Even though beacon technology has been a hot topic in advertising circles for the past few years, marketers are still trying to figure out how to leverage proximity-based marketing in a way that is both useful to consumers and doesn’t feel invasive. Speaking at a panel at SXSW, marketers from Heineken, Condé Nast, and inMarket discussed what challenges the field is currently facing and what can be done to overcome them. 

Lufthansa has successfully trialled new iBeacon technology and will use it to sell “upgrades” into its Business Lounges. The technology works through the Lufthansa app. Travellers who have this on their smartphone and have the location-based services activated can then be notified of “offers and services relevant to their current location and that will make their stay more comfortable”. Lufthansa says that in its test phase, customers in Munich received “an offer for entry into the Business Lounge for €25”.

Thinking of “IoT”? Forget about the Internet of Things, this one’s a gaping hole in the Internet of Trucks. That’s what security researcher Jose Carlos Norte found when he went looking for TGUs using Shodan. To explain: a TGU is a Telematic Gateway Unit, where the word telematics refers to “measuring things from afar,” and Shodan is a search engine that goes looking for insecure devices that are connected to the internet, and indexes them so they can be quickly found in the future. TGUs are a staple of the trucking and road transportation industry these days: if you’ve seen a truck with a warning sign to would-be hijackers that …

As connected car platforms are integrated into more vehicles this year, the automotive and insurance sectors will find additional opportunities to glean valuable customer data, resulting in more optimized services and offerings. With major manufacturers such as Ford and Hyundai increasingly leveraging mobile to augment their in-vehicle platforms, a slew of other automotive brands are set to follow in their footsteps, for a number of reasons. 

Excitement is already building for the second version of the Apple Watch, which many believe will be unveiled this fall. The question is: How will the Apple Watch 2 be better than the first Watch? What will Apple add to the device to make it more useful and necessary to more people? Some of the answers to those questions are easy. The shortcomings of the first Apple Watch have been well defined in customer research, media reviews, and analyst coverage. So filling those gaps will be the first job of the Watch's creators. "They’ll address the typical pain points of the …

The British Internet-of-things company Evrythng has long been trying to be the “Facebook for things,” pitching itself as the ideal player to manage the virtual identities of individual connected lightbulbs and smart product packages and what-have-you, so they can talk to each other and to users’ phones. It’s taken investments from Samsung  and Cisco (and partnered with the former), and now it’s unveiled a major new product: Thnghub. Here’s the problem the vowel-averse company is trying to address. Internet-of-things devices that don’t have a direct connection to the Internet get online via hubs.

The latest innovation in mobile payment is the elimination of those pesky hands. Google is piloting a new mobile payment app called “Hands Free” at select food service retailers, including some McDonald’s and Papa John’s stores, in the South Bay region of Silicon Valley. Unlike Google’s existing Android Pay mobile payment app, Hands Free works on both Android and iOS devices. Hands Free uses Bluetooth low energy, Wi-Fi, and location services on a user’s phone to detect whether they are near a participating store. To make a payment, customers tell the cashier, “I’ll pay with Google.” The cashier then asks for their …

The internet of things (IoT) looks increasingly as if it will be an internet of lawsuits, where determining liability will pose a challenge for lawyers. That is according to a group of experts at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco this week, who discussed the legal difficulties expected as billions of items, from toasters to cars, many of them poorly designed and unsecured, are connected to networks.The panelists said an initial problem was just defining what the IoT was and the standards that govern the “things” that were its components and their activities.

The North Face outdoor clothing label has announced that it will be launching a new mobile shopping app in April but that this won’t just be any regular m-commerce application that device users are used to seeing. Through the use of IBM’s Watson, The North Face mobile shopping app will allow users to be able to engage with its super smarts in order to obtain assistance in finding exactly the right item for their needs, expectations and budget. This represents the first time that Watson will have been employed for use with a mobile app experience. The tremendously powerful artificial intelligence computer …

Visa has now opened up its mobile payments platform to auto manufacturers and Honda has decided that it will be among the first that will be teaming up with the financial services giant to turn its vehicles into credit cards. The goal of this combination is to make it possible for people to pay for items they want to purchase using mobile payments services that are built right into their vehicles. That way, they will be able to buy products without ever having to leave their cars. This could be considered to be highly convenient in situations such as paying for fuel …