Bud Light's smart fridge recently became available for consumers. This is a notable innovation, not only because it's a refrigerator that texts you when you're running out of beer, but because Bud Light is hardly an e-commerce brand. Is this a sign of what's to come for consumer packaged goods (CPG)? The fridge has a complementary app, which requires a date of birth to use. Some of its capabilities include a countdown letting you know when your beer is at optimum coldness, control over what the exterior displays, NFL team updates, and an integration with a beer-delivery service that operates …

There are no self-driving cars on the show floor at the Seattle International Auto Show, but technology is certainly front-and-center at the annual event this year. I spent some time at the CenturyLink Event Center this week checking out various company booths and looking to see how technology was featured by the car-makers. Almost every company, from Toyota to Tesla — yes, Elon Musk’s company got an invite from Washington State Auto Dealers Association, the show’s organizer  — had something geeky to show off to attendees.

Tech giant Apple has filed a patent for a “ring computing device” in the United States just months after the launch of its Apple Watch. The patent has sent the tech community abuzz as wearable technology is tipped to become one of the big growth areas in the near future. Apple’s proposed smartring includes a “mounted touchscreen” along with a wireless receiver and rechargeable power source.

Amazon is jumping into the Internet of Things, but not with a physical product. Instead, the company wants to provide the backbone for a world of connected devices by letting developers harness the power of Amazon Web Services. The new AWS IoT, announced today at the company’s re:Invent developer conference, lets developers take advantage of Amazon’s cloud services for their internet-connected devices — everything from lightbulbs and fans to cars and wind turbines. The company says the new service can support “billions of devices and trillions of messages” and focuses on delivering data securely and reliably.

The future of wearables isn't just devices on your body. It's also sensors that you put inside your body to learn more about your health and interact with smart devices in your home. Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman, speaking Wednesday at the Code Mobile conference in Half Moon Bay, said Jawbone has invested a lot of time and money into developing sensors. And the fitness wearable maker has looked at sensors you'd swallow or implant -- like something that would stay in your bloodstream to monitor your circulation and other factors -- for use in certain scenarios.

After the Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch received a fantastic response from consumers within its own home marketplace in South Korea, the device has now traveled to the other side of the world where it has been released to shoppers in the United States. The two models of the smartwatch that have been rolled out in the U.S. are the Gear S2 and the Gear S2 Classic. Both of those devices run on the Tizen operating system, which belongs to Samsung. The device, itself, features a 1.2 inch round Super AMOLED screen. It has a rotating bezel, a 360 x 360 pixel resolution. …

Significantly more predictive experiences are available on mobile now compared with a year ago, opening up new opportunities for marketers adept at massaging data. Several recent developments suggest some are finally getting a handle on how to leverage the volumes of user data available on mobile and turn it into something that consumers will find useful. 

Most Canadian shoppers are using their smartphones to assist them while shopping and would like businesses to send them location-based offers and rewards, reveals a new report from the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) and LoyaltyOne. 56% of those surveyed have used beacon technology at some point while shopping and overall consumer awareness of beacons and location-based services (LBS) technology is high at 86%.

Internet of things? More like Internet of useless things, no? Next to “wearables,” the Internet of things — or IoT if we want to be cool about it — has been the next big thing in technology since tablet sales started to slow. For the past few years, the hype has been about connecting everything to the Internet, whether it’s refrigerators, luggage or even our pets. The idea is that all these things generate data, and if we can move that data around and access it whenever we want, we’ll find new ways to …

As we enter the “Internet of Things” era, in which all sorts of things are directly reachable over the internet, it should come as no surprise professional camcorders are coming along for the ride. They are actually somewhat late to the game; for quite some time, smartphones have been able to send a video out over the internet from the same device that captured it. But connected professional camcorders have a lot to offer users looking for a streamlined professional streaming solution that video-capable smartphones can’t deliver. The quality of the video delivered by smartphones has, for several years now, achieved …