Kiosk PC News – Dell Announces Industrial PC in Germany

The products are fanless, solid-state design and highly reliable devices to use “headless” or with keyboard, mouse and monitor. Flexible and powerful, with extensive input/output (I/O) options, they run on Intel processors.

Source: kioskindustry.org

Kiosk PC News – Dell Announces Industrial PC in Germany. And it has serial ports (yes, as in plural…)

IoT Reality: Smart Devices, Dumb Defaults — Krebs on Security

Before purchasing an “Internet of things” (IoT) device — a thermostat, camera or appliance made to be remotely accessed and/or controlled over the Internet — consider whether you can realistically care for and feed the security needs of yet another IoT thing.

Source: krebsonsecurity.com

There is a good chance your newly adopted IoT puppy will be:

-chewing holes in your network defenses;
-gnawing open new critical security weaknesses;
-bred by a vendor that seldom and belatedly patches;
-tough to wrangle down and patch

In April 2014, researchers at Cisco alerted HVAC vendor Trane about three separate critical vulnerabilities in their ComfortLink II line of Internet-connected thermostats. These thermostats feature large color LCD screens and a Busybox-based computer that connects directly to your wireless network, allowing the device to display not just the temperature in your home but also personal photo collections, the local weather forecast, and live weather radar maps, among other things.

The Future Of The Retail Customer Experience: Experts Discuss Trends And Engagement – Forbes

Do you know what robots, Abe Vigoda, and the Internet of Things have in common? They’re are all part of the future of the retail customer experience, as you’ll learn in this discussion of what’s new and/or interesting in the retail customer experience landscape. This discussion features customer experience consultants Micah Solomon (that’s me, your author) […]

Source: www.forbes.com

In-store sensing starts to give bricks and mortar a leg up on clicks and mortar.

Why vending machines could be the grocery retailing trend of the future

Made from stainless steel and hand built in northern Germany, the machines can be chilled or non-chilled. A variety of locker sizes are available, and users can set an individual price for each individual locker. There is a range of payment options – cash, debit cards, contactless cards. The machines can even give cash change if required.

Source: www.producebusinessuk.com

Drive-through stores next?

Perhaps the ultimate in retail vending styles has been proposed in Russia. Inventor Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich has applied for a patent for a drive-through grocery supermarket. Watch his video on YouTube.


According to his patent application, the concept solves “the technical problem of improving the quality of customer service while providing maximum convenience and choice of products, reducing time to service customers, cutting the queue time and lowering the time and costs from commercial enterprises associated with the filling and layout of goods”.

He proposes a shop where consumers would drive up to an empty checkout bay, and (while remaining in their car) they reach across to a vertically rotating vending machine, operated by a button, to choose the required products.

Products would be placed on a conveyor belt and passed to the checkout operator who places them in bags. When the shopping is complete, the shopper simply drives up to the checkout, pays, takes the bags through the window and departs.

Of course, such a proposal is still very much in the planning stages – but the indications are that retail vending is definitely set to become more visible, as Dr Gaye concludes: “There are some brilliant ideas around the world. Vending is really going to come to the UK in a big way”.