Smart Cities

First, there were smartphones and then smart houses. Now, the next disruptive “smart” move is the smart city. As work, life, and society become increasingly connected through the wide adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, it’s a natural progression to build smart cities that leverage tech to provide benefits like convenience and efficiency. […]

Tech experts knew it was a long time coming: The interest in smart homes gave way to a desire for smart cities, and the U.S. is running into smart city development full force. A whopping 66 percent of U.S. cities indicated in 2017 that they were investing in smart technology — and 25 percent of […]

What’s the State of Responsible IoT in 2018? After years of concerning news about connected devices that were hacked, bricked, or used to spy on users, a collection of essays by the experts in the ThingsCon network explores where we stand in terms of creating IoT devices that are responsibly made and respect user rights. […]

Latin America’s tech-savvy workforce has attracted international companies to maintain support offices in the region for years. However, the recent government commitment to develop innovation hubs, coupled with a growing middle class that lead in the adoption of mobile devices, has made Latin America prime territory for global tech companies to target local consumers. More […]

The smart city began as a science fiction dream, but it’s very quickly becoming a reality. Municipal infrastructure, integrated with smart technology, will transform the aesthetics, utility, and sustainability of urban landscapes from here on out. To see a smart city in action, just look to Washington, D.C., which has embraced a top-down approach to […]

Smart cities can add value not just through money saved by efficient operations but also through the added benefits for citizens and local businesses by adding great design. Let’s change the design — and build a city. The key to building truly “smart” and efficient cities of the future is improving not just infrastructure — […]

Lutron Electronics has added its Caséta Wireless system to the growing list of devices that support Amazon Alexa range, which includes the Echo, Dot, Tap, and Fire TV. The Caséta Wireless system features various connected LED lights that can change color or brightness on demand. The integration of Alexa allows users to change the lights […]

Ofgem, the U.K. government’s regulator for gas and electricity, has revealed that projects trialled under the Low Carbon Networks Fund (LCNF) could save 215 tonnes of CO2. The program ran for six years, ending in 2015, with the aim of helping Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) develop cost effective and energy efficient solutions for the smart […]

The Internet of Things is sweeping across the globe at breakneck speeds, and before we know it, our entire lives will be facilitated by connected technology. We’re already seeing the IoT make an incredible impact on how the industrial world operates, and we’re seeing it seep into household goods to bring convenience and efficiency to […]

When it comes to smart city innovation, it’s arguable that most use cases are not that exciting to the average resident. A connected garbage bin, traffic light or parking meter is not going to cause applause and adoration for city officials at least in the first instance. But as more and more local systems start to […]

Recently leaders from technology and the multifamily gathered in Tampa, Florida for an event called “Building Cities of the Future”, A CRE and Urbantech Summit. Tampa is already on its journey to becoming a smarter city, and thus was the perfect setting for this event. The one day event was designed to bring together executives […]

Scotland’s seven major cities are teaming up to develop a number of smart city projects, backed by a $31 million war chest. According to Scottish Construction Now, the seven cities will springboard off the funding to collaboratively develop themselves into future-capable digital hubs. See also: Outdated thinking on wireless could doom UK smart cities The […]

Domino’s and Ford have partnered to test a self-driving pizza delivery service to customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The partnership will be part of Ford’s research into how customers respond and interact with self-driving vehicles. Randomly selected customers will have the option of trying the self-driving delivery service, according to The Verge. An engineer will […]

Studies of traffic congestion regularly point much blame at cars circling for parking. To tackle this perennial problem, Get My Parking is joining a smart city initiative to launch a smart parking pilot in India. As reported in Firstpost, the Delhi-based startup’s technology is being tested in government smart city initiatives. “We are getting a […]

One of the biggest causes of downtime and data loss comes not from hackers or other nefarious activities, but from massive power blackouts that are caused by faulty equipment or machine “downtime”. In fact, loss of power leads as the top IT related disaster most organizations face. San Francisco’s massive April power outage, for example, brought […]

The promise of continued innovation hangs on our ability to make data freely accessible to the people and teams who are driving towards the future. Companies everywhere are disrupting their own industries with mobile, agile, DevOps, and of course the cloud. But this is the Information Age and the Digital Economy and those same people, […]

The IoT and coworking spaces have a lot in common. Both need to strike a careful balance between forging accessible yet secure connections to engage with and protect their growing communities. It’s a tough call. Lucas Seyhun, co-founder at The Farm Coworking, said: “While we work with some of New York’s leading technical startups, we […]

In an announcement timed with this year’s MWC Americas, the city of Atlanta is receiving an Internet of Things (IoT) boost, in the form of a sensor-enabled data network that monitors traffic, parking, and pedestrian movement. AT&T, Current by GE, and Georgia Power have collaborated to fit 200 LED streetlights in the North Ave. Corridor, Buckhead […]

Over the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of spending significant time on the ground in China for ReadWrite and ReadWrite Labs. While here in China, I’m continuously discovering new opportunities that exist and even more reasons for foreign startups and corporations to consider getting started in China. However entering a new market can […]

It feels like barely a week goes by without another breaking news account of a terrorist attack involving vehicle ramming, a form of attack in which a perpetrator deliberately aims a motor vehicle at a target with the intent to inflict fatal injuries or significant property damage by striking with concussive force. From 2014 through […]

As residents on or near the coast of Texas continue to try to pick up the pieces of devastation brought on by Hurricane Harvey, the ability to communicate to the outside world has become more and more important. Yesterday, AT&T deployed a fleet of 46 drones to inspect areas in South Texas that have been […]

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and connectivity through the Internet of Things won’t happen overnight, either. A few cities are leading the pack with IoT implementation, but its widespread application may be easier than you think. Even small installments of IoT technology throughout a smart city can create improvements for all citizens to enjoy. […]

As the future of self-driving cars continues to evolve, many of the largest tech companies, auto industries, and city planners around the world are working to prepare for the impacts that autonomous cars will have across all sectors. Since transportation is a central piece of our society, various thought-leaders and industry experts are working together […]

Finland could be the first country to have a regular autonomous shuttle service, with city transportation officials aiming to debut the service this fall. Tests have been ongoing since August 2016, when the shuttle was first deployed on a quarter-mile course with 12 passengers on board. See Also: Scandinavia leaps ahead of everyone in IoT […]

Ten years ago you didn’t have to worry about someone hacking your refrigerator. Today, your personal home assistant is quite literally listening to your every move. Experts believe that in just a few years, there will be over 20 billion devices connected to the internet with the possibility of being compromised by an attacker due […]

Singtel, the largest mobile network operator in Singapore, has unveiled plans to launch a nationwide Internet of Things (IoT) network for enterprise customers. The network will support CAT-M1 and narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) technologies, two of the most popular low-power, wide-area network standards in the emerging IoT industry. See Also: What is IoT’s disruptive role in the […]

With the amount of data available today, cities are constantly innovating, finding new ways to apply insights in ways that benefit citizens. This is no small task, as new technologies are constantly reshaping what’s possible when it comes to using and making sense of data. Data creates opportunities. Cities are rife with challenges that not only […]

Environmental technology is breaking out of its shell and transforming into what is becoming today’s new buzzword: sustaintech, a combination of cleantech and smarttech. What does the emergence of sustaintech mean? It signals that we are witnessing how disruptive innovations are breaking down the long-standing status quo of sustainability originating from the cleantech sector. Essentially, the crossing […]

It is not often the heads of two major companies blast each other in public, so Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence warnings “pretty irresponsible” on a Facebook Live broadcast was seen as a big deal. Musk intensified the drama in response to a tweet, which said Zuckerberg’s “understanding of […]

Elon Musk recently commented on the need to regulate AI, citing it as an existential risk for humanity. As is the case with any human creation, the increasing leverage technology affords humans can certainly be used for good or evil, but the premise that we need to fear AI and regulate it this early in […]

For those involved in the IoT space, it feels as if not a day goes past without the launch of yet another IoT platform, promising a seamless conduit between connected devices and user applications. Talk to any platform vendor and they’ll all earnest declare that their platform is the best, providing features and capabilities that […]

I got a chance to sit down at RISE 2017 in Hong Kong with WeChat’s Director of User Growth Stephen Wang.  For those unfamiliar, WeChat began as a messaging app back in 2010 created by China’s Tencent, but over the years, it has quickly become a tool of everyday life in mainland China. WeChat has […]

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has called on governments to proactively regulate artificial intelligence, before we arrive at the general purpose AI stage. Musk, who also founded non-profit AI research company OpenAI, has stated before his view that AI is an existential threat to humanity and he repeated the same warnings at the National […]

After Mobile World Congress and IoT World earlier this year, there was a lot of buzz about 5G, smart mobility, general IoT, and smart cities. It feels like we’re entering the future, and the excitement is palatable. Unfortunately, there are many soldiers on the battlefield without a plan. See also: Is location intel the key to citizen-centric […]

The proliferation of robots and artificial intelligence into the workplace will make social inequality even worse and lead to significant job losses, according to a report from the Boston Consulting Group. The report says that while automation will affect a broad range of jobs, the rich will be able to retrain and deploy themselves into […]

The most important aspects of the logistics industry are safety and efficiency. At the end of May, LogiNext, a Mumbai-based SaaS company, unveiled its most advanced location-tracking SDK to help more logistics companies and e-commerce platforms gain necessary insights on traffic data so that they can provide a better customer experience. LogiNext users just need to install […]

“Everything we call real is made up of things that cannot be regarded as real” – Niels Bohr For many, the “virtual world” of AI and the “real world” in which we live seem to perpetually be at odds. With AI largely being academic or theoretical in nature for most of the past 60 years, […]

Earlier this year, Wired magazine proclaimed 2017 to be the year that the Internet of Things (IoT) would die. The security risks, hacking scandals and lack of useful technology meant that the connectivity hype would come to an end, they said. To test this view, job meta-search engine To test this view, job meta-search engine […]

Higher education has always been fertile ground for the creation of new, boundary-pushing technology. While VR software and hardware innovation have been, to date, largely the domain of startups and large tech companies, it’s colleges and universities that are using the technology in some of the most interesting ways. Professors and students alike are exploring […]