“Real estate, historically, is a very gut kind of business,” WeWork’s chief product officer David Fano said Wednesday. He’s out to change that. The $16 billion company is looking to gather a slew of data on its members to guide how it designs its spaces.Speaking to journalists on the sixth floor of WeWork’s Times Square location — which the company has turned into a testing site for new technology — Fano likened the ideal office building to an iPhone: all parts are connected and governed by technology. In practice, this means that WeWork members may soon have their every step …

The U.S. Marine Corps is testing a pocket-sized drone that can deliver live video feeds from three cameras and is small enough that it's almost invisible from the ground. The Black Hornet PD-100 can stay aloft for 25 minutes and has a range of 1.6 km (1 mile). That means Marines can use it for surveillance far beyond their current position. It can fly missions guided by GPS yet fits in a pocket. The cable hanging out the back in this image is an antenna, not a cord for power or data.

Digital technology has to prove it is every bit as robust as any other automotive product if the connected car has a long term future. That’s the opinion of Erik Brenneis, Vodafone’s global director of IoT speaking at a press briefing in London outlining the telecoms giant’s 2016 IoT Barometer. And he said the company’s business strategy reflects this conviction. He told TU-Automotive: “Two years ago we acquired a company called Cobra who manufacture telematics boxes to go inside cars. Also they have written the software system that allows remote control of the cars’ function via a smartphone. The software also …

Augmented reality has been having quite the month. It seems like no matter where I go, I can’t get away from Pokémon Go.  It is filling my news feed and office talk, and I keep getting bumped into on the street by people staring at their phones. In case you’ve been on a screen-free vacation in the Galapagos Islands for the past couple of weeks: Pokémon Go is a free-to-play location based augmented reality mobile game. The game allows players to use their smartphones to capture, battle, and train virtual Pokémon monsters who appear throughout the real world. It makes use …

Industry observers say the Internet of Things could become one of the most effective retail tools since the advent of the bar code. To others, though, it’s a ubiquitous phrase that defies standard definition and confuses rather than enhances the customer experience. At its most simplistic, IoT is the result of low-cost computing that connects everything on the planet — person-to-person, machine-to-machine and interactions between both. In other words, the global transfer of data without the need for human intervention. “It’s …

Apple Inc. is preparing to unveil successors to the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus as early as next month with more advanced photography capabilities and upgraded hardware in a design similar to that of last year’s models, according to people familiar with the matter. The standout features will be a dual-camera system on the larger iPhone, a re-engineered home button that responds to pressure with a vibrating sensation rather than a true physical click and the removal of the devices’ headphone jack, said the people, who didn’t want to be identified discussing unannounced features. Apple declined to comment.

With competition in the home automation market growing, Staples is stepping away from its Staples Connect platform while continuing to focus on building the Staples Easy System smart-ordering service. Staples Connect is an application-based platform for managing smart home devices such as thermostats, sensors, appliances and more. While Staples will no longer be selling the products in its stores or online, Z-Wave Products will continue to offer customer support and Staples Connect and Zonoff will make updates to the app.

More and more people are finding that the devices forming this network of smart stuff can make their lives easier. But that convenience may come at a high cost - namely security. Def Con, which sees 15,000 of the world's top hackers gather in Las Vegas, was this year studded with talks about the security shortcomings of IoT gadgets. Holes, data leaks and bugs have been found in everything from CCTV cameras to solar panels, thermostats to door locks. One talk about the bugs in those sex toys revealed that these intimate gadgets are being perhaps too candid with data …

One day, your thermostat will get hacked by some cybercriminal hundreds of miles away who will lock it with malware and demand a ransom to get it back to normal, leaving you literally in the cold until you pay up a few hundred dollars. This has been a scenario that security experts have touted as one of the theoretical dangers of the rise of the Internet of Things, internet-connected devices that are often insecure. On Saturday, what sounds like a Mr. Robot plot line came one step closer to being reality, when two white hat hackers showed off the first-ever ransomware that works against a “smart” device, …

Google's efforts to build a truly self-driving car have suffered another setback after one of its vehicles was caught up in a public crash. A company test vehicle was involved in a collision in California that left it with damage to its rear end after being hit by another car. However it seems that, this time at least, the Google car was not to blame.