When I heard that this month's theme was connectivity I was keen to add my 2 cents worth. Connectivity, or more specifically the use of various wireless technologies to provide long and short range connectivity between people and machines, has been a long term fascination of mine. I believe it is a good example Arthur C. Clarke's law stating "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
Marconi, who in the early years of the 20th century succeeded with wireless radio transmission over the Atlantic Ocean, was an early pioneer whose work has led to the proliferation of now tiny devices with wireless connectivity capability. What would he say if he could see all the devices that most of us use every single day?
This proliferation will explode as the internet of things ramps up towards the "almost 16 billion connectable devices worldwide by 2020". A great deal of these connectable devices will be connected via wireless, whether ZigBee; Bluetooth; Metropolitan or Wide Area Network technologies - or multiples of these, will depend upon application requirements.
I'd be keen to hear from other members of DesignSpark as to what current applications have struck them as interesting - whether useful, quirky or just cool.
links used
http://www.istart.com.au/index/HM20/PC0/PV210109/EX210110/AR212634
http://www.clarinox.com/docs/whitepapers/Whitepaper_04_Wireless.pdf
