Episode 153: Mobile World Congress news and a deep dive into IOTA

The big news from this week has been Amazon’s proposed acquisition of Ring for $1 billion or more. Kevin and I explain the deal and share our concerns before turning to the issue of smarter cameras including the recently reviewed Google Clip. From there we discuss news from Mobile World Congress and then dig into financings, Google winning over a former Alexa exec, the death of Staples Connect and a new device from Fibaro. We also answer a voicemail about setting up a separate guest network for your IoT devices.

The Google Clip camera retails for $249.

This week’s guest is Dominik Schiener, who is a co-founder of IOTA, a distributed ledger for machine transactions. I met Schiener at Bosch’s Connected World event in Berlin, and he explained the rationale behind IOTA’s creation, how it differs from traditional blockchain-based ledgers and why the focus on cryptocurrencies is driving the wrong attention for distributed ledgers. It’s a fun interview.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guests: Dominik Schiener of IOTA
Sponsors: Yonomi and IoT World

  • Amazon Rings up its second largest deal
  • Cameras are smart and we aren’t prepared
  • Google has a new employee and Kevin liked this article
  • What is IOTA?
  • Use cases for distributed ledgers explained

Episode 106: Stacey has a secret

It’s time to swap out my Amazon Echo for a Google Home because all of my integrations are working so well, and because Google added Logitech’s Harmony Hub. August added a lock for the pro channel and Samsung’s Tizen OS has a lot of security flaws. This is not good for anyone, especially Samsung.

The new Zebra SmartPack Trailer product uses a camera and offers analytics.

We talk also about Zebra’s new tech for tractor-trailers and why virtual beacons from Mist are better than real ones. Finally, I confess to a secret and contemplate an IoT device to solve it. This week’s guest Simon Bungers discusses what happens when the internet of things invades research labs, and how it could change scientists’ job descriptions.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Simon Bungers, CEO of Labfolder
Sponsor: Samsung ARTIK

  • Google Home just got better. Is Kevin convinced?
  • Zebra has good new freight tech and virtual beacons are better than the real thing
  • Tizen has some major security flaws. Roughly 40 of them.
  • Meet Smart Nora, which may help my husband sleep at night
  • Scientists will spend more time with Python than petri dishes