Internet.Com Smart Homes Inch Closer To Reality

"The home of the future will look like a page from a sci-fi movie or a Popular Mechanics magazine, but is still a few years away from being commonplace. So says a consortium of companies showcasing the so-called "smart home" in Germany this week.

The idea is to be able to use the Internet to lock or unlock doors; operate the security system, thermostats or lights; and use a Web cam to view the home's interior."

redux [02.18.02]
MSNBC Networked dream home still a dream

"You're on your way to work when you realize you forgot to switch on the washing machine you loaded earlier that morning. No problem. You use your cellphone to send a text message to your personal computer. It transmits the order to your washer, which whirrs into life. Later that day you get stuck at the office. You're in danger of missing the big soccer match on TV so you e-mail your PC and tell it to switch on your video recorder at kick-off time. Match saved. It's a glimpse of a sleek technology-driven world which has been promised for a while but, according to industry experts, is still some way off.

"THE INTEGRATED HOME is at least five years out from here," says Ian Keene, chief analyst of the European Telecommunications Group at research company Gartner Dataquest."

redux [02.05.02]
BusinessWeek Technology without a Cause

"My mom had a couple of questions after being presented with this glimpse of the digital future, and because I cover technology, she thought I might be able to answer them. She knows why AOL Time Warner wants to keep pushing itself into her life -- and pocketbook. But why would she buy everything the media giant wants to sell her?"

"All too often, technology isn't applied to a real problem. It's just thrown at a supposed need. And not just any mundane need, but one that's affecting a mind-bogglingly large market. The urge to foist new technology (or new uses of existing technology) on people becomes more intense when adoption rates for a technology plateau."

Business 2.0 Apple vs. Sony: An Entertainment Smackdown

" In most debates about the future of home entertainment, the real question is not whether homes will become digitized, but how, and who'll profit from it. Like the Betamax/VHS battle, there's a split developing right now between the two main companies vying to rule the digital entertainment roost: Apple (AAPL) and Sony (SNE ). The two have different strategies and different technologies, but truly reinventing the consumer electronics market may require a combination of their approaches."

redux [01.25.02]
BBC News Smart homes on trial

""Houses are already moving to online meter-reading, appliances have microprocessors in them," said Mr Devlin.

"It is inevitable that every home will be a smart home."

The Internet Home Alliance brings together a group of diverse companies, such as General Motors, Invensys, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard and ADT Security Services."

redux [10.10.01]
The McKinsey Quarterly Home is where the network is

"Ever since the Internet entered the popular culture, futurists and technophiles have been telling the world that the new medium would transform homes into information-rich hubs of activity. Refrigerators, they predicted, would someday monitor the expiration dates on milk cartons. The family room would double as a videoconferencing theater. The toaster and the microwave would engage in endless Socratic debate.

Three or four years on, none of this has happened, and some of it may never happen, since consumers are likely to see many gee-whiz applications as more trouble than they are worth. Yet home networking is far from dead: in the past three years, the underlying technology has undergone its own quiet revolution. Big interests are at stake, and companies such as Intel, Microsoft, and 3Com have been diligently working out the bugs; others, including Cisco, Ericsson, and Pace, have been testing the new technology in homes to see how consumers react."

redux [07.28.01]
USAToday IBM's fridge doesn't just hum, it knows the words

"Imagine being paged with word that the milk in the refrigerator has spoiled. Imagine turning off the porch light at home while vacationing at the beach. In the future, when the words "home computer" take on new meaning, it might be possible. That future is on display now at an IBM lab, where researchers are testing new technology in a fully furnished living room, kitchen and garage. In the kitchen, a screen on the refrigerator tells what's inside - without opening the door. Digital stoves and microwaves cook automatically, following recipes downloaded from the Internet."

redux [01.03.01]
Feed No Place Like the Future

"IF THE JETSONS expressed post-war America's subconscious desire to live in an effortless, gadget-filled future, the Microsoft house is today's Internet economy version. Filled with PCs, wireless gizmos, and digital music players (all networked together) the Microsoft Home sets the stage "for families to begin adopting technologies into their homes that simplify daily tasks, enhance their entertainment experiences, and increase communication at home and away." At least that's what the press release says."

"This bit of publicist theater feels like nothing so much as a weirdly flawed version of those kitschy fifties industrial films that heralded the "House of Tomorrow" -- magical, futuristic places where hausfraus in pastel dresses prance around praising the inherent liberation of the robotic kitchen. But where the older films perfectly captured the mix of consumer desire and social anxiety that characterized the newly modern home, Redmond's vision of the future gives the viewer a bad case of cognitive dissonance."

redux [12.18.00]
Context Magazine Smart Homes? A Stupid Idea

"A blind enthusiasm for technological advances is a very costly habit to indulge. It ignores the real nature of peoples? busy lives, the scarcity of their attention, and the rising irritation we all have with devices that clutter our homes and confuse us. Yet, periodically, companies manage to convince one another that some big new trend is simply unstoppable. The last time this happened was in the postwar period when the hot theme was convenience. So, firms rushed to sell us electric knives and can openers, mixers, ice cream makers, electric knife sharpeners, and popcorn poppers. Did this deliver on the promise of convenience? No way.

"Smart homes" aren't inevitable. Homes will continue to get smarter, of course. But they will do so by being more responsive to our activities - directly, respectfully, gently, in ways that amuse and beguile. Above all else, in ways that are gracefully accommodating. If you want to build a really hot product, start there."

The Standard Home on the Web

"Home networking is nothing new. Homes are already thoroughly wired for lighting, security, phones and more. The Internet home will connect all of the in-home networks, then connect each with any number of outside networks. For the fridge to talk to the computer, at least two networks ? the home electrical network into which the fridge is plugged, and the telephone, firewire or wireless network into which the computer is connected ? need some way of interfacing. And if the fridge needs to send you e-mail at work, it needs some way to communicate outside the home network.

But the obvious question is, do consumers want all this interconnectivity? Will we ever really need our fridge to e-mail us that our milk is past its prime?"

"After IBM ran a series of ads in which a dishwasher repairman shows up at a home because the dishwasher contacted him for service, Parks Associates held focus groups to gauge reaction to the commercial. "Consumers absolutely hated that," says Scherf. "People want more control of their lives, not less; they want to be the one to make the call, not the dishwasher."

redux [06.27.00]
O'Reilly.Com Dialog with an Internet Toaster

""Why haven't you given me any new scripts to run for the past two months?" whined my toaster.

I was so surprised I almost dropped my Wheaties on the floor. It didn't bother me that the toaster spoke out of turn; I had installed the adaptive interface as a lark when I got the thing six months ago. What threw me was simply how many months had passed since I became bored with writing scripts to rotate English muffins or adjust the top-brown feature to the thickness of the cheese.

"Hardware problems," I said to gain time. Jeez, what was the world coming to--how could I let my own toaster make me feel guilty?"