Books We are Looking Forward to Reading this Summer

With summer upon us, I am looking forward to a little reading time. Whether you enjoy it in “natural” form or on your favorite e-reader, sometimes you just need to dig in and consume more than 140 characters.

Coming soon – sci-fi reality near you.

Robert Scoble’s “Age of Context”.  Why we think this is important: First, he was inspired by Guy Kawasaki’s APE to self-publish the book. Scoble and co-author Shel Israel successfully raised $100,000 in funds for production, release and marketing through sponsorship. Second, Scoble has long history of technology trend spotting. As startup liaison officer at Rackspace, he has access to developing technology in the internet of things (IOT), including being an early tester of Google Glass. He’s seeing new sensors everywhere – from cereal boxes to wearable computers on your wrist or in your jacket or helmet – collecting data that will become available to marketers for new ways to look at human behavior and habits that tie back to how we can better understand their wants and needs and market to them in highly anticipatory ways. Their book describes this trend in “contextual service”. We follow Robert on his blog at http://scobleizer.com/

Continuing this theme of a world where inanimate objects talk back to you, Daniel Kellmeriet and Daniel Obodovski’s wrote “The Silent Intelligence, the Internet of Things” about their perspective on the IOT. They explore not the predictions, but what’s already happening with Connected Homes, Connected Cars, Smart Parking Systems, Smart Lighting, and Smart Trash. We follow both the authors at http://thesilentintelligence.com/.