Founded by Cynthia Breazeal, Jibo is exactly the type of robot that will usher in the age of personal robotics.  The reason for this is simple - the price will be about $500.  This is in line with a task robot like an iRobot Roomba.  It combines many of the features that are important to robotics - cloud robotics, social robotics that adds an emotional level to communications, and the leveraging mobile device trends that have drastically brought down the cost and increased the capability of mobile processors, sensors, and other components.  Think of these simple personal robots as embodied smartphones - they are embodied in that they have moving parts for a purpose.  In this case the purpose is to aim the camera sensor and communicate with emotion.  Adding mobility adds more complexity and cost.  Adding manipulation adds even more complexity and cost.  All these things will be commercialized, but they will start with personal robots like this that are much more affordable.  Mobility will be built off platforms that telepresence robots use, and manipulation added onto that.  As the personal robotics market progresses, people will see the value in them.  The value in Jibo and other products to come like it will be family-wide communications and reminders around the home, telepresence, something to automatically take pictures and videos or do so on voice command, and more.  A completely stationary device could do much of this but wouldn't be able to aim the camera sensor(s).  Jibo combines functionality with a new UI (social robot) to create a product that is fun and useful.

Today’s news about the launch of Thread Group is worth a look that’s lengthier than your average tech-news look. In brief, the goal of this initiative is to create a new wireless connectivity technology that is designed ground-up for IoT devices, especially the ones operating in a smart-home environment. This seems to mean that Thread will support 6LoWPAN and mesh networking, and aims to improve the state of the art in terms of power consumption and connection security. That’s the goal at least.

There continues to be more developments and questions raised about NFC and mobile payments.  As might be expected, when you get into discussions about who pays what, and gets what cut of what fees and revenues then things get bogged down.  It is very rare that any technology is win-win for all stakeholders with a vested interest in its development.  That is the nature of technology, it more often than not disrupts and companies look to take advantage of the options that are made available to them.  Even rarer is it that a single company has enough scale or influence to push through a new technology into the mainstream.  NTT DoCoMo with FeliCa and Suica was an exception, one not recognised by many proponents of NFC when they said why can’t we (in country X) make NFC work like in Japan?

Samsung recently announced late 2014 will mark the end of its Plasma TV line and LG has expressed (albeit not entirely official) a similar sentiment and timeline – Panasonic ended Plasma TV production earlier this year.  Reviewers time and time again rated Plasma TVs as among the best performing TVs and many have recently published what can best be described as eulogies to honor the technology.    Despite these reviews most consumers eschewed PDPs for LCD/LED TVs and yet like the reviewers a significant number of devotees and self-proclaimed videophiles are lamenting the demise of what they feel is a superior TV technology.  But is it?

Launched this week, Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) is the latest attempt to sort out the interoperability issue that is looming over the Internet of Things. The consortium’s founding members include Atmel, Broadcom, Dell, Intel, Samsung, and Wind River (a subsidiary of Intel), and its mission is to collaboratively develop a new open standard for device discovery and connectivity. At the moment, details on the objectives are scarce, but most presumably they are very similar to those of AllSeen Alliance that was formed in last December. There has been a fair amount of speculation on the motives driving the OIC, but hopefully there’s room for some more, as I simply can’t keep mine to myself.

Two weeks ago Android for Work was announced at Google I/O. Beginning with Android ‘L’ devices, followed by updates to Android Ice Cream Sandwich and higher (4.0), Android smartphones will have Android for Work capabilities. Of particular interest was the announcement of Samsung Knox contribution. Now it remains unclear what exactly *contribution* means, but Knox is a very complex solution with various levels of security capabilities. Whatever the level of Knox contribution to Android for Work, both Google and Samsung should benefit, especially in developing markets.

When Google announced its acquisition of Nest back in January, I wrote that the rationale of the deal was largely about enabling potential APIs and third-party apps. With the news that Google is indeed opening up Nest to (approved) third parties, it would now seem that I even wasn’t entirely wrong. With a few more of these recent and unexpected kernels of corn, this blind chicken might be able to make popcorn one day. Even a spoonful would do, really.

Pretty isn't a term that I have had to use much in my time as a technology analyst. But pretty is in many ways the battleground for Lyric and Nest thermostats.

At its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced that iOS 8, which will be released in the autumn, will include HealthKit, an application that will pull together data from a range of sports, wellness, and mHealth applications hosted on its devices or wearable devices that are connected to them. Apple has taken a cautious step with HealthKit, but it is worth looking at the plans and their potential.