The Wi-Fi Alliance recently announced the long-awaited Wi-Fi HaLow standard for products incorporating IEEE 802.11ah wireless networking technology (HaLow is pronounced just like the title of the popular video game from Microsoft). HaLow extends a flavor of Wi-Fi into the 900 MHz band, which provides greater range than the pre-existing 2.4 GHz standard, provides better connectivity through barriers such as walls and promises extensibility in the development of low-power Internet of Things (IoT) applications, such as Smart Home sensors and wearables.

A part of Google’s Internet of Things approach involves placing low-energy Bluetooth beacons in the world that can communicate with smartphones. Starting with version 49, currently in beta, Chrome for Android will be able to read and interact with these beacons. Google has also announced a research pilot that provides gear to university researchers working on IoT. Google’s beacon technology, called Eddystone, was announced last year along with Chrome for iOS support. The first time a user comes into contact with a beacon they get a notification asking if they want to enable what Google calls the Physical Web. 

Global searches for the top 50 watchmakers increased by 56 percent in 2015, per a report by jewelry retailer Karus Chains. Using Google’s Keyword Planner tool, Karus Chains set out to determine which watch brands consumers have the most interest in and where those searches are being conducted. A number of watchmakers have expressed excitement rather than fear of the Apple Watch, as smartwatches have brought consumer attention back to the wrist.

Can your smart TV spy on you? Absolutely, says the US director of national intelligence. The ever-widening array of “smart” web-enabled devices pundits have dubbed the internet of things [IoT] is a welcome gift to intelligence officials and law enforcement, according to director James Clapper. “In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper told the Senate in public testimony on Tuesday. As a category, the internet of things is useful to eavesdroppers both official and unofficial for a variety of reasons, …

Online shopping is undergoing a shift. The days of entering your credit card number, name, address and other buying information is giving way to buy buttons and one-touch purchasing. Mobile technology now allows people to buy anything, at any time, wherever they are. And with just one tap of their thumb. This is what's known as contextual commerce: making the buying experience as easy as possible and making mobile shopping part of a person's everyday activities. Pinterest's Buyable Pins are a good example. Last year Pinterest launched buy buttons inside users' home feeds, boards and in search results, allowing them to easily purchase items …

The biggest threats to the average device are physical: a stolen phone, a busted lock, or even an Evil Maid attack on your laptop. But while cybersecurity gets more and more advanced, physical security hasn’t changed much. We’ve seen smart doorbells and packaged security systems, but there’s no simple device to tell you if an object has been picked up or a door has been opened. Cameras have gotten cheaper and smarter, but distilling that video down to actual information can be unwieldy and time-consuming. In many ways, the toothpick in the doorframe is still the best solution we have. …

Cisco warned on Monday of serious flaws it found in an Internet-connected thermostat control, which it said are typical among products of vendors who aren't well-versed in network security. The flaws were found in the ComfortLink II thermostats made by Trane. The thermostats allow users to control room temperature from a mobile device, display the weather and even act as a digital photo frame. Cisco's Talos unit said the issues have now finally been patched since notifying Trane nearly two years ago, which is why it went public.

Facebook recently announced that it would shutter Parse, its app development platform, in Jan. 2017. This was a surprising move, since Facebook had repeatedly promoted Parse after acquiring the platform for $85 million in 2013. Parse was expected to challenge cloud giants like Amazon Microsoft, and Alphabet's Google in the mobile BaaS (backend as a service) market. BaaS platforms add user authentication, push notifications, social media integration, location data, data analytics, and other services to any app. Since Facebook acquired Parse, the number of its hosted apps soared from 60,000 to 600,000.

You turn the wheel hesitantly and crane your neck to look for any available parking down the street. The person behind you honks irritably. Feeling pressured, you impulsively turn onto the side street. As you do, you glimpse a free space on the street you just left — and it’s taken by the time you circle around again. We’ve all been there. City parking can be a nightmare. But if you lived in a city like San Francisco or Los Angeles and had the right app on your phone, you might have found that spot sooner. These cities are using …

Fisher Price has fixed a security vulnerability in a smart toy after being alerted to its presence by security researchers. The Fisher-Price Smart Toy is a stuffed animal that provides added functionality via wi-fi through a mobile application installed on parents’ phones, such as device monitoring and learning activities for the child. Researchers at Rapid7 was able to determine that the API platform – which is built on Android version 4.4 (KitKat) - was not performing adequate verification of messages sent between the device and the app, allowing for unsigned messages to be transmitted between them.