A study by IT staffing firm TEksystems reports that businesses are struggling to get Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives past the concept stage. Of the 200 IT and business leaders polled, 42 percent said their business was in early talks regarding IoT and its impact on business. However, only 17 percent said they had pilot programs in place; 22 percent said they have finally "transitioned into IoT-driven processes, services and products." According to TEKsystems Research Manager Jason Hayman, "IoT will enable the collection and aggregation of data that will drive digital transformation deeper within organizations, enabling better insight into customer experiences and …

Today, Uber announced the ability to order a ride with just your voice, assuming you have an Amazon Echo, that is. Using the Uber API and the brains behind the Echo, Alexa, users can now use the Amazon device to snag a ride with Uber or UberX.  To test this out on your Echo, you’ll need to adjust its location in the ‘Settings’ section of the Alexa App. From there, add the skill in the ‘Skills’ (a collection of learned behaviors, or add-ons) section and link your Uber account. After that, you’re good to go. And while you’re at it, use the code 15Alexa to …

About halfway through the trailer for the 2011 movieGreen Lantern—it’s presumably in the movie, too, but that’s impossible to verify because no one ever saw it—an otherwise ordinary Ryan Reynolds slides a big, blocky ring onto his middle finger and becomes a superhero. “The ring,” says an apparently important dying purple man, “It chose you. Use its power to defend our universe.” It’s the other one ring to rule them all. Sonia Hunt’s goals for her smart ring are, let’s say, slightly more mundane. She’s the president of Neyya, which sells a chunky ring meant to be worn on your index finger.

An Apple Watch application update has enabled the mobile device to call for a Tesla car directly from a user’s wrist, with the vehicle opening a garage door and driving itself down a driveway. The so-called summon feature gives a user an exciting glimpse into how driverless cars may work in the future. Version 3.0 of the Remote S for Tesla app for the Apple Watch developed by Rego Apps launched its use of the feature Wednesday. When activated, it starts the car and brings it out toward the road. Ordinarily, the vehicle requires the keyfob to be nearby when starting, but if …

Suddenly, everyone wants to be Jasper's friend. In 2014, following a connected car deal with AT&T, Jasper Wireless raised $50 million in financing, changed its name to Jasper Technologies, and began to be seen in the company of IT industry leaders more often. Over the next two years, Jasper, which makes a platform for managing the things referred to in the term "Internet of Things" (IoT), announced partnerships with IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and VMware, along with assorted mobile operators around the world.

Ed Venglik has built the mancave of his dreams — five big-screen smart TVs, Apple TV streaming boxes, DVD players, Sonos music system, an Xbox, a Wii and remote-controlled lighting. To run it all, Venglik is dumping his already beefy download speed of 150 megabits per second for download power on steroids. He’s switching to Comcast’s Gigabit Pro — a 2-gigabit speed demon so fast a two-hour high definition movie can be downloaded in 12 seconds or a 30-minute “Parks and Recreation” episode in just two. “It’s a little over the top,” the married Johns Creek father of three admits. …

Mozilla announced that the company was finally bowing out of the smartphone space. The company will pull the plug on its Firefox OS for smartphones from May onwards, ensuring that Firefox OS 2.6 will be the last supported mobile OS which is officially supported by Firefox. However, the company is only pulling the plug on the smartphone platform; the Firefox OS will stay alive, but will be used to power Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In the blog post, Mozilla's George Rotor conceded that Mozilla was often “playing catch-up” with …

More data has been generated in the past two years than in the entire history of mankind. While for many, there are reasons to celebrate this increasingly connected world, others express growing concern about the risks associated with all that data, an ideal target for cyber crime. Cyber security was one of the hottest topic at the recent CyberTech conference in Tel Aviv. “Everything is connected to the internet now,” said Yoav Leitersdorf, managing partner at venture capital firm YL Ventures. “I think that in 2015, about 20 percent of cars in the US were shipped connected which means they …

With the Super Bowl upon us, what better time to preview the latest in Wilson X's wirelessly-enabled sports tech, the Connected Football. Though it's stuffed with Bluetooth and a bevy of sensors, at first glance you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for a regular football but, as Wilson demonstrated when I met with them in San Francisco this week, it'll unlock a wealth of new data when it arrives in time for the 2016 season. Where the Wilson X Connected Basketball was targeted a pro-athletes, the company is looking to a broader market with the Connected Football. Though it's on a par with …

Researchers with arguably too much time on their hands have discovered security blunders surrounding Fisher-Price Smart Toys and hereO GPS watches for children. Fortunately, the two sets of vulnerabilities, discovered by security researchers at Metasploit biz Rapid7, have been addressed and fixed by both affected vendors. Even so, the failure by the toymakers to discover the flaws during quality control before the products left the drawing board, let alone the factory, once again raises concerns about the security of internet and mobile-enabled gadgets and gizmos. Improper authentication handling by a Wi-Fi-equipped digital stuffed animal from Fisher-Price could have allowed attackers to …