Software

Siri, Could You Make Me Breakfast This Morning?

The concept of the wired home is not a particularly new one. As far back as 1964, following a visit to the New York World’s Fair, the scientist and author Isaac Asimov published an op-ed in The New York Times outlining his predictions for 2014. Among them: “Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare ‘automeals,’ heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on."

Connect your coffee maker and toaster via Apple’s HomeKit and program them to start breakfast with your iPhone, and we’re pretty much living Asimov’s dream. But clearly it’s not just Apple that’s playing with “The Internet of Things.” Recent news like the $3.2 billion acquisition of connected thermostat and smoke detector developer Nest Labs by Google has made it clear that we’re on the verge of an all-out technology arms race for control of the smart home.

And that’s just one area of focus within the vast Computing & Peripherals category, which is being driven by an avalanche of patent activity over the last year from the likes of Samsung (S. Korea), IBM (U.S.), and Canon (Japan).

In terms of influential academic research, Europe hits the charts taking the first and third slots, respectively, with Technical University Czestochowa (Poland) and University of Glamorgan (U.K.). Stanford University (U.S.) is wedged between for the second listing. Poland's research outperforms Stanford by more than 100% in terms of the impact of its Computer Science-related research (with respective impact scores of 6.26 and 2.91).