Thermostat

Honeywell today filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nest Labs and is seeking to stop sales of Nest Labs' high-profile thermostat.

The lawsuit claims that Nest Labs infringes seven Honeywell patents. The longtime thermostat maker is seeking damages and is trying to prevent Nest Labs and Best Buy, which is also named in the suit, from selling Nest Labs' Learning Thermostat.

Honeywell said Nest infringed patents dealing with user interface control and other advanced features. "We are focused on upholding the integrity of the hard work and development our company has put into its home comfort and residential control … Read more

For many, the ballyhooed smart home of connected devices will start with the lowly thermostat.

Startup EnergyHub today is releasing data from a study of customers who bought a Wi-Fi enabled thermostats tied to EnergyHub's Web service. It found that letting consumers operate the thermostat from a familiar PC or smartphone application, rather than on the thermostat itself, makes a dramatic difference in how often the programmable features are used.

An Internet-connected thermostat also allows people to remotely control home heating and cooling. Being able to adjust home temperature from the office or commute, for example, appears to be … Read more

It's end-of-the-year roundup time, when we marshal the power of hindsight and judge all of the tech products that came out in 2011. There were some obvious groaners (hello, HP Veer), but plenty of winners, too.

This is a whopper of a poll. The choices are all culled from the hardware that made CNET's list of the top tech of the year.

There is some stiff competition here. The iPad 2 has been cooking up millions of sales, but Amazon's Kindle Fire has muscled onto the scene in a big way.

The iPhone 4S landed on both the winners and disappointments lists. Will that stop if from coming out tops in the poll? … Read more

It's hard to get excited about a thermostat, but we may be warming to one in particular. Its creators have set out to create a simple, elegant, and intelligent thermostat.

At Nest Labs, former Apple product engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers have molded their thermostat with many of the design and technology characteristics of Apple products like the iPod and iPhone. SmartPlanet's Sumi Das visits the startup to see what they've been up to and finds out what Fadell--who oversaw the design and production of the iPod--learned from Steve Jobs.

This video originally appeared on SmartPlanet … Read more

Nest Labs says it has sold out of its thermostats.

In response to the demand, Nest Labs has temporarily shut down the online store on Nest.com and plans to reopen it in early 2012, Erik Charlton, vice president of sales and marketing at Nest Labs, announced yesterday via the company's blog.

Those who've preordered a thermostat via Nest Labs have nothing to worry about--the company says it will still be able to honor all original shipping dates on confirmation e-mails. Those who've only received a reservation number for a Nest Labs thermostat will now have to … Read more

Whew! Today was an extralong episode, and we start things off speculating about the mysterious location of Grand Theft Auto V. The teaser Web site from Rockstar Games hints at a financial theme, so we're definitely thinking an American city known for its financial institutions...Washington, maybe? Or maybe it's Billings, Mont.? Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, perhaps? We'll know for sure on November 2.

Bringing up GTA inevitably devolves into a discussion on the negative effects of video game violence on children (Godwin's law, too), but luckily the ophthalmologists over at the Micro Surgical Eye Clinic in Kolkata, India, are using games for good.

This team has found that a modified version of the first-person shooting game Unreal Tournament can be used to strengthen the eyesight of teenagers suffering from amblyopia, or "lazy eye syndrome." Still no progress being made on the cure for "lazy everything else" syndrome.… Read more

The father of the iPod creates a cool home thermostat, the Obama campaign joins Tumblr, and Netflix reports its first drop in customers in nearly two years--and it's a doozy.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

news analysis The launch of Nest Labs and its sleek thermostat marks an important transition from green tech that only a scientist could love to something that everyday consumers may actually desire.

The company came out of stealth mode today, telling the story of how two consumer electronics mavens, including the "father of the iPod," decided to take on the unlikely quest of making a better thermostat.

The product is just a programmable thermostat. But the genius of Nest Labs is that it decided to make the iPhone of thermostats--a device that looks cool and is smart enough … Read more

It's hard to imagine making thermostats sexy, but if anyone could do it, it would be the "father of the iPod."

In 2008, amid renewed concerns about Steve Jobs' health, Fortune ranked the probable candidates to someday replace the famed Apple CEO. The first choice? Then COO and eventual successor Tim Cook. The second? Tony Fadell, chief of the iPod division and the man credited with the ideas that resulted in the creation of the iPod and its marriage with the iTunes Music Store.

Around that time, Fadell left Apple, his next move unknown, and since then, … Read more