IoT Trends You Need to Be Aware of in 2023

by Nate Houstman | Feb 28, 2023 | Business, Digital Marketing, Web Design

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of today’s most promising technologies. It will greatly change not only the business landscape but also many aspects of our private lives.

Industry experts expect that the revenue in the IoT market will hit $23 billion in 2023. Moreover, given all the prospects that IoT-powered technologies open to businesses, it is quite reasonable to suppose that this figure will continue growing in the future.

IoT technologies can be the sphere of interest for companies that develop such solutions as well as for those that are interested in using the capacities of the Internet of Things for their own business purposes. Well-thought-out IoT systems can help businesses facilitate and automate routine tasks that are now performed manually. They can also streamline processes and optimize operating costs.

But to achieve these results, it is crucial to stay updated with the modern IoT trends that currently dominate the market. The best IoT companies and businesses that are planning to launch their own IoT solutions always need to take into account the latest industry trends. This is essential for meeting users’ expectations and gaining an additional competitive advantage.

Trend 1. IoT and AI in Tandem

The symbiosis of IoT and AI is probably the most promising trend. This is because the capacities of these technologies perfectly complement each other. While AI can greatly benefit from IoT’s ability to gather various types of real-time data, AI prowess in processing data and advanced management can enrich IoT .

A good example of this joint work of IoT and AI is preventive maintenance. IoT sensors can gather information on the performance of equipment, while AI can estimate when a piece of equipment needs service.

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Trend 2. Advanced Smart Home Systems

Today’s smart home solutions are much more than just alarm systems that send notifications to the homeowner’s smartphone or lighting that switches on and off automatically in accordance with a set schedule.

The popularity of digital assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon Echo has greatly influenced the development of such solutions. Now IoT-powered apps can fully manage a wide range of home appliances and devices.

At the same time, there is still room for growth. For instance, one aspect that many companies are focused on today is automation. Developers are working on the possibility of automating as many tasks as possible.

For example, it is possible to automate temperature control functionality within security systems. In this case, it would be important to provide users with features for configuring such parameters manually. It would also be helpful to implement the relevant AI algorithms that would tune them automatically.

Trend 3. Development of IoMT

One of the industries where the use of the Internet of Things can bring a wide range of benefits is healthcare. The application of IoT in the medical sphere has even received a separate term: the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT).

The need for providing medical services and consultations remotely became obvious during the coronavirus pandemic when many people simply couldn’t go to hospitals or doctor’s offices.

IoMT can completely change the way doctors take care of patients with chronic diseases. This will help them to increase treatment effectiveness and save lives.

Special wearables and other medical devices can continuously monitor patients’ vital parameters such as blood pressure, heart rate, sugar level, and so on. These devices can then send this data to servers where doctors and medical staff can view it. Importantly, such solutions can also react to set critical levels of certain indicated parameters and send notifications to medical personnel.

Trend 4. IoT and Smart Cities

IoT technology can improve the lives not only of individual families when it is used in smart home solutions but also of whole cities and towns.

One of these examples is traffic monitoring. Sensors installed at intersections can play an important role in traffic optimization. This increases safety on the roads, thanks to more well-organized traffic flows. Additionally, water level sensors can be useful for informing people about possible flooding.

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Conclusion

As you can see, IoT can change widely diverse spheres and industries. While we have mentioned only a few of the most promising possible uses of IoT, there are many others. Among other IoT-friendly areas are logistics and transportation, retail business, sports and fitness, and warehouse management. Therefore, now is an excellent time to enter the market with an IoT solution.

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The post IoT Trends You Need to Be Aware of in 2023 appeared first on Business Opportunities.

WordPress 6.2 Openverse Integration Updated to Upload Inserted Images

by Nate Houstman | Feb 28, 2023 | Business, Digital Marketing, Web Design

WordPress 6.2’s Openverse integration is getting some last minute changes after contributors expressed concerns about it hotlinking images by default. The new feature allows users to quickly insert free, openly-licensed media into their content. It also allows users to upload external images through a button in the block toolbar, but this creates an extra step in the process and is easy to miss in the UI.

Several contributors cited GDPR and privacy concerns in the ticket that called for uploading the images by default. They also noted that hotlinked images can pose problems for users who want further manipulate the images by cropping, rotating, and filtering, and for developers managing site migrations. Some went as far as to say the feature belongs in a canonical plugin, which would likely have had a less rushed implementation and better testing prior to landing in core.

“I am deeply uncomfortable with any integration of Openverse into core,” WordPress contributor Peter Shaw said. “Philosophically WordPress is a personal publishing platform so it should be avoiding external APIs and dependencies. The only external calls it should make (by default) is to check for updates.

“No issue with the service itself though (I like it) but it should be a canonical plugin that site owners consciously install. Either way images must be on the local server though.”

As the hotlinking drew more attention, WordPress contributors chimed in on the ticket to call for the feature not to be shipped in its current implementation.

“This cannot ship this way, or it will get unknowing users sued,” Yoast founder Joost de Valk said. “Next to that it has negative performance implications, as you can’t do srcset or loading attributes on images loaded from remote. Sideload really should be the default, and in fact IMHO, only way.”

Gutenberg contributor Nik Tsekouras jumped in with a quick PR that changes the implementation to upload the Openverse images when they are inserted, wherever possible.

“We definitely want to upload to the site library for this flow and should treat this as a bug,” Gutenberg Lead Architect Matias Ventura said. “There’s work going on in parallel to upload by default on other actions (like pasting) that are not as straightforward or general enough (hence the need for something like #46014) but this one should be straightforward.”

Tsekouras’ PR ensures that any images inserted from Openverse are uploaded. If they cannot be uploaded to media library due to CORS issues, WordPress inserts the Image block with the external URL and a warning about legal compliance and privacy issues. Here’s an example of a successful upload:

WordPress 6.2 Beta 4 was delayed this morning until March 1, due to an unrelated regression introduced in 6.2. Tsekouras cherry-picked the Openverse PR to the wp/6.2 branch to get it included in the next release, so the next beta should ship with the updated implementation.