Canadian grocer Metro is bringing its mobile application to Apple Watch, enabling shoppers to manage their grocery lists right from their wrists and suggesting more food retailers will soon follow. Metro is the first Canadian retailer in its sector to introduce this functionality, giving it a leg up on competitors also attempting to reach on-the-go consumers. Users will also receive additional targeted offers based on previous purchases, a strategy that has yielded five to 10 times more customer engagement on mobile.

Virgin Active is embarking on an ambitious redesign of its facilities that uses the Internet of Things to improve the service it offers to customers and reduce subscriber attrition rates, explains Andy Caddy, chief information officer of Virgin Active. “Five years ago you didn’t really need to be very sophisticated as a health club operator in terms of your IT and digital capability,” Caddy says. “But now I would argue that things have changed dramatically – and you have to be very smart about how you manage your relationship with customers.”

Chinese institutions China Unicom Shanghai, China Unicom Research Institute and kit vendor Huawei have developed a collaborative partnership to develop a pilot of cellular IoT (CIoT). Based on Huawei’s “4.5G” LTE service for machine to machine communications (LTE-M), the carrier has rolled out a trial mode of what it refers to as “Smart Parking”, and claims it to be the first commercial application of commercial LTE-based cellular IoT. Smart Parking is intended to help ease traffic and parking congestion in dense urban areas with intelligent sensors across the city. Drivers can search for available parking bay using a mobile app, and has been …

Inelegant as the name may sound, the "Internet of Things" has become been adopted these days as the descriptor for a whole gaggle of Internet-connected devices and appliances, from smart sprinkler systems to thermostats. Now Fuhu, a Los Angeles company known best as the producer of the Nabi tablet computers for children, wants to open the IoT's market to kids. Fuhu is in the early stages of devising a "connected room" platform for kids room platform that's built around sensors, monitors and cloud services, all designed to supply information – and hopefully peace of mind – to parents.

Finally consumers will be able to enjoy a one-stop e-commerce shop for any type of wearable technology product and the Internet of Things. Founded in 2015, The Wearables Store, has the ambitious mission of offering tech-shopaholics the most innovative products available in the “Wearable and Internet of Things market.” That’s not all. The company provides potential buyers with the latest news and videos on the tech world’s happenings.

Phones and wearable devices now collect all kinds of biometrics data, but nobody has yet figured out how to use sensors to measure body fat. Well, Samsung may have. A new patent describes a method of using four sensors installed in or near a phone. By “near” I mean that the Samsung method might involve four sensors embedded into the screen cover of a phone case.

Target wants you to have a connected home. It even created a showroom called Open House in the middle of San Francisco to help its shoppers figure out how such a home is supposed to work. But a side effect of this new mini store is that it could show device makers how the Internet of Things should work. With a combination of vignettes meant to show off situations that can be solved with the help of a connected home and so-called Deep Dive tables that showcase a product's features, the retailer aims to educate its shoppers. But while a controlled room …

German automaker Mercedes-Benz is taking another step toward autonomous driving with the launch of connected features for its latest E-Class model. The vehicle, which will be available next spring, includes an Intelligent Drive system that enables the driver to ease off the controls on long stretches of road and a Remote Parking Pilot, which lets the owner park their car while standing outside of the vehicle using their cell phone. Rolling out semi-autonomous driving in a consumer model may help convince consumers of the benefits of the now-experimental full-fledged self-driven cars.

Cisco predicts that the number of devices connected worldwide will rise from around a billion today to 50 billion by 2020. But with less than 1% of the world currently connected, options for the startup community to exploit opportunities for digitalisation and connectivity are substantial. Phil Smith, Chief Executive, Cisco UK and Ireland, said: “UK companies of every size are devoting time and ingenuity to designing and building Ipplications, from the smallest SMEs to the largest enterprises. These companies are not just digitising in the conventional sense but finding completely new ways to connect people, processes, data and things, from …

Jay Adelson and Andy Smith want to invest in the Internet’s “third wave.” Center Electric, a new venture capital firm focused on the Internet of things, is seeking to raise $50 million for its debut fund (with a $75 million hard cap), Fortune has learned from prospective investors. The Silicon Valley-based firm was formed by Jay Adelson, co-founder of Equinix EQIX 1.22% and Digg, and former Dolby Labs DLB -0.24% executive Andy Smith. It plans to back early-stage companies involved in producing the “underlying infrastructure needed to support IoT as well as the hardware that takes advantage of it.”