The concept of the connected home is not easy to understand. At first blush, it seems simple: devices and tools connected to each other in an automated way to save labor and effort in the home. But in reality, the connected home remains an elusive ideal, with no clear breakout hit present in our lives or even clear on the horizon. With the near-ubiquity of Internet access in the home and the onset of Internet-connected devices of all shapes and sizes, it seems a foregone conclusion that the connected home is right around the corner. Wire up a coffee maker and toaster to the Internet, and you’ve got breakfast ready in the morning with a touch of an app. But that gastronomically satisfying vision of the future has not come about yet. Nor has another vision of the connected home: the automated home-entertainment system that has your music follow you from room to room. While this aspect of the connected home has been installed in various homes, the cost and complexity has kept it out of reach of all but the wealthiest and most determined audiophiles. That’s just one definition. Ask one connected-home advocate what the connected home is, and you might get an answer that a connected home aligns everything from computers, smartphones, TVs and set-top boxes to systems such as lighting, appliances and heating/air conditioning systems and makes them controllable through a single interface. But a connected-home expert more interested in media systems might promote the idea of […]

Ethan Imboden, founder of Jimmyjane, knows a thing or two about hardware startups. He founded one back in 2003, when software was all the rage and  hardware was uncool. After toiling on Jimmyjane (which disrupted the sexual wellness industry) for almost ten years, Imboden is adding another position to his bio. “I am happy to contribute to the hardware entrepreneur’s experience based on the bumps and bruises I have taken and help them on their own ground,” he says. To get started, he outlined five tips for hardware entrepreneurs, based on his experience with Jimmyjane. 1. Hardware is not software “The ecosystem supporting hardware is nowhere near the technology of software,” says Imboden. That difference in ecosystem manifests itself at several levels, according to Imboden. For example, rapid product iteration, which is common in software, is extremely difficult or absent in hardware products. Over the years, Imboden has also noted the knowledge gap between hardware and software at the investor level. While they can segment software products into consumer- or enterprise-focused markets, venture capitalists find it difficult to slot hardware products in a similar fashion, says Imboden. In turn, this becomes a stumbling block for hardware entrepreneurs to convince investors about the value of their product. Similarly, packaging, which is becoming obsolete with software products with the rise of the Internet, is extremely important for hardware. Then, there is the problem with finding talent. “While investors may know fantastic hackers (from software), they cannot direct you to class A engineers, block […]

For most of its brief existence, Bitcoin has been widely associated with Silk Road—the anonymous cybercurrency, naturally enough, wound up backing transactions on the shadowy online market for drugs, hacking services, and other illegal activities. So it makes sense that the value of Bitcoin would fall off a cliff as news broke that the FBI had arrested a man suspected of running the most famous online black market. The value of Bitcoin dropped to about $110 by early Wednesday afternoon, down from $140 earlier this morning. But people in the more legitimate corners of the Bitcoin world believe the apparent demise of Silk Road is the best thing that could happen to the currency. “I think it’s a huge positive,” says Fred Ehrsam, the co-founder of Bitcoin startup Coinbase. “This kind of takes the biggest target that people might speak negatively about when it comes to Bitcoin, and takes it off the map.” According to a recently unsealed FBI complaint, Ross William Ulbricht had been running Silk Road from January 2011 until agents tracked him down in a San Francisco apartment this summer. Ulbricht named himself the Dread Pirate Roberts, after the character in The Princess Bride, and the FBI complaint describes his alleged role overseeing a small staff that kept the network running. Earlier this year he paid for the murder of someone who was threatening to release the names of thousands of Silk Road users, according to the complaint, and Ulbricht is quoted through correspondence suggesting the murder actually happened (although the […]

K 2013 is getting closer and closer, and more companies are revealing what products they are planning to showcase at the international trade fair. Metabolix, Inc. will highlight two new performance additives for PVC, one of which recently launched earlier this fall. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is a versatile and resource-efficient thermoplastic with a wide range of applications, making it indispensable in virtually all areas of human activity. But the truth is that without additives, PVC would not prove to be a very useful substance. It’s a brittle, stiff, and a thermally unstable material. PVC is often used in compounded products for these reasons.  A compounded product typically includes about 20-40% performance additives, which help improve the performance of PVC products, either to soften or color the material, or to increase the product’s lifespan. Unfortunately, despite its versatility, PVC is also one of the least recycled plastic materials in the world. That is also true for most of its additives, which are not usually made with renewable resources.  Additionally, although these additives provide important enhancements to the basic PVC polymer, they can sometimes hinder recycling and reuse. Consequently, there is a lot of research currently underway  exploring opportunities to enhance PVC’s and PVC additives’ biodegrading capabilities. Metabolix, Inc., an innovation-driven bioscience company constantly developing biopolymers as performance additives, released a 100 percent biobased PVC modifier, I6001, last December.  I6001 is an effective multi-functional polymeric modifier for semi-rigid and flexible PVC compounds. It improves impact resistance, tear resistance, tensile toughness and plasticization, […]

Yahoo users who got recycled account IDs said they’ve found a security risk — they are receiving emails containing the personal information of former account owners InformationWeek.com reported Tuesday. The users told the news site that initially, they were receiving junk mail for the Yahoo ID’s previous owner, but then other mail with sensitive information started showing up. This included account information, confirmation for appointments and flights, and event announcements. The old owners must still be giving out the email address without knowing they no longer have access to the account. One user, an IT security professional named Tom Jenkins, described the potential for identity theft as, “kind of crazy”: “I can gain access to their Pandora account, but I won’t. I can gain access to their Facebook account, but I won’t. I know their name, address and phone number. I know where their child goes to school, I know the last four digits of their social security number. I know they had an eye doctor’s appointment last week and I was just invited to their friend’s wedding.” We’ve contacted Yahoo for a comment and will update if we hear back. The company told InformationWeek that it takes the “security and privacy of our users very seriously,” and has received complaints from “a very small number of users who have received emails through other third parties which were intended for the previous account holder.” It continues to ask other companies, the ones sending the emails, to verify accounts by adding a […]

On Monday, September 23, Microsoft will be launching (but not shipping) its next-generation Surface tablets at an invitation-only event in New York City. In the past few weeks, lots of leaks have revealed much of what’s expected to debut at the launch. Although Microsoft officials haven’t commented on or confirmed these specs, I’ve heard and seen information that leads me to believe they are correct. The new Surfaces are going to look almost identical to the current Surfaces, as they are going to use the same 10.6-inch screens and VaporMg casing and be compatible with the same snap-on keyboard/covers that the current Surfaces use. They will have the same number of USB ports and they won’t support LTE, just WiFi. The Surface 2, the successor to Surface RT, will be an ARM-based (Tegra 4) tablet with an estimated eight hours of battery life. It will feature a new ClearType full HD display, the one that debuted on the Surface Pro earlier this year. The Surface Pro 2, the successor to the Surface Pro, will run an Intel Core i5-based Haswell processor, and allegedly get seven hours of battery life instead of just four to five hours. Windows SuperSite editor Paul Thurrott has the full list of expected Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 specs, including weight, thickness, ports, etc. The more interesting part of Monday’s Surface launch, in my view, are the new Surface peripherals. In spite of Microsoft’s claims last year that the company had no intentions of making a Surface Pro docking […]