How Nest and Opower quietly morphed into competitors
The leading energy data startups Nest and Opower have quietly started to look more like competitors, though with some significant differences. Read more »
A land grab emerges over the connected thermostat
The connected thermostat is one of the hottest devices out of the Internet of Things that’s using a data connection to get smart software and to enable new types of services. It’s also getting a lot of attention from the latest Valley startups. Read more »
Interview: AT&T’s Lurie on building the iOS of the connected home
photo: Shutterstock / alexmillos
AT&T President Glenn Lurie has big ambitions for Ma Bell’s Digital Life division. He’s not slapping together a bunch of connected home applications. He’s building a platform — an iOS for the Internet of things. And like the iPhone, Digital Life may come with its own Siri. Read more »
Nest thermostat reviewed: A smart device for all seasons
Nest introduced its smart thermostat in October of last year only to find that there was greater initial demand for its product than originally thought. After using a review unit for longer than I should have, I can see why: This good-looking device is super smart. Read more »
The implications of the Honeywell-Nest lawsuit
Check out the results of our survey of 200+ GigaOM readers on what they think are the implications of the Honeywell-Nest lawsuit. Read more »
How the Honeywell, Nest lawsuit could stifle innovation
When tech patent lawsuits land in the middle of an industry they tend to make a loud, dull, thud sound. Nobody particularly likes them, both parties can often times end up looking bad, (or at least petty) and patent lawsuits are a guaranteed time and money-suck. Read more »
Honeywell killed off its learning thermostat 20 years ago
Two decades Honeywell tested out learning thermostats — the notion behind Nest’s new device — and found that consumers didn’t take to them and would rather control their thermostat themselves. Read more »
Hey Silicon Valley, Nest isn’t the only smart thermostat around [photos]
There’s a perception in Silicon Valley that smart thermostat startup Nest created the world’s first connected thermostat. While the Nest thermostat is gorgeous and potentially a game-changing, there’s dozens of companies that are making smart thermostats and software, and here’s a dozen of them in photos: Read more »
Tapping weather data for better demand response
Energy software company EnergyHub and weather and sensor network company Earth Networks have teamed up to offer a smart thermostat and demand response program for utilities and consumers. Read more »
What big data and smart thermostats can reveal about us
Energy software startup EnergyHub is powering around 100,000 connected thermostats in the U.S. with its management software, and those thernostats are producing around 5 billion data points each month. What kind of trends will that big data reveal about Americans and energy consumption? Read more »
Now live: Verizon’s smart energy home products
Phone company Verizon quietly launched its smart home products nationwide about three months ago, which enable customers to lock and unlock doors and windows, watch home video cameras remotely, and manage thermostats and lighting. Read more »
Nest’s log jam is opening up for its smart thermostat
The Nest thermostat has been sold out for months, but it looks like that backlog is starting to clear. While the thermostat still isn’t available on it website, the company is offering some potential customers on its email list a chance to buy the device. Read more »
Unboxing Nest’s learning thermostat
The hottest item that you probably couldn’t get for Christmas this year was the Nest thermostat, which is sold out until 2012. But I bought one a couple months ago for a Christmas present and the device showed up a couple days before the big day. Read more »
GigaOM’s top 10 green stories of 2011
Which stories dominated the green GigaOM clicks in 2011? This year was filled with smart thermostats, a dream of Apple getting into solar, the bankruptcy of Solyndra, the efficiency of cloud computing, Google’s green data centers and Tesla’s Model S. Read more »
Inside Nest’s learning thermostat
I got my Nest learning thermostat in the mail on Wednesday (a couple of weeks early), but thankfully, when I woke up on Thursday morning, the folks at SparkFun did a complete tear-down of the Nest, so I don’t have to break mine up. Yay. Read more »
After Chinese hacks, how do we secure the Internet of Things?
Reading about hackers hitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, I was struck by the hackers accessing a thermostat, and the tone of resignation around preventing such attacks. So how will we secure the Internet of things, and do we give up on perimeter-based security? Read more »
GigaOM RoadMap Rewind: A conversation with Nest’s Tony Fadell
The world’s first learning, connected thermostat from startup Nest, was sold out of 4 months of production in the first 72 hours, said Nest founder Tony Fadell in an interview at GigaOM’s RoadMap event last week. Check out the entire video Q&A. Read more »
Nest and the Apple-ification of the thermostat
The Nest burst onto the scene recently, making waves unlike any seen for a product you’d never guess anyone would care about: the home thermostat. Fadell talked about how his team is rethinking a 50-year-old industry with lessons from his days at Apple. Read more »
FAIL: Energy Savings Foiled by Dastardly Thermostats
Turns out programmable thermostats in our homes are almost as much of a nightmare to figure out as confounding DVRs. According to a recently-published study from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, a significant portion of users of programmable thermostats are incorrectly using them. Read more »
