Internet of Things News of the Week, July 21, 2017

Particle gets $20 million: IoT development platform Particle, which used to be known as Spark, has received $20 million in venture capital to expand its platform. Particle is a public IoT success story from an era when everyone had a hardware-based IoT development board. Others are still in the market though, such as Electric Imp and even Samsung’s ARTIK modules. (Medium)

Ditch those fitness trackers: If you’re planning to commit arson, murder or another crime, perhaps you should get rid of data collecting wearables, including your pacemaker. An Ohio judge ruled that a man’s pacemaker data was admissible in the court to counteract the defendant’s testimony of his actions during the fire. The judge decided that the data was not private, which doesn’t bode well for folks who may one day be forced to choose between getting a pacemaker and worrying that their heart rates may betray them in court. (CNET)

Desperately seeking cyber insurance: The Petya and NotPetya cyber attacks last month have caused lingering damage. Two stories highlight how organizations hit by the attacks have been forced back to the 1950s, pushing literal paper as they try to continue their business operations. One question is who pays for the losses in cases like these and who will force organizations to upgrade their security practices to prevent future attacks. The answer to each question may well be insurance firms. (Bloomberg, The San Francisco Chronicle)

Amazon is at a privacy crossroads: The Amazon Echo is a tremendous success, but a few reports out in the last week highlight its challenges going forward as it tries to become the dominant voice interface. Last Friday The Information reported that Amazon was debating whether it should send out audio transcripts to developers of Alexa Skills to help those developers improve their offerings. It makes sense, but consumers might be leery of letting their inquiries about the calorie contents of their donuts or requests for life advice go out to third parties. The other privacy debate the Amazon Echo is facing is about how Amazon plans to construct an Alexa-based social network. So far it has failed to follow best practices when it comes to adding friends, instead behaving like a spammy app that reads your contacts and links you to everyone else using the Alexa app. (The Information, Gizmodo)

Meet the new class of TechStars IoT: After a focus on consumer, many IoT investments firms and startups are veering toward enterprise and industrial markets.  TechStar’s IoT incubator in New York has followed this trend, and with the crop of 12 new startups, it is helping some good ideas come to fruition. I look forward to writing about some of these in a year or two. (TechStars)

Sears is adding Alexa to Kenmore appliances: Many appliance companies are busy developing Skills for the Amazon Echo, and Sears has now joined the club. But the retailer has also decided to sell its Kenmore branded appliances on Amazon’s web site. I can’t tell if this is brilliant because it’s impossible to fight Amazon, so why not just resell your branded products through its web site, or just a way to slow the decline in revenue for Sears. (CNBC)

Oh, there are different types of IoT Edges: Last week I tried to figure out what the heck people meant when they talked about the IoT Edge. In response Tom Bradicich of HPE sent me a link to this article he wrote in May that defines them not just as a node on a network, but based on what type of network they were on. So the OT edge is further out than the IoT edge. It’s worth a read if this is the sort of thing that keeps you up at night. (HPE)

Japanese researchers create a long-wearing sensor: Imagine visiting your cardiologist and instead of getting an electrocardiogram test with a clunky machine, the doctor just sprays on a conductive wearable mesh that will track your heart for a week. That’s one possibility based on this new conductive mesh technology that researchers at the University of Tokyo have built.  (Eureka)

Remember Wi-Fi HaLow for IoT? Don’t worry if you don’t. No one does, because it’s hard to find anyone using it 18 months after the Wi-Fi Alliance launched it as the Wi-Fi network for IoT.  HaLow used the IEEE 802.11ah standards for its radio network. There were several reasons I doubted the technology, and it seems that now folks are trying to turn another 802.11 radio standard into the Wi-Fi for IoT. This story touts 802.11 ax as more optimal for IoT because it has lower power consumption and works on the established Wi-Fi frequency bands. I’m still skeptical, but this time it’s because Wi-Fi is obviously awesome for some IoT applications like video, but really terrible for battery-constrained applications that don’t need a lot of bandwidth. We can use multiple tools. (Network Computing)

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