Category: IoT News

The Internet of Things is big news – with a profusion of views and articles published on the web every day. Here at About the Internet of Things we’ll wade through that news each week to bring you regular updates on all that is IoT – finding, in our opinion, the most interesting items making the IoT news headlines.

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World’s first Internet of Things Bank – gives you an electric shock if you spend too much

We didn’t see this one coming. The folk at Intelligent Environments, developer of the world’s first ‘Emoji Passcode’, which allows customers to log into their financial services app using only emoji’s, now bring us the world’s first Internet of Things bank, to help you take control of your finances by connecting your bank account to your IoT devices…

Interact IoT, the first ever Internet of Things bank platform, launched today by Intelligent Environments. Smart devices such as Nest Thermostat and the Pavlok wearable device can now be connected to your bank account. Overspend and Pavlok will deliver an electric shock, while Nest Thermostat will automatically turn your heating down to save you £255 a year in bills

Read the full article on Information Security Buzz

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Why Google Home and Assistant will kick Amazon and Apple to the curb

Google Home, a new voice-activated smart home product, was big news at this year’s Google I/O conference. A direct rival to the Amazon Echo, Trusted Reviews discuss why Google Home, powered by Google Assistant, may have the edge.

Powered by the new conversational Google Assistant, Google Home promises to be the smart home hub we’ve all been waiting for – and takes the fight to rivals Apple and Amazon. Chris Smith looks at the possibilities…

https://youtu.be/2KpLHdAURGo

Read the full article on Trusted Reviews

But will it beat the Amazon Echo, which is still only available in the US, to a UK release, and how much is it likely to cost? – PC Advisor offer their thoughts

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Gartner selects Afero as a ’Cool Vendor’

Security is on everyone’s minds in the world of IoT. Afero offer a secure Bluetooth Smart module that can be easily embedded in IoT products, as well as an entire IoT Platform solution for developing and deploying the next generation of connected devices. Gartner have recently profiled ‘Cool Vendors’ who can help  “CIOs, IT leaders and decision makers build IoT solutions”; Afero was one of them…

Today Afero, the platform bringing secure connectivity to the Internet of Things for both enterprises and the home, announced it has been named a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner in their May 6 report “Cool Vendors in the Internet of Things 2016.” The report evaluates new and innovative vendors, products, and services in the IoT market.

Read the full article on PRNewswire

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Get your hit of nature inside your home or office with NaturePod

The IoT brings you virtual nature with the NaturePod

Feeling stressed in your high powered city job? Fancy getting back to nature? Well now you can – in your lunch break – with NaturePod, a revolutionary new way to deliver nature to the workplace. Sad, insane, or the future? Let Lloyd Alter over at TreeHugger help you decide…

Our independent investigators have verified that a ten minute daily exposure in NaturePod™ Solo equates to the restorative impacts of an hour-long walk in nature – an ROI of 6X on what nature provides unaided.

Read the full article on TreeHugger

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How the Internet of Things is changing what you eat

Surprisingly, agriculture is doing more for IoT innovation than many other industries. Rick DelGado at TECH.CO analyses the key points of a VentureBeat report on IoT and the agriculture industry, and also tells us how the IoT is helping bees in the fight against colony collapse disorder (CCD).

Every acre of land dedicated to food productivity needs to achieve maximum yield. To accomplish that, farmers are experimenting with wireless, cloud-connected systems that automate operations and provide real-time monitoring and data analysis for smart decision making.

Read the full article on TECH.CO

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The Internet of smart packaging?…

Cate Lawrence looks at how smart packaging has arrived, from advertisements incorporated into disposable coffee cups, to embedded food expiry dates to help reduce food waste, it’s a potentially massive market for the IoT.

Consider the number of the packaged products in the world, and that the possibility that each could be interactive either within the supply chain as part of the manufacturing process or as a retail product that interacts with the retailer and/or consumer.

All of a sudden the size of the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes unimaginably big…

Read the full article on ReadWrite

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Serious security problems in Samsung’s SmartThings say Researchers

Samsung Smart Things

Researchers at the University of Michigan have identified a number of security vulnerabilities in Samsung’s SmartThings platform that allowed them to remotely unlock doors, set off smoke alarms, and perform other malicious actions through the use of overprivileged apps. The discovery casts doubt over what functions in the home we should be allowing our smart home platforms control over. Ashley Carman at the Verge reveals all.

but most pressing are the privileges given to apps, many of which they don’t need to function. A smart lock might only need the ability to lock itself remotely, for instance, but the SmartThings API bundles that command with the unlock command, which an attacker can leverage to carry out a physical attack

Samsung were quick to respond on their smart things blog.

Read the full article on The Verge

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10 billion items of connected clothing… within 3 years

A partnership between Avery Dennison, a global leader in branding, labelling and RFID solutions, and Internet of Things platform EVRYTHNG could lead to 10 billion products in the apparel, accessories and footwear market being individually digitally connected within three years. Rachel Arthur explains.

Essentially our physical wares will come with digital applications accessible via our phones. We will indeed be able to find our shoes when we’ve lost them, but also do such things as figure out how to wash clothes properly, look for style tips on how to wear items, even search for how to buy a new version of the same piece.

Read the full article on Forbes

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The best connected devices and more

Jim Hill at T3 offers a nice little introduction to the Internet of Things and tells us about some of the best gear available right now.

What began in 1982 with an internet connected Coca-Cola machine that could order its own refills, now includes dishwashers, cars, robots, traffic lights, and anything else that might benefit from collecting and acting on shared data. Experts predict that, by 2020, 50 billion such devices will have joined the IoT. But to fit this feature onto six pages, we’ll focus on the smart home and wearables, because that’s where the IoT is having its most immediate and beneficial impact.

Read the full article on T3