Yeah, I think I'd be a lot more active with IoT if wasn't quite so fragmented.

Wearable Biofeedback and health monitoring...

An fascinating new tech from Disney (of all places) that's along these lines is EM touch recognition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpKDNle6ia4

Indeed -- I noticed that FPGA is getting a lot of attention in the 2015 Community Awards: Technology of the Year poll, too.

I see wireless payments and integrated WiFi having good profit potential.

I like this option too. I'm all for eliminating cash, actually. I'd kinda like to see biohacking integrated into this as well -- biometric NFC embedded in your hand to pay for stuff, unlock your phone, computer and front door, and start your car!

Oh, and I'm thinking about buying a spherical camera, too

Interesting points about it finding its way into the office and workplace. When we talk about IoT, I think the primary subject is generally about the home, but there's so much scope for businesses, too. Just look at the incredible Smart Band system they've implemented in Disney World.

You're right there, Bob. I think the reason STEM (or, as I prefer, STEAM) will finally go mainstream is that there's been several years of hard work, preparation and promotion in building it up, and it's all primed to pay off.

Totally agree. I subscribe to the H+ magazine and emails, and there are always a lot of great features on transhumanism. It might sound bleak, but personally I think it's the species' best chance for long term survival!

Imagine if the devices were able to alter their consumption to reduce the peak loading. The distribution company could reduce the size of the infrastructure rather than building to suit peak demand.

There's talk already of power shortages here in the UK over Christmas. But the truth is we generate an excess of power in this country -- it's just that a lot of it is being wasted, as you rightly point out. If it was being managed carefully, and automatically, we could spread the load and find ourselves using a lot less.

Then again, using less means paying less, and that's never a popular option with the energy companies

I totally agree with you though -- smart meters could be exactly that.

I voted micro:bit because I'm very intersted in such product....

Ah, interesting thoughts, which I share. I remember almost to the day when storage space problems were solved. The gigabyte came along, and within a year the problems of running out of space on your PC were gone. And that quickly spread to flash memory, too.

But now I find I don't actually need much storage space! Well, not physically, on my PC, phone, tablet, server or laptop. I use a lot of cloud services and streaming instead, so storage on my devices no longer needed to any great excess.

I also agree that separate machines are disappearing. I liked the Ubuntu smartphone that they tried to Kickstart (but the goal was way too high), which ran Android when you were using it as a smartphone, but switched over to desktop Ubuntu when you docked the handset. Awesome idea, and even though it didn't work out that time, I reckon it's still coming soon.