Headworx

A personal view of the CEO and co-founder. At WiHo.me we're enjoying a roller-coaster ride. I mean it is wild and full of energy and the turns and pivots are violent. An experience I really like. At the same time, as it seems there (finally) is a chance to make money in this business, I hear questions about what happens after. Asked both by some of our angel investors and some friends of mine. And raising my eyebrows... because I have no plans for the "after". I really do enjoy the ride. So the longer it lasts, the better. It is about the road, not the destination. What really gives me the fuel to burn are the everyday challenges, brain teasers and puzzles to be solved. This has been so engaging I can't imagine the "after". Honestly this was the primary reason behind starting the company. Back in 2009 I was retired, after two successful startups. It was so boring I could barely withstand this state of mind (doing nothing and being a highly paid consult

IP-based connectivity and IPv6 in particular is being praised as the unified future of the Internet Of Things. While it may be true in general, the devil, as always, is in the details. My automatic property gate has an IPv6 address. I can control it from any place on Earth. My driveway floodlights have IPv6 addresses too. They too can be controlled from anywhere. Because my controller, which is a smartphone, knows the addresses of both the gate and the floodlights. But remote control is not cutting edge at all. It is not even an automation, not to mention intelligence. Remote control is manual control. But what if I wanted to add some automation to the setup? Say, when my gate opens and it is dark outside, the floodlights should light up. Imagine the gate is smart. Meaning it knows the location and can compute the sunrise and sunset times. Let's assume the gate is even smarter: it can compute the "and", activating the lights when it is dark while it is opening. So

A week ago I met a long time friend of mine. We talked about my current business. I already sold him two of my previous companies. Sort of. But each time he was the driver and influenced the decision to buy. And we talked a lot. Because a lot has been happening in my current business. By the way I am no longer allowed to call my startup a startup - one of our angel investors wants to present us to the world as a mature company. Which we really are - I've added it up recently: 64 men-years of R&D. That is a lot! But a kid will always be a kid to her father. No matter how old they both are... Anyway. I was describing the landscape of the Internet of Things and low power connectivity and software stacks from tiny wireless processors that live their lives harvesting energy from light (photovoltaic), temperature differences (Peltier) or motion (tiny dynamos) to widely scalable servers in the Cloud. Then I described the myriads of applications we can define on our platform. Appli

We've had a number of smartwatch updates this week. The most anticipated was the Samsung Gear. And I'm scratching my head... what do they think at Samsung? Do we really want a fully fledged smartphone on a wrist? I'm really disappointed, the Gear is thick, heavy and barely lasts a day. And they even haven't thought about some clever charging options... just the brute force solution: carry two chargers and two cables. I'm keeping my Pebble . It is thin, perfectly visible in sunlight, and lasts a week on charge. What Pebble understands and Samsung doesn't is in a watch less is more. My verdict is the Gear will share the geeky niche with Sony . I've had Sony smartwatch and dying battery in the evening completely ruined the experience. We have to wait for Apple. They may show something unique, but judging by the iPhone 5, the battery life in the iWatch won't excel in this area. Which brings us to the unexpected contender in the smartwatch race: Qualc

From last week's flying high on emotions today we're down to earth. Which - honestly - I really love. Since the devil is always in the details. We're on the last lap before releasing a major upgrade to our system. The stabilization phase, during which - obviously - we should not introduce any new functionality, just fix bugs. But there always is the temptation to squeeze in something extra. And it usually is a recipe for a disaster. But knowing all this, we needed one more evidence... This time it was the status page. You know, one that is displayed when you point your browser to the device's IP address. It was the requirement from the support team to have the serial numbers easily accessible. On his final day before the vacation the program manager entered a simple enhancement ticket in our Trac system: "Implement a status page". Thinking it could not be easier to complete, he left. The web developer prepared a template. It probably seemed too simp