[tomkin]

I can't love this. It seems there is a flood of new products that allow you to track or remember them. This can't be sustainable in the long run, as each product uses it's own proprietary technology, that requires you to use a specific app. Fast-forward 5-10 years. Do I want 30 apps on my phone that track the various things I may or may not bring with me? Nope. That would be very annoying, indeed.

[vinceguidry]

Where you see hell I see market forces making everyone freer and more powerful.

Once everything has intelligence, we'll need to manage that intelligence. We need one phone app and not dozens.

There's only one thing I can see that can make that happen. Open protocols. Open device APIs. Then we can make our own management apps. Oh what a wonderful day that will be.

When I can coordinate my bathroom scale with the app that manages my grocery list. When I can automatically start my car at 8:30 am, but only if my shower ran. When I can actually teach my house to understand whether I'm actually there or not.

[smoyer]

Yet that same phenomenon means that losing your phone feels like losing all the objects tracked by your phone. I agree that this can be done well if we try but it should also be so resilient that you can be on a new phone with the same applications, data and settings in just a few minutes.

[aroch]

>own proprietary technology

Surely they should all use BLE or similar? If umbrella disconnects (you're outside the 15-25m range), give an alert. If using BLE, the protocol is essentially open and other apps could build around it.