Carbon monoxide detector – Webman's View

Google just announced that it’s buying Nest for $3.2 billion! For a company with two products, that’s a lot of cash 🙂

But Nest is one of the current market leaders in what is being referred to as the “Internet of Things.” What is that you ask? The Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects, like a room thermostat or smoke detector, that are connected and accessible via the internet. Earlier examples of these “connectors” are RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips, barcodes, QR codes and digital watermarking. According to Gartner there will be nearly 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020. Now that is a lot of devices.

A bit more about Nest. Nest is best known for its smart thermostat, which learns your habits over time and adjusts your heat settings accordingly. They also recently launched Protect (Smoke + CO Alarm) to rave reviews. Here are pictures of the Nest thermostat and Nest Protect alarm.

The Nest thermostat is the first next generation in-home thermostat. It learns your schedule, programs itself and can be controlled from your phone. The Nest Thermostat can lower your heating and cooling bills up to 20%. That will save you a lot of Benjamins 🙂

Nest Protect not only has an alarm component, but also speaks to you with a human voice. It tells you what the problem is and where it is. And if you have more than one Nest Protect, they connect so they can speak up at the same time even if Wi-Fi is down. No better way to protect the home and family.

For Google, this continues a big new push to apply its machine-learning expertise to physical objects, from self-driving cars to robots and now home appliances. Google continues to broaden its focus to artificial intelligence and machine learning in myriad forms. It is now a machine-learning company.

We are moving into a time where the opportunity to track everything in real time on your phone or other internet connected device will be possible. When will we have the time to actually accomplish anything? 🙂 George Jetson is the man!