IoT news of the week for July 3, 2020

See Spot run! After 11 years in the making, Boston Dynamics has begun selling its Spot robot to anyone who has $75,000 lying around. I’ve seen dozens of company-produced videos of Spot, the four-legged robot, but this is the first time I’ve seen a customer share one. Technically, Spot may be on loan to the Unbox Therapy YouTube channel, which shows the capabilities of this dog-like device from an end-user point of view. I’m more amazed than ever at how Spot can navigate obstacles and uneven ground after watching this. Most impressive? How Spot navigates stairs with uncanny ease. This is well worth the watch to understand what kinds of robotics we can expect in the coming years as the cost of compute power, sensors, and other hardware decrease. (Unbox Therapy) 

Facebook has a new take on VR glasses: A Facebook proof of concept for thinner VR glasses appeared this week, showing what look to be sunglasses at first glance. Behind the dark lenses are a new technology the company calls “holographic optics,” which help to reduce the lens thickness to 9 millimeters. The idea is to replace the traditional refractive lens, which focus images in a VR headset, with another lens to shorten the focal length and allow for thinner optics. The company says that by using the other lens, “light can be controlled to move both forward and backward” within it, which is how the lens can be thinner than what you’ll find in today’s bulky headsets. Anything that makes wearing one of these VR contraptions less like wearing a scuba mask is a good thing in my book. (The Verge)

Speaking of smart glasses, I tested Amazon Echo Frames: I really wanted to like the Echo Frames, mainly because they look like traditional glasses. And Amazon has succeeded in delivering a simple way to use Alexa hands-free thanks to always-on listening, two microphones, and two pairs of speakers. But marginal battery life, reliance on having your phone with you at all times, and a lack of interesting new features have me thinking that $250 isn’t worth the price of admission for these. (StaceyOnIoT) 

California Consumer Privacy Act enforcement has begun: The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) took effect back in January, but legal enforcement of it has only just now begun. This week, the state’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, made sure to remind both businesses and consumers of that fact. This data privacy law is among the first in the U.S. at the state level, so it will be interesting to see if others follow. Under CCPA, consumers can request information about what personal data businesses sell and ask companies to no longer sell that data, requests which the company must abide by. This is great for general online privacy, but I don’t know that most smart device makers will fall under CCPA; the act is only enforceable on companies that make “50 percent or more of [their] annual revenues from selling consumers’ personal information.” If hardware sales make up the majority of revenues, then device makers could in theory sell personal data from device usage. (California DOJ)

Hitachi Vantara has a new CEO: Hitachi Vantara, maker of the Lumada IoT platform, has appointed Gajen Kandiah as its next CEO, effective July 13. Prior to joining Hitachi Vantara, Kandiah spent 15 years with Cognizant, growing the company’s annual revenues from $368 million to more than $16 billion. Kandiah replaces current CEO Toshiaki Tokunaga, who will remain chairman of the board. (Hitachi Vantara)

The dangers of everything as a platform: Novelist and former European Affairs Coordinator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Cory Doctorow wrote a thought-provoking Twitter thread this week on “everything as a service,” a key theme in his current novella. It refers to how even though you may own a physical thing, the services that help it work only come at an added cost. He starts with how smart devices in the home can turn into “rent-extraction services,” with terms that can be renegotiated at any time. This leads him to describe several other concerning scenarios involving smart vehicles and other devices, and to explain why the laws currently favor companies that build these platforms. It’s well worth the read. (Cory Doctorow) 

Let’s get rid of the IoT silos: That’s the thought of Wienke Giezeman, chief executive at The Things Network, a Netherlands-based LoRaWAN group. Giezeman is complementary of Sigfox, a key competitor in the IoT network space. He believes that IoT brings a massive amount of opportunity to the market both for IoT companies and the developers that bring smarts to their products thanks to choices. Giezeman says that for IoT success, developers need to use a broad workbench of tools rather than simply adopting platforms: “A workbench is not a platform; a workbench is agnostic. It is designed to enable the maker, and not to lock them into a technology or marry them with one silo or ecosystem.” Here, here! Down with the IoT silos! (Enterprise IoT Insights)

Google Smart Home Actions gain more analytics: In advance of next week’s Works With “Hey Google” Smart Home Summit, Google this week introduced enhanced analytics for Actions. Developers of Google Home Actions can now see important data such as response latency to voice requests, engagement success, device traits used, and more. If you’re not a developer, this probably sounds like buzzword technobabble. But if you use Actions on your Google Home devices, know that it means developers now have more useful information to pinpoint request bottlenecks and improve Actions in your smart home. (Google Developer Blog)

Because everyone loves lists: If you’re implementing IoT devices by taking a large-scale, building-wide approach, this list is for you. Stefan Sandhagen, CPO at Yanzi Networks, shared the 10 things you should expect from IoT sensor providers, including fully automatic provisioning, interoperability, on-prem or device storage, simple installation, short-range radio technology (which sounds counterintuitive, but there’s a good technical reason for it), and more. This is a list worth bookmarking. (My News Desk)

Stacey is planning her next IoT virtual summit for later this month. To sponsor this event, or to learn about sponsoring this newsletter and the IoT podcast, please email andrew@staceyoniot.com for a media kit.