On 'The Internet Of Things'

I wonder if you ever thought about 'Cloud' – it's gone way past looking up at the sky and seeing pretty patterns. Now, when we talk about Cloud, we think about huge amounts of data stored in remote data banks somewhere out there. I was listening to John Barrett as he talked about 'The Internet of Things.' He says that there's about 4000 exabytes of matter in the Cloud. That's how much it is in terms of size – 4000 exabytes. Very few of us have any understanding of how much that really is, as we think about megabytes, gigabytes and tetrabytes. Barrett helps us understand.  He says, "Think of a stack of books from here to the planet Pluto and back, and then multiply that 80 times. That's the amount of information and data that is stored in the Cloud." It's absolutely mind-boggling, isn't it?

But now all this data is beginning to talk to each other and communicate and that's what "The Internet of Things" is all about, or the IoT as its acronym is known as. What is the Internet of Things? It's a network of physical objects or things, embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data.

Information Glut - Use It Well

I don't know how many of you use sites like Expedia or MakeMyTrip or ClearTrip.com to do your bookings. I often do. I like to go online and get my own tickets. I usually use Expedia or Orbitz.com to, not only buy my flight ticket, but also booked a hotel or a car when travelling to the United States.

I came across this article that Bala Iyer and Mohan Subramaniam wrote: "Are You Using API's to Gain Competitive Advantage." Basically what they were saying was that all the companies that are really moving forward today are using APIs or Application Program Interfaces to help them. They talk about Uber, Airbnb, Alibaba (e-commerce) and PayPal (online payment) – they all have this in common.

I was curious to know more about these APIs. I hadn't really come across this acronym before. They go on to explain that APIs are a technology that allows firms to interact and share information with other firms at an unprecedented scale, taking advantage of the far-reaching progress in digitization and the rising influence of software in our day-to-day lives. I tried to look at ways to understand that more clearly. I found that APIs or Application Program Interfaces are interfaces that have information that allow different software to talk to each other and share information with each other. This then allows them to have more information to do the kind of work that they need to do. For example, Expedia that has flight information talks to an API that has hotel information, or companies like Hertz or Avis that deal with car rentals. Thereby, they are able to offer more services on their particular site.

Harmony of Work-Life

The first quarter of 2015 is coming to an end today. Three months have sped by. I hope it's been a good quarter for you all. I was travelling last week and was standing in line at the Mumbai airport, waiting to board the aircraft. I saw a familiar person walk up to me and smile; we began to chat. I asked him where he was headed and found out that we were both going to Bangalore. I then asked him when he was returning and he said that he would probably return on Friday night. He said that this was typical of his week – he usually went out on a Monday and returned on a Friday. We boarded the flight and separated.

On Friday when I was returning (I had to go from Bangalore to Chennai) from Chennai and was boarding a flight at 6 pm, I hadn't had the time to pre-check in on the web. So I was doing it en route to the airport and saw that there were only 4 seats left on the flight, all of them middle seats. Well, I had no choice. I got onto the flight – it was choc-a-block, no vacant seats. Every one was returning home. It drove home this fact that typically, lot of people work like this – travel through the week and come back home on a Friday night or Saturday morning   for the weekend with the family, then out again on Monday or Tuesday. Maybe Monday at the office to catch up with office work and take the first flight out on Tuesday.