Stories by Bob Brown

10 Internet of Things companies to watch

It's good to be an Internet of Things startup these days, as investments from Cisco, Nokia, Verizon and others show. Here's a look at 10 IoT companies that could make an impact on the consumer and/or enterprise market.

How Verizon finds IoT innovation outside its four walls

Verizon Ventures says that while consumer Internet of Things startups were all the rage in 2014 and continue to be popular among investors, enterprise IoT newcomers have become even hotter properties among venture capitalists over the past two years, with enterprise IoT investment expected to double or triple that of consumer IoT in 2016.

Blame the cellphone: Injuries pile up, from cat bites to shocks to broken bones

We’ve all become aware of the dangers that drivers preoccupied with their cellphones cause on the roads and most have also probably seen plenty of “pedtextrians” endangering themselves by paying way more attention to their phones than their surroundings. But phone-related injuries go way beyond these two scenarios – we’re talking everything from ringing phones that supposedly scare dogs and cats into biting people to people being really dumb (and gross) about where they stick their smartphones.

Wi-Fi hotspot blocking persists despite FCC crackdown

The FCC has slapped hotels and other organizations with nearly $2.1 million in fines since the fall of 2014 for blocking patrons’ portable Wi-Fi hotspots in the name of IT security, or more likely, to gouge customers for Internet service. But Network World’s examination of more than a year’s worth of consumer complaints to the FCC about Wi-Fi jamming shows that not all venue operators are getting the message.

Google I/O 2016 website live, registration begins March 8

The Google I/O 2016 website is now live for the always sold-out developers' conference, and registration for the application lottery opens on March 8. The May 18-20 event will take place at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, where the event started 10 years ago.

Crypto dream team Diffie & Hellman win "Nobel Prize of Computing"

Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, whose names have been linked since their seminal 1976 paper introduced the concepts of public key encryption and digital signatures, have been named winners of the 2015 ACM A.M. Turing Award (a.k.a., the "Nobel Prize of Computing").

UC Berkeley makes third data breach disclosure in past 15 months

UC Berkeley on Friday -- THE time for issuing bad news even in these days of 24-hour news cycles -- revealed that it has alerted 80,000 current and former faculty, staff, students and vendors in the wake of a late December "criminal cyberattack" that could have compromised Social Security and bank account numbers.

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