Hong Kong International Airport is set to introduce new "beacon" technology throughout the airport that allows facilities, stores and restaurants to "communicate" with passengers. The new system, which has already been tested at the airport, identifies passengers when they enter the terminal and automatically passes specific information to their smartphones.

Apple has been selling the Nest Smart Thermostat since 2012 and was one of the first companies to sell the innovative device. The Nest Thermostat was designed by Tony Fadell, the father of the iPod, or Pod Father, and other former Apple employees. Nest products began disappearing from Apple Store shelves earlier this month.

Adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) is moving along – bringing about speed, efficiency, reliability, and accuracy across all lines of business. Procurement organizations are converging people, business, and things in a digital network to satisfy ever-changing business needs, customer expectations, and market dynamics. Manufacturing areas are monitoring the operational performance of their equipment with sensors. RFID is steadily altering the supply chain, tracking every item from the back room and back lot to the warehouse, shipping dock, and register. And even marketing and sales are getting into the action as benefactors of the large volumes of data generated by these devices …

Amazon is already the largest e-commerce site in the world by overall visitors. However, the company's ambitions extend far beyond selling physical and digital products -- it wants to expand into the growing Internet of Things market. Amazon plans to tap into this booming market with "smart" devices which could boost the strength of Amazon's ecosystem.

BlackBerry continues to shift its focus from selling mobile phones to securing them—as well as other portable devices, and increasingly connected items that are part of the Internet of things. “All of our investments and acquisitions go to one thing, to make the most secure mobile platform that the industry has to offer,” said John Chen, BlackBerry executive chairman and CEO, kicking off a morning of presentations at the company-sponsored BlackBerry Security Summit, held Thursday in New York.

Multinational retailer Carrefour has placed iBeacon networks in 28 of its hypermarket stores in Romania, pointing to the inevitable global rollout of personalized shopping experiences on mobile. Carrefour claims this is the first project of its kind that taps 600 Onyx Beacon devices and is able to interact with the public at a commercial network level. 

If buzzwords like “proximity tracking,” “GPS-enabled marketing” and “universal location sharing,” bring to mind an Orwellian image of the future, then the airport might soon be a place to avoid. A report from SITA,  a leading aerospace IT and communications firm, says that a growing number of airlines and airports are showing an interest in beacons as part of an “Internet of Things” (IoT) approach to better connect with both infrastructure and travelers at the airport. SITA research shows that more than 85 percent of airlines plan to implement the IoT method to track everything from baggage to equipment and, because …

The UK government has this week put forward £20 million of funding into the country's smart car revolution. CBR sums up five key technologies that every smart vehicle will have built-in in the future. Smart lights: The use of smarter lightning systems in cars will help prevent accidents in darker driving conditions, according to manufacturers. Ford is currently developing a new technology in this space, to which it calls "Spot Lightning". The solution uses a front-mounted infrared camera that works together with GPS data to light the way through hard-to-see routes.

Its star athletes are winning about every major award on the planet, and the company just announced its 21st consecutive quarter of 20% or more growth. No wonder Under Armour (UA)stock hit an all-time high of over $97 a share on Thursday. It ended the day up over 7%.

Last month, EMC and Vodafone revealed they had jointly invested €2m in a new INFINITE internet of things (IoT) industrial platformthat will traverse Cork, and which will provide facilities for the testing and exploration of technologies like machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. The IoT Innovation platform is spread across three data centres in Cork: EMC, Vodafone, and data centre and cloud provider Cork Internet eXchange (CIX).