{"id":5347,"date":"2013-08-19T08:03:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-19T14:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5347"},"modified":"2013-08-19T08:03:59","modified_gmt":"2013-08-19T14:03:59","slug":"thoughts-on-fords-openxc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5347","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Ford’s OPENXC"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Battelle<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Ford has created a platform called OpenXC<\/a> that opens APIs into 50 or so data streams coming out of your car. On the first day of Ingenuity, teams of makers, hackers, and regular folks came up with amazing ideas that leveraged Ford\u2019s innovative platform. For example, one team built an app that senses when a pet or child is in your car, then monitors the car\u2019s internal temperature. If it gets too hot, this app can lower the windows, turn on the AC, and text the car\u2019s owner. I mean, how cool is that?!<\/p>\n

Boing Boing\u2019s editors presented the winners on stage on Sunday during Ingenuity, a day long celebration of, well, the weird and wonderful people and ideas that make Boing Boing, Boing Boing. There was a hack that turned driving data into music \u2013 if you drive aggressively and waste resources, the music gets aggravating. If you drive well, it gets soothing. Another hack interpreted braking, steering, and other information into new signals for other drivers \u2013 imagine a taillight flashing \u201cThank you!\u2019 when someone lets you merge into oncoming traffic, for example. Yet another hack took all that data and turned it into a \u201ccost per trip\u201d dashboard that gamifies driving and encourages you to drive in a way that saves money.<\/p>\n

These kinds of innovations can only occur in an ecosystem of openness. As our society tips toward one based on data, our collective decisions around how that data can be used will determine what kind of a culture we live in. And what I observed at Ingenuity strengthened my belief that companies that lean into an open approach to data will win. There will soon be streams of data coming from all manner of products \u2013 appliances, clothing, sporting goods, you name it. Wouldn\u2019t you rather live in a world where you can export the data from your son\u2019s football helmet to a new app that monitors force and impact against a cohort of high school players around the country? Or would a better world be one where Riddell Inc. owns and controls that data?<\/p>\n

Way back in 2008 I wrote a piece about Facebook and data called It\u2019s Time For Services on The Web to Compete On More Than Data. My point was this: winning on a strategy of data lockdown is a short-term play. What matters is the service you provide on top of that data. For companies like Ford, the key won\u2019t be to lock in customer data and try to be the best at leveraging your proprietary insights. It\u2019ll be allowing your customers to take that data out, remix it into a robust ecosystem, and feed it back to your company and products, so they can get better. Companies will compete on how they best leverage a customer\u2019s data, not on whether or not they\u2019ve locked those customers\u2019 data assets in (are you listening, cable companies?!).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ford’s OpenXC website<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Battelle: Ford has created a platform called OpenXC that opens APIs into 50 or so data streams coming out of your car. On the first day of Ingenuity, teams of makers, hackers, and regular folks came up with amazing ideas that leveraged Ford\u2019s innovative platform. For example, one team built an app that senses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}