There’s a scene in the 2002 film Minority Report when Tom Cruise’s character walks through a shopping centre and a wall of holographic advertisements address him by name. In that film, optical recognition technology allows a series of sensors dotted throughout the centre to pin down the specific identity of customers, call on a stored database of information and tailor adverts in real time to appeal to an individual person’s tastes. 

Spare a thought for high end fashion boutiques. The rarefied aura of prestige and privilege they spend so long cultivating to reflect the premium brands they stock means they can’t use something as crudely effective as discounts to lure customers in store. So how do they acquire new customers? One options is fancy events and dinners to wine and dine future big spenders. But that’s not a cheap option, as you can imagine. Nor, necessarily, hugely effective.

Yesterday in San Francisco, Google launched a pair of new smartphones, some AV devices and a Surface-like tablet. But future events could just as easily devote a large portion of their running time to the Internet of Things and smart home devices. Tilt your head by 90 degrees and you can almost spot Google's subtle strategy to become the dominant name in your home -- after all, as the phone market begins to play itself out, it's only natural that the firm would move onto the next big thing. After years of lingering on the periphery of the industry, perhaps souped-up lightbulbs and …

John Lewis has announced that start-up company, Peeple, has been chosen as the winner of its programme designed to fast track the Internet of Things tech companies into the retail sector. The annual competition gives 10 specially selected start-ups access to leading entrepreneurs and technology experts, letting the innovators refine their products and business models in an effort to accelerate the development of Internet of Things (IoT) connected homes and win a contract with John Lewis.

For the past two decades, the web has been optimized for sight and touch. This is about to change in a big way. Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and the Amazon Echo are ushering in an era of voice-controlled devices and services. Soon, Facebook M will join the fray. These digital assistants all reveal the beginnings of a transformation within the Internet. We will increasingly interact with the web and all it contains primarily using our voice. There’s one glaring problem with this brave new world: as the Internet of Things talks back to us, much of what it has to say will be for our ears only. How do we keep …