Ugh. The example given here, the electric imp, is everything that's wrong with how people want to commoditize the Internet of Things. Had the "as a service" product been optional, I'd have already purchased a half dozen of them for various projects I'm working on. However, because it can only use the integrated wifi to connect to their servers, there's no way to build devices that will work in situations where internet access is spotty and/or latency management is crucial. Internet of Things is neat, and fascinating, but articles like this may very well smother it in its crib. Dependency on a central server is the one way to ensure that it stays just a geek toy.