matter of time.
The ease of paying your way in France
People in France can now pay for transportation using IoT-bracelets. This project was launched during the Euro 2016 soccer tournament that takes place in France. The test run of the project was initiated by the author of the project, Keolis Lille company, in the city of Lille and its surroundings. Passengers who have “Partenaire des Supporters” bracelets can pay the transport fee in one touch. At the moment, the number of such bracelets is limited.
Better Tools, Better Ads
The more ads there are, the more competitive and creative the ad creators have to be. Facebook launched a new platform for ad creation called “Creative Hub.” This platform will help users to test various formats of ads for Facebook and Instagram, implement changes in real-time mode, and organize the collaboration of ad specialists worldwide. The main goal of the tool - simplification of the mobile ad creation for Facebook users.
Besides Creative Hub, Facebook also introduced Offline Conversions API, an instrument to track ads’ influence on visiting usual offline stores. These advertising tools will help brands to better understand and evaluate the effectiveness of the ads and SMM as well as to find the correlation between advertising and sales volume. Along with the analytical instruments, Facebook added a number of options to the local brands pages. One such change is the addition of maps.
To evaluate the number of the offline visits, Facebook will use the geolocation feature in users’ gadgets. The social network promises, however, that the data will be anonymous. Even despite the anonymity, stores that use the extended analytics tools will be able to find a lot of information about their customers - for example, their gender and age, as well as user’s interests.
