Could Thingful be the new Google for Internet of Things?

Sharks in the ocean, weather stations in Brazil, radiation detectors in Germany and even Tower Bridge in London are some of the millions of objects around the world that are slowly entering the public consciousness as the new connected world of the Internet of Things.

Much like the excitement surrounding the world wide web in the 1990s, the Internet of Things is attracting a lot of attention not just from switched on tech geeks, but also from investors, businesses and the public en masse. Recent research in the US predicted that there will be over 30 billion connected devices by 2020, expanding the concept of the internet beyond screens into the physical world.

A London based company Umbrellium has unveilved a first global site that indexes all the Internet of Things around the globe that produce publicly available data called Thingful.net – a discoverability engine for the public Internet of Things that will provide visibility to the emerging network of connected things allowing people, organisations, and cities to easily access and use the data they generate.

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“Today, millions of people and organisations around the world already haveand use connected ‘things’, ranging from energy monitors, weather stations and pollution sensors, to animal trackers, geiger counters and shipping containers,” says Umbrellium founder Usman Haque.

“Many choose to, or would like to, make their data available to third parties – directly as a public resource or channeled through apps and analytical tools. With Thingful we want to break down the conventional silos that our data falls into and create a truly citizen oriented Internet of Things that puts the power of the data into the hands of the public”.

In the same way that Google indexes web pages, Thingful aggregates and indexes objects worldwide providing direct links to datasets or related websites. It has a social element too, connecting object owners and interested parties through Twitter profiles.

Currently in alpha, a beta version is planned for 2014, with new features enabling people to register their own devices, find out about popular device trends and discover more about the connected device world. It is the first step towards building The Public Internet of Things, for citizens, communities, companies and cities all over the world to make their own.

Find out more at: www.thingful.net

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