marypcbuk

Tucked away on HP’s Cupertino campus is a small house that might look familiar. Once the Next Gen Home at CES 2006, this two-bedroom house was cut in half, trucked here from Las Vegas, and kitted out with a mix of digital home entertainment and home automation gear. HP’s Brian Burch showed me around what he calls “the home of now, not the future”. Read the rest at Tom's Guide

Speaking personally, the big difference between our house and this one is that everything is plugged in and working, and that the place is tidy - and indeed all the walls are painted. I do covet the video feed from the front door...

We don't yet have a Rooma although I'm vey tempted (we'd just have to carry it up and down a few stairs every now and then). I look at AIBOs as as irritating as toddlers without the benefits. I think I'm ready for my robot butler, although it has to not infuriate me the way most electronics do at least once in their lifetime. But talking with Colin Angle of iRobot this morning, I made what might be a Freudian slip. We were talking about robots in the home; I mentioned the Intel Digital Health ideas of telepresence and while raising the excellent point of privacy issues Colin said that we don't yet have the killer application for the smarthome. And then he was surprised when my next question was about robot safety.

I blame Rudy Rucker and his robot that mixes up the baby and the turkey.