Major vehicle manufacturers are telling Congress to keep its distance as the industry evolves to take advantage of the “Internet of cars.” Representatives of Toyota, Tesla and GM are scheduled to testify before a House Oversight subcommittee on Wednesday, when they will tout the safety and comfort benefits of increasingly connected cars in prepared testimony. Their plea for limited government intervention comes after the recall of 1.4 million Chrysler vehicles earlier this year when researchers found a flaw that allowed them to remotely hack into the vehicles. 

Samsung has created an IoT access point that it is targeting at smart buildings including shopping centres, hospitals and department stores. The company said in a blog post that the access point supported wi-fi, ZigBee and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity, and had been engineered to ensure the three technologies did not interfere with one another. Samsung said the access point could cut down the amount of equipment that needs to be deployed to support a smart building environment.

The value of the internet of things (IoT) may exceed the hype, according to research by the McKinsey Global Institute. “We estimate that the total potential value of IoT will be $3.9tn and $11.1tn a year by 2025,” said Dan Aharon, senior engagement manager at McKinsey & Company. “Most of this value will come from operations and equipment optimisation in factories, chore automation and security in the home, automation in the retail sector, and improvements in public health and transportation services,” he told journalists at PTC LiveWorx Europe 2015 in Stuttgart, Germany.

In “CAPITAL”, Karl Marx presented some striking thoughts about the nature of everyday products, which he called commodities. A commodity ought to be “a very trivial thing”, he argued, and “easily understood”. But in fact it is the opposite: “a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.” In primitive societies people fetishise religious objects, imagining that they are living beings that can enter into relations with each other and with human beings. In capitalist societies they do the same thing with commodities. Today the queerness of many products is material rather than metaphysical. Stuffed with sensors and …

Ford Motor Company is ramping up its connected car initiatives with a complementary mobile application for the 2017 Escape SUV, the first model to receive the brand's Sync Connect treatment. Ford is hopping on the bandwagon of automotive manufacturers relying heavily on mobile to draw in millennial car owners and offer convenient vehicle information at the tap of a finger. The app for the forthcoming Escape model – the first to provide additional car interaction even from remote locations – will enable users to remotely start their vehicles, check tire pressure and schedule future starts.

The federal government wants consumers to abandon passwords, even for smart home appliances that collect large amounts of personal data. As part of a new pilot, the National Institute for Standards and Technology awarded a $1.86 million grant to a tech company claiming it can devise a security system that protects individuals' data in the "Internet of Things," but also saves consumers from "password fatigue" (having to manage several increasingly complex codes to access their own systems). 

You may miss the smiles, but not the long waits. The flying cars promised by science fiction may not have materialised but SITA Lab — the technology research arm of travel operator SITA — is working on innovations that could soon make humans redundant at airline check-in counters. Instead, a flier will have a robot to ensure trouble-free check-ins. The robot, however, will do a lot more. Targeted at premium-class passengers, it will wait as a passenger gets off his chauffeur-driven car. “You scan your boarding card on the robot’s scanner which verifies that you are on a flight …

Canadians have a strong appetite for connected devices, fuelled by concerns on the home front, according to a survey by Primus and Ryerson University’s DMZ. (Part of the survey was released in May, but a second wave of data was made available exclusively toMarketing.) Most Canadians (92%) are preoccupied with home security, family wellbeing and tending to loved ones’ needs. In fact, 60% express concern about home security while on vacation, 59% worry they left a door unlocked, and 55% are anxious about a home break-in. The survey also found 67% of parents worry about their children being at home alone; 43% expressed …

Apple TV is not an iPhone. You may think this is obvious now, but you’d be surprised how many expectations you subconsciously carry from one context to the next. Take a look at the state of the platform, and you’ll see that most of the tvOS App Store consists of poorly transplanted iOS apps that have no idea what to do on the big screen. I would argue that most developers have not yet learned that Apple TV is not, in fact, an iPhone. This is troubling given that we are on the eve of a computing era in which …

Car lovers are not easily impressed. Sure, every year we get new models, but often they look un-impressively like last year’s models. Prototypes emerge that catch interest and excitement. Overall, innovation is incremental with some notable exceptions, such as, Tesla, and Local Motors. Earlier this year, Local Motors showed the world what “direct digital manufacturing” (DDM) is all about by 3D printing a car, dubbed Strati, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. DDM can include 3D printing, but it is not limited only to that production method. The Strati is considered the first 3D printed car and …