The video game experience has arrived in the automobile. It’s called the virtual cockpit and, starting with Audi, it will become a more common feature in cars in the not too distant future. Gone are the traditional mechanical dials — the speedometer, the tachometer, the various gauges and pointers — and in their place is a 12.3-inch LCD screen that houses an animated instrument cluster. The high-resolution screen, which lights up behind the steering wheel, directly in the driver’s line of sight, can be programmed to show several functions — for navigation, a cellphone, radio and media, Google Earth …

EBay Australia is teaming up with retail brand Myer to bring a forward-thinking way of shopping to consumers in the form of a virtual reality department store, enabling consumers to use a special viewer to inspect products before completing their purchase via the eBay application. EBay’s self-described virtual department store was designed to allow individuals to immerse themselves inside a Myer store without having to be in the physical location. Using the “shopticals,” or specially-designed VR viewers, shoppers can look at an item, lock eyes on information icons to receive more details about price and shipping and shift their gaze …

“When the original Internet was designed, we assumed that we should allow anything to talk to anything else. But you didn’t have to talk. You could receive a packet and say, ‘I’m not going to talk to you because you haven’t authenticated yourself adequately for my preference.’ “Some of those things have to be built into the Internet of Things and all the other things that are connected to the Internet in order to make sure that only authorized parties are actually communicating.

As Google is working on the future of virtual reality, YouTube is along for the ride. The Google-owned video site announced plans for its own virtual reality app Thursday, which will be available on Daydream-powered mobile VR devices once they become available later this year. But YouTube’s plans for VR don’t stop there. The site has also been busy hooking up some of its content partners with VR cameras to get them to produce immersive 360-degree video content, and is already thinking about ways to eventually monetize this content as well. Google announced  at its Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California Wednesday that it is building …

The growing number of brands leveraging virtual reality is opening the door to VR commerce, which marketers are tapping to showcase products out of bricks-and-mortar contexts and offer in-store shoppers unique customer experiences. A slew of retailers – including The North Face and IKEA – have already begun experimenting with VR commerce by showcasing products through mobile applications and complementary headsets that pull into individuals into new dimensions. 

ARM has acquired an Internet of Things (IoT) business called Apicalthat holds a lot of intellectual property and has a finger in connected vehicles, robotics, smart cities and security systems. ARM will pay $350m in cash for Apical, which specialises in computer vision technology. The purchase is seen as part of a long-term ARM strategy that includes securing the IoT and offering chip designs for IoT products.

With Google’s announcement yesterday of an Android virtual reality platform called Daydream, a new headset for smartphones and applications in the works from a number of big brands, the company hopes to unlock consumer adoption and new marketing opportunities for virtual reality. During the keynote address at Google’s annual developer conference yesterday, the company unveiled a number of new offerings, such as Android Instant Apps, a chat app called Allo and the new smartphone-driven VR platform, whose initial partners include USA Today, HBO and Major League Baseball. The news around Daydream is the latest example of how the VR space is …

Google has announced plans for a voice-enabled, connected home device that lets users search for information, ask for directions, and play music, much like Amazon’s rival Echo device. Google Home, which was unveiled at Google’s annual developer conference on Wednesday, is Google’s entry to an increasingly important fight to be the hub for the home. Amazon, in particular, has a head start with its Echo device, which has gained strong momentum since its introduction last year.

If you're looking forward to the day when an Uber whisks you across town without anyone behind the wheel, then good news: the ride-sharing company has shown off its first autonomous vehicle. The car -- a Ford Fusion Hybrid -- has been shown taking to the streets of Pittsburgh. It's equipped with sensors, radars, laser scanners and high-resolution cameras, and is designed to gather mapping data as well as test its self-driving capabilities, Uber writes on its blog. "When it's in self-driving mode, a trained driver will be in the driver's seat monitoring operations," the company explains. "Real-world testing is critical to our …

The cybersecurity industry could see a boost in venture capital, thanks to new threats the Internet of Things (IoT) provide to smart homes, autonomous cars, and future factories. Investment in cybersecurity rose by 78 percent in 2015 to $228 million and Lux Research expects it to reach $400 million this year, in part because of the rapid adoption of IoT devices. “Connected consumer and business products have begun flooding the market, but security has been an afterthought. The world now has to figure out how to secure the multitude of things that have recently become connected,” said Lux Research Vice President, …