Although the Internet of Things is often regarded as a technology that is yet to really burst into life, a recent study reveals that it can already be hugely profitable.

An industry survey conducted by Progress and Harbor Research has found that 65 percent of IoT apps are generating revenue, with this figure expected to hit 80 percent by 2018.

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A paper produced by a team at the University of Pennsylvania confirms something many people have probably thought true for some time: the notion that internet users are unhappy with the way their privacy is undermined by advertisers and online companies, yet feel there is nothing they can do about it.

While marketing companies like to present an image of customers who are happy to hand over personal information in return for certain benefits, the truth is rather different. Rather than dedicating time and energy to trying to stop personal data from being exploited, people are instead taking it on the chin and accepting it as part and parcel of modern, online life. It's just the way things are.

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There is currently a battle underway over the Internet of Things. Samsung has its ARTIK platform while Huawei is pinning its hopes on its tiny LiteOS -- and Microsoft has Windows 10's AllJoyn feature which could prove pivotal in the widespread uptake of the IoT.

There is still plenty of scope for innovation, and it seems that the next great leap forward for connected devices could be the delivery of power over Wi-Fi. A team of US researchers have developed a technique that can be used to power small devices without the need for wires or battery changes.

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Every tech company worth its salt is running to get involved in the Internet of Things; Ubuntu is in on it, and Microsoft has teamed up with more than one company to plant its IoT flag. Today Google unveiled its new IoT platform, Brillo.

Google is not entirely new to the Internet of Things -- it already has its cloud platform in place and has also acquired Nest. Destined for all manner of connected devices, Brillo is a stripped down and streamlined operating system based on Android. Google has not revealed how its size compares to Huawei's LiteOS, but has said that -- like Android M -- there is a focus on security, and the platform will run on Weave.

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A major challenge for society in the near future will be meeting the needs of an aging population, set to rise by 23 percent from 2010 to 2018, with the 65+ UK population expected to reach 16.9 million by 2035.

The combined pressures of this demographic change, reduced health and social care budgets and the desire of individuals to lead independent lives for longer will drive the need for more personalized health programs based on home-centric care.

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Harmony remotes, purchased by Logitech, have long been a standard for universal control of your home theater. However, the world is moving on and headed towards fully connected homes -- dwellings where we can control everything with the touch of a button, automate it and let it serve us. The Internet of Things can be scary, as my colleague Derrick Wlodarz pointed out, but it can also be fascinating in that shiny new gadget sort of way.

Slowly but surely you can do all of this, not only from your phone or tablet, but from that remote control sitting on the coffee table in front of you. Harmony has just picked up support for Nest Protect, a smoke detector, and Rheem EcoNet, a water heater system.

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Chinese firm Huawei today announces its IoT OS at an event in Beijing. The company predicts that within a decade there will be 100 billion connected devices and it is keen for its ultra-lightweight operating system to be at the heart of the infrastructure.

Based on Linux, LiteOS weighs in at a mere 10KB -- smaller than a Word document -- but manages to pack in support for zero configuration, auto-discovery, and auto-networking. The operating system will be open for developers to tinker with, and is destined for use in smart homes, wearables, and connected vehicles.

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The "Internet of Things" is a buzzword which is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s society. This is mostly due to the rise of crowd funding schemes and an insurgence of low power, highly capable microcontroller platforms such as Arduino.

The Equity Kicker expects 33 billion devices connected by 2020 with a large portion of them falling under the IoT umbrella term and Forbes are predicting some pretty mind-bending revenue estimates over the next few years. Many of these devices are greatly enhanced by increased connectivity to the internet where they have access to large amounts of cloud based computing power.

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Given all of the hype surrounding the Internet of Things and intelligent devices you might think that consumers would be keen to make use of all the latest options.

However, a new study by UK online retailer Appliances Direct suggests that for many people even mastering their washing machine is too much.

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Spending on Platform-as-a-Service (Paas), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is forecast to reach $118 billion this year, and it's clear the cloud is now big business. Companies are fighting to enter the space with new industry- and marketing-specific offerings. But what effect will this have and will it worry the big players like Amazon Web Services?

We spoke to Scott Swartz, VP, CTO Enterprise and Cloud Billing at Ericsson and founder of MetraTech, an enterprise billing specialist recently acquired by Ericsson, to find out more about the state of the IaaS space.

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The network is more exposed than ever before with the expanded attack surface IoT brings, leading to increasing support for securing interconnected devices. As the Industrialization of Hacking evolves, so does the number of vulnerable end points on the network including physical systems, mobile devices and wearable technologies.

The biggest challenge is a lack of visibility. The key to seeing an attacker’s every move, from control networks to the data center to the cloud, is contextual visibility by monitoring events and actions across the entire threat landscape before, during and after an attack. Only then will IT be able to continuously detect threats and address them in real time, decreasing the risk that the malicious activity will go undetected.

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Every company worth its salt is keen to get aboard the Internet of Things bandwagon, and Samsung is no different. Today the company announces its ARTIK platform which it hopes will accelerate the development of IoT apps and hardware for both consumers and the enterprise.

This is more than just a platform announcement, however; Samsung has produced three modules with a variety of integrated features ready to power the next generation of connected devices. The modules are backed up with embedded hardware security and can be tailored to a range of tasks.

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The Internet of Things offers huge scope to change the way we live and work. But for developers it introduces a whole new set of problems in allowing applications to talk to and use the information generated by IoT devices.

Californian company MODE is launching a cloud platform designed to help developers and emerging brands deliver IoT solutions quickly and easily.

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The Internet of Things is set to change many aspects of the way we live, but for companies and developers it represents a whole range of challenges when it comes to integration with existing systems and analyzing the extra data it generates.

Now analytics specialist Glassbeam and development platform supplier ThingWorx have announced a collaboration to allow their solutions to work together.

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When the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched its new Raspberry Pi 2, we were impressed to hear it would be able to run Windows 10. Admittedly it isn't the full PC version of the operating system, but rather a special version created especially to run on such devices.

Yesterday, following the keynote at its Build developer conference, Microsoft released a new build of Windows 10 Insider Preview, but that’s not all. It also pushed out a Windows 10 IoT Core Insider Preview with support for Raspberry Pi 2 and Intel’s Minnowboard Max. So if you have either of those devices, you can download and try out the preview right now.

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