At the recent IFA Global Press Conference in Sardinia, Siemens demonstrated a prototype of a connected app for their future range of connected home appliances. Watch this video and be amazed by the possibilities of connected things.

If this is the future of your kitchen, what will the future of advertising look like? The kitchen is a playground for many people and marketers would love to have access to it. The media-ization of your kitchen by companies like Siemens can make that happen. The recent shift in advertising was caused by ego-broadcasting platforms like Twitter and Facebook. And now the industrial internet is turning appliances into ego-broadcaster as well. A fridge that sends you a pic, coffee machines that say that they need to be cleaned and so forth. For your convenience of course.

Machines that ask for your attention will cause a stronger bond between you and your stuff. That’s probably why Siemens is in the game of connecting (connect you with Siemens). But what will be their next step? Could Siemens become the new Facebook of our kitchen? Side-bar advertising on the pictures that come from your fridge? Will they sell the data to the food-industry? Or to Gordon Ramsey for a new version of Hell’s Kitchen?

Why is European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, sitting behind camera explaining the internet of things for dummies? Well, because “Things” are extremely important for the future of Europe. Just have a look at the Digital Agenda for Europe here and know what it’s all about. You can skip the video, the message is clear.

Now that you know that the internet of things is coming, what to do with it? Prepare your
kids. Educate them and they will have the best preparation for new jobs that are coming.
In the video you’ll see Ayay Bdeir, she’s an engineer, inventor and interactive artist, Ayah
received her master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab the founder of Little Bits.

Little Bits is how your kids learn how the internet of things work. It’s an open source system
of preassembled, modular circuits that snap together with magnets – making learning about electronics fun, easy and creative. . LittleBits was named Best of Toyfair, has won the editor’s Choice award from MAKE magazine, and has been acquired by MoMA for its
collection.

Colleagues around the world, family or distant lovers can say good night wherever they are. The Good Night Lamp will help you do that. Buy a Big Lamp, connect it to your computer to enter your wifi network and password and you can start. Buy a little house and send it to a friend. As soon as he’s connected you’re ready to go. Whenever your friend turns off the light, your light turns off as well. It also works as a wake-up sign. If you want you can add more little houses and friends, as long as you’ve got the big house. Here’s how it works. It’s a kickstarter project, so when you buy them you’ll be the first to use them.

As boundaries between real and virtual are blurring, we can consider doing more stuff digitally instead of physically. The neighborhood I’m living every once in a while is under attack of graffiti artists. A recent MIT Media Lab project called Second Surface delivers a substitute: anyone can add his art and creativity on real life objects digitally and those can be seen by anyone else using Second Surface. It reminds me of Julian Bleecker’s “objects that blog”, explored in his “Manifesto for Networked Objects: Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things “. The short title of his Manifesto is “Why Things Matter”. A wall can be a digital blogject using MIT technology, and the real thing itself can stay as it is at the same time. And that’s nice, a wall is a thing that matters to me.

Second Surface from Tangible Media Group on Vimeo.