Consumers are wary of smart homes that know too much

Nearly two-thirds of consumers are worried about home IoT devices listening in on their conversations, according to a Gartner survey released Monday. Those jitters aren’t too surprising after recent news items about TV announcers inadvertently activating viewers’ Amazon Echos, or about data from digital assistants being used as evidence in criminal trials. But privacy concerns…

When life gives you a 3D printer, make a house

Russia now has its very first 3D-printed house. The ‘construction’ process only took about 24 hours and came in around $10,000.  The structure is only 38 square meters (about 400 square feet) and includes a kitchen, living room and bathroom. On its website, Apis Cor claims that this is the first house to be printed…

MapR and Outscale partner on big data PaaS

At the Big Data Paris event in Paris, France, today, MapR Technologies and French enterprise-class cloud provider Outscale announced that they have joined forces to provide a big data platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering built on the MapR Converged Data Platform. Outscale will provide the new premium cloud service in Europe, North America and Asia and says…

Amazon Echo adds Office 365 calendar integration

Amazon’s Alexa added a new productivity skill to its tool set after we inadvertently discovered in mid-February. The smart assistant—embedded in the Echo line of smart speakers, as well as many other devices—now works with Office 365 business accounts, officially. That means anyone using Office 365 for work can now get their calendar updates from their smart…