During Intuity’s first steps towards the internet of things, we were looking for proper protocols to ensure that all the networked things are talking the same language. We figured the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), known from Jabber, might serve as a good basis for this. The cool thing is – it brought me to an interesting initiative called OpenSpime focusing on standardized protocols. The other is WideTag a pioneer in architectural computing systems that integrate sensors, positioning devices and memory with social, Web 2.0 style services in applications that revolutionize business and push consumer technology. Both pretty much sound like Bruce Sterling was sitting on the advisory board :-)

WideSpime provides a monitoring system, allowing for the collection of a significant amount of data (e.g. energy metering in smart grids) almost in real-time.

I spent €1,59 and gave their WideNoise app a try. You can monitor the noise levels around yourself wherever you go and send your detection to twitter. Twitter might be way too slow for most IoT purposes; but playing around with these apps you get a feeling for what’s happening in the next Web.

CarNoise
On top of providing some insights into the IoT, the test gave us clear first-hand evidence that something needs to be done about the traffic noise in Stuttgart’s city center…