The Guardian has uncovered a secret plan by Google parent Alphabet to overhaul public parking and transportation in major U.S. cities. Regarding a secretive subsidiary name Sidewalk Labs, The Guardian writes: “Its high-tech services, which it calls ‘new superpowers to extend access and mobility,’ could make it easier to drive and park in cities and create hybrid public/private transit options that rely heavily on ride-share services such as Uber.”

As the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution continues to inspire an endless torrent of interconnected gadgets and smart devices, the United States is continuing to ramp up its investments and energy into the lucrative market. However, despite Silicon Valley's ambitious venture into the sector, German manufacturers are powering ahead in implementing digital and IoT solutions compared to their American peers. According to a new survey from Boston Consulting Group that polled more than 600 managers and senior executives representing over 300 German and US companies, the Germans are keener to adopt "the new industrial technologies that are collectively known as Industry 4.0" …

A large BMW branch building in Munich located a stone’s throw from the famous Olympia Stadion is, despite its unremarkable façade, something of a trendsetter for the Internet of Things (IoT). The building is as a repair centre for BMW cars. It has 800 parking spaces and used to handle around 250 cars a day, a number limited by the logistics of locating the cars and getting them to an available mechanic. Arthur Schmidt, head of IT for the BMW Niederlassung München (pictured above), explained to V3 that this was far from ideal. "We had no system in place to track where …

Food safety was thrust into the public consciousness in 2015 after salmonella and E.coli outbreaks sickened people at Chipotle. Determined to avoid such public relations disasters, quick-service restaurants are taking extra precautions to keep customers healthy and ensure that their products comply with health inspection standards. Chick-fil-A, whose commercials feature chicken-shilling cattle, is using wireless sensors to monitor the temperature of walk-in coolers and freezers. Yes -- the Internet of Chicken has arrived. Chick-fil-A franchisee Matthew Michaels, who equipped his two Texas stores with the sensors 18 months ago, notes that several prominent incidents have underscored the importance of adhering to …

Seagate is targeting drones and robots as it looks to add its storage technologies to new devices. There’s a huge opportunity there,” said Patrick Ferguson, a product manager at Seagate. “I’m really excited about it.” Manufacturers make drones easy to fly, but storage isn’t a heavy consideration, Ferguson said. Robots and drones generate a lot of data, but have limited internal storage to retain all that information. For example, drones with multiple cameras generate a lot of video, but just one CompactFlash or SD card to store all that data may not be enough. “In a 20 minute flight you’re …

I meet Paul Jacobs in a studio in San Francisco's warehouse-filled Dogpatch neighborhood. We're there to watch the filming of Qualcomm'sInvent-Off competition. Two teams are competing to create a smart device -- in only three days -- that can save lives. They're doing it all in a warehouse studio that's packed with power tools and high-tech electronics components. One product wants to accelerate the delivery of medical treatment to people in remote areas. The other is for extreme sports enthusiasts, or even someone going for a hike alone. (Later this summer, Qualcomm will broadcast the series online and will reveal the …

Tesla might have made some major announcements recently, but FordCEO Mark Fields says his company not in the race to make announcements. Instead, Ford is busy focusing on how to make customer's lives easier and building the car of the future. "Our combination is an auto and a mobility company, and we think that makes a lot of sense for us. But we're not in a race to make announcements. We are in a race to do what's right for our customers, and what's right for our business," Fields said.

The Xfinity Home brand could very soon have an entirely different look and feel. It’ll likely have a more connected home-y feel, if you will. That’s thanks to a major move by Comcast this week that saw the cable giant take a huge step into the connected home and Internet of Things (IoT) space: they’ve agreed to acquire Icontrol Networks Inc., an Austin-based company that creates technology and platforms for connected home security and IoT. Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed. The Icontrol name is a familiar one around the Comcast offices—they, in fact, helped to launch Xfinity …

French startup Sevenhugs closed a $14.6 million Series A today led by Xerys on a quest to better integrate smart home technology. Sevenhugs has already developed a sleep tracker and is nearing completion on development of a universal smart-remote. Sevenhugs joins Misfit, Hello, and others with its hugOne sleep-tracker. When it launches, the remote will let users simply point to control a wide array of connected-home devices. From coffeemakers at college hackathons to TVs at your local Best Buy, everything is smart these days.

Today, if you want to experience virtual reality, you have two options. The first is mobile VR, which uses a relatively cheap headset paired with your smartphone screen to offer a somewhat immersive experience but without the ability to get up and move around inside the virtual world. The second is a high-end headset like Facebook’s Oculus Rift or HTC’s Vive. These expensive products do allow you to move around within the virtual world thanks to positional-tracking technology in the headsets that work in conjunction with external sensors mounted on your wall — but your range of movement is limited.