Interesting article:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/6348
The article mentions several companies involved and their participation (Microsoft provides Windows Media, HP - Digital media centers, Whirlpool - the laundry). For Procter & Gamble they say "consume know how". The true is that they offer much more than that. In 2001 I went to their future home laboratory. It seemed to be a regular home, but behind those walls there was the most impressing automated home that I have ever seen. They had hidden cameras everywhere to monitor how their focus groups testers would react to all that automation together, or how they rejected a test product, etc. And you could see everything from the home theater.
When asked why they started the house, the admitted that they wanted to preempt new technologies that would affect the purchase of their products. Their nightmare was Tivo - in the future people would be able to skip ads!!!!
From all of them, the most impressive for me where the RFID enabled, speaking washing machine from Whirlpool. It would tell you not to mix colors, etc. There have been 5 years from that, and nothing in the market yet. Lets see what happens.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/6348
The article mentions several companies involved and their participation (Microsoft provides Windows Media, HP - Digital media centers, Whirlpool - the laundry). For Procter & Gamble they say "consume know how". The true is that they offer much more than that. In 2001 I went to their future home laboratory. It seemed to be a regular home, but behind those walls there was the most impressing automated home that I have ever seen. They had hidden cameras everywhere to monitor how their focus groups testers would react to all that automation together, or how they rejected a test product, etc. And you could see everything from the home theater.
When asked why they started the house, the admitted that they wanted to preempt new technologies that would affect the purchase of their products. Their nightmare was Tivo - in the future people would be able to skip ads!!!!
From all of them, the most impressive for me where the RFID enabled, speaking washing machine from Whirlpool. It would tell you not to mix colors, etc. There have been 5 years from that, and nothing in the market yet. Lets see what happens.
