standards

ZigBee Alliance 3.01 Standard

New ZigBee IoT Standard To Replace Six Others

One of the main players in the Internet of Things communications space, The ZigBee Alliance, announced that it has merged six existing standards covering everything from building automation to healthcare to form a single standard:ZigBee 3.0. The announcement, last week, comes as ZigBee looks to compete with other emerging IoT standards. It says ZigBee 3.0 will provide interoperability among a wide range of smart devices that communicate based on its technology, laying the ground work for an expansion of IoT technologies. The new standard is being tested. According to the Alliance, the initial release of ZigBee 3.0 includes ZigBee Home Automation, ZigBee Light Link, ZigBee Building Automation, ZigBee Retail Services, ZigBee Health Care, and ZigBee Telecommunication services. The switch will impact tens of millions of devices already using ZigBee standards. However, the transition to ZigBee 3.0 will be gradual, as devices designed to use some of its constituent standards eventually transition to the unified […]

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connected car - audi-thumbnail

Automakers Issue Privacy Guidelines For Connected Cars

A group representing some of the leading foreign automakers who sell in the U.S. released guidelines to protect consumer data collected by in-vehicle technologies and make sure that car owners consent to the collection of everything from geolocation data to biometric identifiers. The group, Global Automakers, represents foreign auto manufacturers and original equipment makers (OEMs). The Privacy Principles document (PDF here) include guidance on issues like transparency, anonymity and security and are intended to set ground rules for the collection and use of driver or owner information by increasingly sensor-rich vehicles. “As modern cars not only share the road but will in the not too distant future communicate with one another, vigilance over the privacy of our customers and the security of vehicle systems is an imperative,” said Global Automakers President and CEO John Bozzella in a published statement.  The Privacy Principles are voluntary are are based on the U.S. Federal Trade […]

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Is IoT Innovation Outpacing Our Ability To Keep It Safe?

GigaOm has an interesting, high-level piece that looks at the issue of law, liability and the Internet of Things. The article takes off from a discussion at the Download event in New York City earlier this month, wondering whether adoption of Internet of Things technologies like wearables is starting to run far ahead of society’s ability to manage them.   Specifically: is the pace of technology innovation outstripping the ability of our legal system to reign in excess and protect public safety and civil liberties? On the list of ‘what-if’s’ are some familiar questions: How to assign liability. (“If one of Google’s automated cars crashes, is it the fault of the driver or Google?”) Read more Security Ledger coverage of Internet of Things here.  What responsibility to users have to take advantage of safety features in connected products? (Does a parent’s failure to password-protect a baby monitor change the manufacturer’s liability when and […]

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Cisco Internet of Everything Opportunity

Convergence of M2M and IoT signals Major Cultural Shift

Required reading for Monday: TechCrunch has a nice little explainer article by @ArtyomAstafurov (of DeviceHive) that talks about the evolution of machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies into the Internet of Things and how the two technology trends are now indistinguishable- and are poised to cause large-scale disruption. To quote Astafurov: “IoT separates itself from M2M not only in the simplicity and quantity of devices involved, but also by how the devices communicate with each other…Whereas M2M tends to rely on point-to-point exchanges between individual devices, IoT communications involve dispersed devices sharing data through a central server, resulting in exponentially more data based on the relationships and patterns that emerge.” And the IoT will drive massive investment in products and technologies that can capture, aggregate and analyze consumer data. This will be akin to the kind of investment corporations put into ERP (enterprise resource planning) tools a decade ago, he says. Though the focus of IoT right […]

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Philips Hue Lightbulbs

AllSeen Alliance Announces Smart Lighting Framework

Smart lightbulbs aren’t anything new. In fact, products like the Philips Hue bulb have been in the market for years. The devices, which typically couple a standard incandescent or CF bulb with a wireless transmitter, allow lights to be managed via mobile device and also respond to environmental changes monitored by other sensors. But – as with much of the Internet of Things – each family of smart bulbs is something of an island: interacting- and communicating mostly with other smart home products from the same manufacturer. That’s good for the lightbulb maker, but bad for smart home advocates, see out-of-the box connectivity across product silos as a precursor to broad adoption of smart home technologies.   It’s also been the case that the products that have been released have often fallen short in areas like security. In August, 2013, security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani disclosed a proof of concept hack […]

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