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.

Samsung’s Voice of the Body Initiative

Smartphones with MIMO for Wi-Fi will increase rapidly.  This could have taken off with 802.11n, since 802.11n first supported MIMO, but did not because of the increased cost of adding MIMO combined with the complexity of antenna placements in small devices.  The closer MIMO antennas are placed, the less of a benefit there is to use MIMO.  But this is changing rapidly, even though at first 802.11ac (1X1) was seen as a way to provide an increased data rate over the wider channels used in 5 GHz without having the added cost or complexity of MIMO.  There are a few reasons for this change:

On May 20, 2014, Telstra, Australia’s leading fixed and mobile network operator announced that it will invest more than AU$100 million to create “one of the world’s largest Wi-Fi networks” for use by its home broadband subscribers and the general public. In addition, Telstra’s Wi-Fi network which will become available early next year will also be able to extend overseas thanks to an agreement with Fon – the Spanish Wi-Fi provider, which will allow subscribers to connect to more than 12 million hotspots worldwide.