As companies race to embrace the inanely-named "internet of things" (IOT), security and privacy are usually a very distant afterthought. That's been made painfully apparent by "smart" refrigerators that expose your Gmail credentials, "smart" TVs that transmit your living room conversations unencrypted, or "smart" tea kettles that compromise your Wi-Fi network security. In all these examples the story remains the same: everybody's so excited to connect everything and anything to the internet, few companies can be bothered to do so intelligently and correctly.  And with the mad rush to bring this kind of aggressive myopia to toys, the lack of security is now impacting kids as well. …

Sales for the Apple Watch jumped over the holiday weekend thanks to a series of special offers, alluding to a potentially brighter future as prices come down and opening up new opportunities for developers. Apple Watch product sales are likely to reach 6 million this December according to analyst Daniel Ives of FBR & Co, based on checks with Apple, which means the product is likely to become a more important aspect of consumer behavior in the near future. A wider base of marketers will need to look at the device as a means of communication with consumers, but also can …

Amazon isn't just creating software and services. It's also building items that connect to the Internet. For example, there's the Amazon Echo, a personal assistant in the form of a giant cylindrical speaker, and the so-called Dash buttons, which make it easy to reorder a product with a single click of the tiny devices. Expect the company to keep inventing new household devices, especially those that make ordering from its online storefront even easier. Last month, the company's Amazon Web Services division unveiled AWS IoT, a service that has the potential to link cars, medical devices, household appliances and other …

Those who dared to head out to stores on Friday, the busiest purchasing day of the year, probably didn't leave home without a smartphone and a few strategic shopping apps. Technology has long influenced how we shop, and technologists are doing their best to make sure that continues. The future of shopping at a store? It looks a lot like shopping online, with personalized suggestions, no waiting and help that pops up out of nowhere when you pause for a few seconds. In the future, sensors and cameras in stores could alert a store employee's smart watch that a customer has been …

In November 2014, British toymaker Vivid Toys debuted an Internet-connected doll, My Friend Cayla, that used speech recognition and artificial intelligence techniques to have conversations with kids. By February, researchers had hacked the doll to spew curse words. Now other Internet of Things toys are encountering similar problems. On Wednesday, NBC Chicago reportedthat security researcher Matt Jakubowski had hacked Mattel's Hello Barbie, potentially exposing users' account information, home Wi-Fi networks, and MP3 files recorded by the dolls. Hello Barbie is a version of the classic toy that converses with kids, remembers things they say, and recalls details later. …

The number of connected people on the planet has reached 3.2 billion, according to a report from the International Telephone Union (ITU.) Managers, marketers, engineers, and designers who are building mobile and internet products for international consumption should read the full report. The many charts and graphics make the 252-page report on fixed and mobile internet and telephone services around the world an easy read. Mobile cellular subscriptions reached almost 7.1 billion, driven by mobile networks that now cover 95% of the world’s population. Data in the report shows that the price of mobile-cellular services continues to fall around the world, while the …