Technology

Google last week launched a Fact Check tag to help readers find fact-checking in major news stories published in the United States and the UK.

Readers will see tagged articles in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News & Weather apps for iOS and Android.

One factor the Google News algorithms consider in determining whether an article might contain fact checks is the Schema.org ClaimReview markup.

Another is whether sites follow commonly accepted criteria for fact checks.

Although there's a slew of biased media reports about the presidential candidates, the Fact Check tag "is aimed at all stories, not just political ones," Google said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by company rep Maggie Shiels. "The tag has just launched, so you will likely see an uptick in the coming weeks."

Applying the Fact Check Label

Google requires that discrete claims and checks be identified easily in the body of Fact Check articles. Readers should be able to understand what was checked, and what conclusions were reached.

Analysis must be transparent about sources and methods, with citations and references to primary sources.

The organization must be nonpartisan, with transparent funding and affiliations. It should examine a range of claims in its topic area instead of targeting a single person or entity.

Article titles must indicate that a claim is being reviewed, state conclusions reached, or simply indicate that the contents consist of fact checking.

Google News may apply the Fact Check tag to content published with fact-checking content adhering to its criteria.

Google may remove sites that don't follow the criteria for the ClaimReview markup from Google News, or ignore the site's markup.

What's in a Tag

"Done well, where valid news stories that report ethically and accurately are used, this could really help journalism and the public," said Lynn Walsh, national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.

"For journalists, it's just one more validation that their work is trustworthy," she told TechNewsWorld. "For the public, it provides a way to cut through the clutter that sometimes exists -- like articles that don't clearly distinguish between fact and opinion."

However, there's a risk that tagged articles may not be fully vetted, accurate or ethically reported, Walsh warned. "With this just launching it's too early to tell, but this is something I think journalists and news organizations should watch closely."

Who Watches the Watcher?

"It appears that Google's depending on fact checking collectives to police themselves and is then simply utilizing fact checkers that conform to the standards of the collectives," said Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

"This is OK, but Google may face issues unless it makes the quality of its fact checking very clear," he told TechNewsWorld. "A disavowal of the accuracy of fact checking seems likely at some point."

Another concern is whether Google is "attempting to credential articles and reporters as legitimate, and others as non-legitimate," Walsh said.

There's a need for legitimizing sources, but "this could be a slippery slope," she cautioned. "We have a right to publish and speak freely in this country no matter who you are."

Apple appears to be shifting its driverless car ambitions into a lower gear. Changes in the company's automotive strategy have resulted in hundreds of job cuts and the shelving of plans to build a car of its own, Bloomberg reported Monday.

"Project Titan" -- Apple's internal name for the automotive initiative -- has a new focus, according to the report. It will develop an autonomous driving system that will give the company the option of partnering with an established auto maker or producing a robo car of its own.

The Titan team has until the end of 2017 to prove the feasibility of its self-driving system and to decide on a final direction for the project, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the initiative.

The shift in direction follows months of disagreements, leadership uncertainty, and supply chain problems within the project, they reportedly said.

Tough to Fit In

Rumors of Apple scaling back its driverless car program have been in the wind for some time, noted Roger C. Lanctot, associate director of the global automotive practice at Strategy Analytics.

"We've been hearing about it for awhile," he told TechNewsWorld.

"The whole proposition seemed sketchy from the beginning. With so much innovation and development activity going on, it's difficult to perceive where the need for another car manufacturer like Apple exists," Lanctot said.

It's a crowded field, observed Renee Stephens, vice president of automotive research at J.D. Power.

Apple would have to face "some serious competitors with some serious experience in manufacturing," she told TechNewsWorld. "Companies like Ford and Mercedes are looking to put fully autonomous vehicles on the road by 2020."

Margin Problems

Besides being crowded, it's a field where making money can be challenging, too.

"Apple is a company that traditionally likes to make very high-margin products," said Sam Abuelsamid, a senior research analyst with Navigant Research.

"They don't like to make commodity products," he told TechNewsWorld.

The Project Titan team has spent a significant amount of time over the last two years trying to create something distinctive that Apple can sell at a premium.

"The car industry is a very tough place to make a profit," Abuelsamid said. "Most auto makers are lucky to hit 8 or 9 percent profit margins. Apple typically hits 35 to 40 percent on most of its products."

Ford Needs to Feel Like a Ford

Scaling down its auto making plans might not be enough. Apple might find it difficult to crack into the systems market for autos, too, Abuelsamid noted.

"Auto makers have made it clear that they want to have their own unique user interface and look and feel in their vehicles," he said.

"When you get into a Ford, Ford wants it to look and feel like a Ford," he explained. "They don't want an Apple or a Google look and feel."

That doesn't seem to have prevented some of them from supporting CarPlay, though, which allows a car radio to act as a display and controller for an iPhone.

"Apple has had much greater success with its CarPlay smartphone integration than Alphabet has had with Android auto," Strategy Analytics' Lanctot pointed out.

Playing With Others

Still, if Apple wants to create automation systems for vehicles, it's going to need to play nice with auto makers, which could be a problem for the company.

"Partnering hasn't been something that Apple has been open to in the past," observed J.D. Power's Stephens.

"They haven't been open to providing access to a lot of their coding," she said. "That's something manufacturers are looking for before they will integrate Apple capabilities into their vehicles."

The Right Approach

Apple's approach to the automotive market has been a good one, noted Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies.

"They've researched the idea from every angle and then brought in Bob Mansfield to manage it and pare it down to an offering that is feasible and makes sense for Apple," he told TechNewsWorld.

Mansfield, who led the hardware engineering development of the MacBook Air, iMac and iPad, took Project Titan's helm this summer, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Project Titan will play a significant role as Apple maps out its future.

"It is important to their CarPlay strategy and would help them differentiate themselves within the next generation of smart automobiles," Bajarin said.

"Autos are the ultimate mobile experience," he pointed out, "and tying them to Apple's products is key to their long-term strategy to boost their apps and services business."

The status of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange grew a bit murky on Tuesday after the group accused the U.S. State Department of pressuring Ecuadorian officials to block him from posting additional emails linked to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The Ecuadorian foreign ministry on Tuesday acknowledged placing temporary restrictions on Assange's access, saying in a statement that it did not wish to interfere in a foreign election. It also said that it was acting on its own and not in response to any outside pressures.

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 to shield himself from two outstanding sex assault charges stemming from a 2010 trip he made to Sweden. He has continued to lead the WikiLeaks organization from there.

WikiLeaks earlier on Tuesday had accused U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry of pressuring his counterparts in Ecuador to crack down on the email leaks during a round of peace negotiations to end the decades-old conflict between Marxist FARC rebels and the Columbian military.

Kerry held private meetings with Ecuador during a sideline period in negotiations with Columbia that began on Sept. 26, WikiLeaks claimed.

The John Kerry private meeting with Ecuador was made on the sidelines of the negotiations which took place pricipally on Sep 26 in Colombia.

— WikiLeaks (@WikiLeaks) October 18, 2016

Assange lost his Internet connection at the Embassy at 5 p.m. on Saturday GMT, shortly after the group published Clinton's Goldman Sachs speech, WikiLeaks said in an earlier tweet.

We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs speechs.

— WikiLeaks (@WikiLeaks) October 17, 2016

Code Blue

WikiLeaks initially claimed that a state party intentionally severed Assange's Internet link and that it had "activated the appropriate contingency plans."

WikiLeaks also released three tweets called "pre-commitment 1: John Kerry," "pre-commitment 2: Ecuador" and "pre-commitment 3: UK FCO." Each tweet included what appeared to be alpha-numeric cryptokeys, more than 60 characters long.

The tweets set off a frenzy of speculation, including rumors that Assange had died. However, that rumor was quickly shot down.

Assange had warned for several months that he would release information that was damaging to Clinton before the November presidential election.

Method and Madness

The method and motivation of the various actors in this most recent drama left Troy Hunt, a Microsoft regional director and MVP, at a loss as to exactly what happened this weekend.

"Seems a bit weird to me -- Ecuador has granted him asylum," he told the E-Commerce Times. "Why pull his Internet? And how was the U.S. able to do it when he's holed up in a building in London? Or was it political pressure rather than technical means used by the U.S.?"

Kerry had nothing to do with Assange's loss of Internet access, according to State Department spokesperson John Kirby.

"While our concerns about WikiLeaks are longstanding, any suggestion that Secretary Kerry or the State Department were involved in shutting down WikiLeaks is false," he said. "Reports that Secretary Kerry had conversations with Ecuadorian officials about this are simply untrue. Period."

US Will Strike Back

Assange made headlines earlier this year when WikiLeaks was connected to suspected Russian hacks of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton and her associates, as well as network intrusions of several Democratic Party organizations.

The leaked emails are part of the Russian government's targeted campaign to undermine the confidence in the U.S. presidential election and possibly influence the outcome, according to U.S. government officials and cybersecurity experts.

The Obama administration earlier this month officially accused the Russian government of orchestrating the cyberattacks and promised to deliver a proportional response.

Officials at Ecuador's U.S. embassy referred us to the country's Foreign Ministry, which did not respond to our request to comment on this story.

WikiLeaks recently released a new batch of emails belonging to longtime Clinton associate John Podesta, who is the current chairman of the Clinton presidential campaign and was chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and counselor to President Barack Obama.

Electronic Arts' new epic first-person shooter Battlefield 1 could be the war game to end all war games, based on the first wave of reviews published Monday. This latest title in the popular franchise from Swedish developer DICE is an action-packed, rip-roaring take on World War I.

There's a single-player campaign that features a story worthy of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which lets the player partake in key moments in the global conflict. There's also intense online multiplayer action with support for 64 players.

As with past Battlefield titles, players can choose from a number of classes, each offering unique weapons and abilities to fight in the trenches. They also can control numerous World War I era modes of transportation, including bi-planes, tanks and even horses.

Battlefield 1 will be released on Oct. 21 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Direct Hit

Battlefield 1 highlights the attention to details in the weapons and equipment, while it further captures the intensity and at times the chaos of the First World War, the early reviews note.

"Battlefield 1's less precise weaponry and slower-moving vehicles work to the game's advantage, modulating the havoc of platoon-scale fracas by increasing reaction times and slowing things down in general," explained Matt Peckham for Time.

The new single-player campaign narrative also won kudos.

"The horrors and heroism of The Great War are well told in War Stories, Battlefield 1's campaign," noted Miguel Concepcion for GameSpot. "It's a more focused experience compared to prior Battlefield story modes of globetrotting and one-note powderkeg narratives. These new tales are organized in a non-linear anthology format that doesn't need to be played in any particular order."

This change may have been geared toward enhancing the gameplay experience, suggested Phil Hornshaw for Digital Trends.

"To some degree, these stories are tutorial chapters for multiplayer," noted Hornshaw. "One focuses on a pilot and his gunner, giving players a chance to learn how to handle aircraft. Another is all about a tank crew, with plenty of time spent discovering how to best handle it."

However, some took aim at the fact that the game -- like the actual war -- could result in times when it is difficult to make progress.

"For every cool moment I have in Battlefield 1, whether it's bayoneting a soldier or chopping someone in half from horseback, I'll be blown up by 20 tanks or be headshot by 20 snipers, and often it's more frustrating than fun," said Paul Tassi for Forbes.

Shell Blast From the Past

Battlefield 1 is a significant departure from the trend toward fictionalizing modern conflicts rather than historic ones. In fact, apart from a few strategy games and independently produced titles such as Verdun, game makers largely have ignored World War I.

It remains to be seen whether the trenches of Europe and even the sweeping deserts of Arabia are attractive enough to inspire interest among gamers looking for something different. World War I technology, though deadly, may seem antiquated compared to the fast-moving helicopters and accurate sniper rifles today's gamers have come to expect.

"This is going to be a tough title to move, given the weapons, but for a dedicated player or one who wants to play a game that won't favor twitch speed and youth over strategy, this may be the ideal title," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"Targeting these older players will be the key to success," he told TechNewsWorld.

Over the Top

Another concern is whether this game may sugarcoat the horrors of the trenches. World War I generally is not romanticized, due to its association with mud-filled trenches, static lines, and at times hopelessness.

"It's a game, and as such, it has little to do with the reality of war," said military history writer John Adams-Graf, editor of Military Trader.

"But I suspect conveying the essence of suffering during World War I isn't the intent of the game," he told TechNewsWorld.

Rather, the primary intent is to provide entertainment to customers, and game designers are always on the lookout for new backdrops for that intent.

This time it happens to happen the Great War, Adams-Graf said.

"Will that have an impact on those who study the Great War or who perpetuate the memory of the 17 million who lost their lives, or the 20 million who became casualties during the war?" he pondered.

"I doubt it, but it can't hurt," Adams-Graf said. "Inspiration to study and understand history can come from the most unexpected places. Perhaps Battlefield 1 will inspire a whole new awareness of the international struggle, turmoil, destruction, and loss of life that occurred during the First World War."

Maui 1 "Aurora," which launched this summer, is one of the latest newcomers in the continuously changing list of Linux distributions.

Maui Linux, with its new Hawaii desktop environment, is a replacement and rebranding of the discontinued Netrunner project. Its developers are attempting to continue the Kubuntu-based heritage, while adopting some of the latest technologies impacting other Linux distros in varying stages.

The demise of Netrunner and the birth of Maui 1 occurred simultaneously. Essentially, Maui Aurora is the new Netrunner distro. This new release marks the transition to a Long Term Support base. Some of Maui's components will get regular updates as partially rolling releases.

Maui Linux uses KDE neon as a base, and its new development team expects to provide cutting-edge versions of KDE software in a semi-rolling release model.

The Maui distro is reportedly the first distro to fully implement the X Window Graphic User Interface replacement. It also relies heavily on QtQuick and the Systemd initialization process.

Maui will focus on keeping tools up-to-date: Plasma, Frameworks and KDE applications; single software packages such as Firefox and Thunderbird; and anything that gets updated on Xenial via backporting. This approach will allow the developer team to release updated ISOs shipping the latest KDE software on a frequent basis.

Dual Innovations Unite

Wayland slowly is gaining adoption momentum among some established Linux distros, so it makes sense that a freshly minted desktop environment comes with Maui bearing a namesake closely connected to the new distro's name. Other distros are working on making existing desktop environments compatible with Wayland.

Hawaii is desktop environment based on Wayland and the Qt Quick application framework. Wayland is a new display server replacing the X Window system, X.org.

It better supports the majority of user interface toolkits, such as GTK and Qt, according to developers.

The Hawaii desktop that drives Maui Linux is built from the ground up to work with Wayland and Qt developer tools.

Wayland -- in place of X.org -- runs between the input and output in the operating system to coordinate the on-screen display. It handles the directions from mouse input and windows behavior control buttons. It also provides the needed interaction between Linux user and the GUI to keep the operating system humming along.

Why the change? X.org is several decades old. It has been adjusted and tweaked beyond its capabilities, according to some developers. They want to throw out the old and bring in the new to avoid the bugs and security holes that no doubt lurk within.

First Full-Fledged Following

Hawaii has not gained much acceptance among other Linux distros. One of the first to dabble with the Hawaii Desktop Environment is RebeccaBlackOS, a Linux live distribution intended to serve as a technology preview, which I reviewed earlier this year. It offers an early look at Wayland in action.

A few other distro makers, such as Fedora had protoypes of Wayland running, but the options for different desktop environments available were limited.

RebeccaBlack OS offered a sampling of Wayland and the Hawaii desktop project that ultimately was adopted by the Maui distro.

Maui Primer

Maui is a GNU/Linux-based operating system. It will get continuous updates and support until the next LTS release in 2018. The developers plan to release updated ISO versions every three to four months with the latest of Plasma software and other updates.

You can download the ISO here. You have but one choice. Maui is 64-bit only.

If you are a Netrunner user, you can not take any shortcuts by upgrading directly to Maui. The differences in what was Netrunner and what is Maui 1 are vast.

Start fresh. I found the installation process to be very smooth and straightforward.

I tried the live session ISO on several of my desktop and laptop computers using both DVD and USB installations. I did not have any disappointments. I then duplicated that experience when I installed Maui 1 in a virtual machine.

Look and Feel

The Hawaii desktop has a nicely simplified user experience. Despite Maui's roots in the KDE Plasma ecosystem, what you get with Hawaii is a much less overpowering user interface.

Maui 1's integration of the new Hawaii desktop environment has a clean look with a very comfy feel. It easily manages the KDE Plasma screen.

Hawaii is still what you use within the KDE Plasma screen, but all of the Plasma complexities of using KDE are gone.

Do not get me wrong. I was a long-time KDE desktop fan, but It took me considerable patience to learn how to fine-tune the user experience. Over the years, I found KDE too tiring and welcomed an alternative. For me, that became the Cinnamon desktop.

The new Maui desktop is much like Cinnamon in its earlier versions. Maui still thrives on the KDE look, but it has a much more subdued feel. Especially for new users, that is a very good thing.

Instead of forcing you to know every detail of your computer, you can turn it on, sit down and just use it.

It's not the kind of Linux distribution you've tried before. Instead of including a plethora of different desktop environments, Hawaii has only one, made to overcome the boundaries of the current solutions.

Using Maui

Hawaii has a balanced settings policy. It is not minimalist, with nearly no user customization preferences available, but neither is it so highly customizable that users get lost in a flood of overbearing options for every single settings detail. Instead, Hawaii offers a collection of reasonable defaults tempered with useful user options.

The result is a clean-looking screen devoid of any graphical clutter and corner buttons for activities and virtual desktops, a confusing array of preference panels and notification areas, or any of the other "plasmoid" stuff that can befuddle KDE users.

Rather, the Hawaii desktop handles much of the Plasma screen functionality simply. You can add what you want -- virtual desktop switcher, activity switcher and widgets galore -- to the panel bar.

Right-clicking on the panel bar makes it easy to add features and functions. You can launch many of these directly from panel bar. You can right-click anywhere on the desktop to access other options quickly.

Bottom Line

Maui is an out-of-the-box solution to being productive with the KDE ecosystem. You get all the KDE software and the freedom to add other packages just as you would in most Linux distros.

The window appearance is flat, almost in the style of Google's Android Material Design scheme.

Hawaii's menu provides a new way to find your installed software applications.

Maui, the Netrunner Kubuntu replacement, is an inviting alternative. It is both new and already accomplished. The developers took a Kubuntu distro that was well-oiled but at the end of its development line to the next level.

That should make adopting the Maui Linux distro a less risky option. Most other Linux distros are moving in the new direction of Wayland, Systemd and such. Maui's developers are already there.

Maui 1 is very stable and easy to use. It is a well-stocked distribution with an established library of KDE software.

Want to Suggest a Review?

Is there a Linux software application or distro you'd like to suggest for review? Something you love or would like to get to know?

Please email your ideas to me, and I'll consider them for a future Linux Picks and Pans column.

And use the Talkback feature below to add your comments!

Not that it isn't scary enough -- but if you look at both candidates, who have had their images destroyed largely by technology (tapes and emails) -- there is a huge warning inherent in the process.

Email really wasn't a big thing until the late 1990s and even having your own email server wouldn't have been likely before 2005, let alone thinking through the security aspects. The Trump tape, which wasn't indexed based on the off-air segment, would have been nearly impossible to find before it was digitized and indexed.

It's likely neither of these issues would have come up before Obama first ran for office, because you couldn't have found the footage in a reasonable amount of time and linking a third-party server into the government system would have been far more difficult. (Yes, you did have folks using personal email services like Hotmail but not their own server.)

Increasingly, videos like Trump's are being indexed, digitized and archived in a way that makes them easier to be found, and now -- take a breath -- your social media, email, and increasingly videos of you (often recorded by people you don't know) are going through an even more robust process.

As you watch Billy Bush lose his job and likely his career, he could be the canary in a coal mine. What I'm suggesting is that there's an increasing likelihood that what happened to him, as well as to Trump and Clinton, could happen to you or your kids in the not-too-distant future.

I'll share some thoughts and close with my product of the week: an app that actually could make your IoT stuff work as promised.

A Digitized World

We talk a lot about digitizing our life, and we've had several attempts at life cameras. What many people don't realize, though, is that our lives already are being digitized on a massive scale. We've recently learned about the government program that was scanning and indexing correspondence on Yahoo's email service, and you have to know there is virtually no chance this is an isolated instance, and that there have been a number of initiatives to capture, digitize and index our cellphone calls.

Social Media already starts out being public, and there is already an initiative in place to make scanning social media accounts a requirement for entry into the U.S. It is certain that social media is being scanned regularly -- and with vast improvements in facial recognition, pictures and videos taken by our friends, family and strangers are being scanned and, increasingly, connected to us.

What many do not realize is that it isn't only new stuff that is being digitized -- it is old stuff as well. So there is an increasing chance that -- as in Trump's case -- something you did years ago eventually will be connected to your name.

It kind of makes me wonder what will happen in the next major election, because we are just at the tip of the iceberg now. It is very likely that in the next eight years, and certainly in the next 18, much of our past lives will be available to anyone who wants to do the research -- whether we like it or not.

The End of Politics as We Know It

One of the questions really struck me in the last presidential debate: whether it was OK for a politician to have conflicting public and private opinions. While Clinton drifted into some screwy Abraham Lincoln response, she never really answered the question. However, in the new world that we are getting a glimpse of, there may be no "private" for most of us, and certainly not for politicians.

As we saw four years ago with the smartphone leak of a Romney talk, the idea that anyone will be able to say something in an event, even a private one, that won't be on some social network within hours increasingly will be obsolete.

So, regardless of whether it is right, it likely will be untenable for folks running for office to have two opposing opinions (with the private opinion being the real one) because this common dishonesty simply won't remain private. Email really never has been secure. I was auditing it back when it was first created in the 1980s, which suggests there always are eyes on email, and what you write could -- and likely will -- be used against you.

Given the lack of honesty, almost to an extreme level, it is also clear that this election is fueling ever-more-powerful real time fact checking. Given that the fact checkers currently have no controls placed on them, I expect some abuse. However, the ability to maintain lies for even a few minutes soon may be obsolete, as more and more folks learn to live-search information on candidates' comments during their speeches and debates.

It wouldn't surprise me if in future debates, some streaming services run fact-checked responses in real time right next to video of the candidate talking.

I wonder if we also shouldn't apply a qualitative metric, though. For instance, let's say you have two politicians one lies 80 percent of the time but the 20 percent that is truthful is on issues where your life is at risk, and you have another politician who is honest 80 percent of the time but the 20 percent that is false is on those same life-threatening issues.

It's not just the amount of dishonesty but how much damage it does that is important. By the way, there is no subtle reference to Trump or Clinton here, as I clearly haven't done the qualitative analysis on either that would allow me to drive this point home. (That would be more than a full time job this year.)

Wrapping Up: Final Thoughts

We likely should be looking more at what happened to Billy Bush and what is happening to Hillary Clinton than to Donald Trump. Billy effectively was fired for something he did 11 years ago, as a result of a process that largely didn't exist when Obama was first elected.

All three cases also should represent a warning to everyone that what you say or write will have legs that could last your lifetime, and come back to haunt your career decades in the future. It is likely time that we all started acting like we are always on stage, because we actually are. Privacy effectively died last decade.

There are a couple of good things that I think came out of this event. Suddenly, people all over the country are taking an interest in the physical abuse of women, something that has been ignored too long. The connected male behavior is being called out, not as status-building guy thing, but as the reprehensible behavior it is.

Though unintentionally, Trump and Billy Bush may have made a good chunk of the world much safer -- or at least accelerated the process of making it safer -- for women. Millions of women now are speaking up about their own abuse, making many of us realize we hadn't been aware of how big this problem was.

This could go a long way toward making men change this unacceptable behavior. If you have kids, this likely should be -- and for many it already is -- a topic of discussion, and that too is a good thing.

So, Donald Trump may have made the country greater, but sadly it was unintentional. It strikes me that if he took this issue and owned it, pivoting to offer massive support for women's issues like this, and if he were believably contrite, he then might turn the leak into an asset (and he has distanced himself from the party platform). Apparently he isn't that guy, which is why I expect he'll lose.

I've been pretty unimpressed with the IoT efforts to date. Most of this connected crap simply doesn't interoperate, and the point was never to just turn things off and on with your cellphone but to connect them so they'd act automatically.

For instance, it would be nice if they were capable of changing the settings on your home heating and cooling system, turning off your lights, and arming your alarm when everyone is away from home. It would be great if you could give your Amazon Echo a command like "Alexa Good Night" and have it adjust all of your electronics -- alarm systems, sensors, and appliances (like firing up your dishwasher) -- for what you want done while you sleep.

Right now, doing that automatically should be possible but for the most part it isn't, because few things talk to each other.

Well, Stringify, which unfortunately only works on iOS (they'll have Android by year end), is effectively the Rosetta Stone for IoT devices.The Rosetta Stone was kind of a universal translator for ancient languages, and Stringify is a platform created to connect simply the huge diversity of devices that are out there.

It can connect your Alexa to things that Alexa can't yet address directly, and it actually works better with Insteon that Insteon's own controller software, along with 600-plus other IoT platforms like Nest.

Sadly it doesn't yet work with all of the tech in my own house, like ADT Pulse Security, the advanced Emme home heating and cooling solution or Blossom smart sprinkler controller. (This is my subtle way to get these on Stringify's to do list.)

Still, of all the solutions currently in market, it is the most comprehensive. If you are building a solution in your own home, starting with this and picking from its supported list should give you an integrated solution that early IoT adopters will envy for years.

Stringify fixes a massive problem with IoT at the moment, and if you are on iOS, this would be an excellent place to start. These folks currently are my gold standard with regard to IoT implementation, and thus Stringify is my product of the week.