WIDETAG: Visionary IoT Products
Redwood City, CA | 2008-2011
WideTag was one of the first Californian IoT startups.
I started this company nurturing the idea that IoT could be bent to raise climate change people's awareness. We introduced the idea of crowdsourced ecology and created technologies to reduce residential energy consumption based on shared social habits.
When the iPhone came out, we created an App to measure noise pollution. WideNoise App had its momentum, and the entire WideTag Project became a media magnet.
On the other hand, WideTag anticipated too much the IoT and failed to raise money, but it was an incredible learning opportunity and made me famous for 15 minutes (Cit. Andy Warhol).
The Earth Monitoring Project
Between 2006 and 2008, Al Gore's campaigns to raise public awareness of the dangers of global warming had momentum. The Blue Man Group sent a message from Earth to America, and I got the call.
I founded WideTag following the idea to leverage IoT to enable people to SEE the problem and become pro-active sensors, collecting data and driving potential solutions. We tried twice: With a custom add-on hardware to measure CO2 and later with a simple SW to measure noise pollution. "WideNoise" was fully integrated into a European Official Research project to map pollution.
The Social Energy Meter
Social Energy Meter – SEM – is an innovative solution that allows the real-time monitoring and collaborative management of energy usage in households through hardware and software platforms.
Why SEM? Energy cost is considered a primary need, and it's usually cheap enough not to be monitored by families.
However, residential energy consumption might be the hook for a cultural change. Social norms have a strong influence on personal behavior and happiness.
Global change is only possible when people are involved.
Disclaimer: video recorded and edited for WideTag internal purpose.
OpenSpime / WideSpime
OpenSpime is a protocol, an open XMPP custom extension (Slideshare) enabling physical devices to communicate. WideSpime is a horizontally-scalable and high-concurrency platform for connecting massive numbers of objects based on distributed parallel data processing. Both WideSpime and OpenSpime have been written by Widetag co-founder Roberto Ostinelli.
Media & Awards
Business Case
Founded in 2008, WideTag was an IoT pioneering startup based in Redwood City, CA.
We quickly got media attention and credibility working with one of the significant energy companies word wide.
Role
Founder, CEO, Chief Big-Dreams Officer, and Head of Design. #Startuplife
I had on my side an incredible team, featuring a futurists, two well known designers, and a genius. :)
thx Roberto Ostinelli, Erin Casali, Dario Violi and David Orban.
I spoke with CEOs, inventors, writers, journalists, TV anchormen, and with the former next President of United States of America.