The Internet of Things is Coming

I had the pleasure of attending ToyFair once or twice as a kid, since my dad was in the toy advertising industry, and it can only be described as adolescent nirvana. But it’s also an important window into the lifecycle of consumer adoption and, in some cases, the mainstreaming of technology.

My prized trophy from my first visit was an original prototype Hacky Sack, which I was intially under-impressed with — as were my friends at school — but turned out to be much fun when it became a pop-culture phenomenon many months after my well-informed prognostications that it would do so. (So I guess in that respect ToyFair was also a good early lesson in the power of marketing.)

Ventureblogalist has a writeup of some interesting finds at this year’s - see NYC Toy Fair at Ventureblogalist - and it shows some really promising things going on with making web and 2.0 technologies consumer-friendly. Nice to see some true startups in there too.