Thingful aims to be the `Google’ of IoT

`The world is full of connected things’. So, at least, says start up technology company, Umbrellium. In practice that may be stretching the point just a bit, just at the moment. But move time on a year – or two at the most – and it will most certainly be true. The world will be full of not just connected things, but dynamically interconnectable things.

The potential of such a situation is mind-boggling. A phrase that is often used is that the potential will only be limited by human imagination – and that may well prove to be quite limiting, in practice. It will, however, also be limited by other factors, with perhaps the most important being actually knowing what `things’ are out there, where they are, and how to connect to them.

Providing answers to such fundamental questions is the job Umbrellium has set itself with the launch, in Alpha test mode, of a Google-style indexing site for The Public Internet of Things, known as Thingful. It is designed to provide visibility to the emerging network of connected things, allowing people, organisations, and cities to easily access and use the data they generate.

“Today, millions of people and organisations around the world already have and 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 channelled 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, datastreams or profile pages. It sets out to put people at the very centre, by structuring their ownership around Twitter profiles. This makes it possible for people to talk about why and how they are using the devices that they add to the index.

Thingful indexes across eight categories including health, environment, home, transport, energy and flora & fauna.

It has just been launched in alpha, enabling people to explore their own neighbourhoods and see the public things that have already been indexed, save them as ‘favourites’, and build conversations with communities of people and devices they are interested in (for example, air quality, weather or home automation).  

Thingful will launch in beta in 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, which is valuable and useful to citizens, communities, companies and cities all over the world.

Anyone interested in trying Thingful can find out more here.