Speaking of smart houses, Volunteers Will Move into House to Test Latest Technology

"Philips has opened a "laboratory house" to test technology on people in an everyday environment. HomeLab in Eindhoven is linked through hidden cameras, microphones and one-way mirrors to observations rooms. Researchers will be able to follow the occupants 24 hours-a-day to get a better idea of their needs and motivations.

It features home entertainment systems that can respond to human voice commands, or create digital fantasy environments for virtual reality games. And it combines various devices in one for managing activities such as recording a voicemail, watching a video or listening to music from any room in the home. TV pictures can be projected on to blank walls. Music will come from MP3s stored on the HomeLab computer jukebox, which can even recognise and play a hummed tune.

Most connections are wireless, with systems controlled by handheld devices as well as flat-panel displays. And the HomeLab's wireless Local Area Network has access to the outside world via broadband internet." [Ananova, via Lockergnome Bytes]

This sounds like a first step towards John Robb's vision for the next 5-10 years.

While trying to fall asleep last night, my mind stretched a little further on John Robb's push back about convergence and the OQO. John wrote:

"Hey, let's stretch our brains a little more.  If combined with a OQO PC, voice control of a weblog app, and a next gen P2P network, it would be possible to totally document a life in full surround sound, video, stills, writing, and audio."

One of the bad things about using a news aggregator is that you don't see the comments people leave on the original post at the other person's site. Fortuitously, I had visited John's site and read the comment by a reader asking who would actually use one of the devices John outlined.

I immediately thought of the combination of storage and a smarter PDA, which reminded me of the recent article about the evolution of storage. Sure it would be a specialized niche, but possible uses would include investigation of crime and accident scenes. In fact, it could provide a unique new version of director and actor commentaries on DVDs if you filmed everything from their viewpoints and could edit them right then and there.

All of this in turn reminded me of the movie Strange Days, and now I wonder how far away we truly are from recording our daily lives and reliving them through sensory playback.

"ZDNet runs a review of the the ReplayTV 4000 (ReplayTV 4000: It's not ready for prime time). The reviewers make some justified comments about the difficulties of using ReplayTV, difficulties that are not unusual for first generation consumer technology. First generation in this sense: The interesting thing about ReplayTV 4000 is that it is the first Personal Media Recorder that includes broadband connectivity, including the ability to send recorded TV shows to another ReplayTV. This capability, of course, has gotten SONICblue, the parent company, sued (Press Release: SONICblue Begins Shipping ReplayTV 4000 to Consumers Undeterred by Lawsuit Filed by Major Television Networks, Studios)." [LawMeme]

I was reading this article yesterday thinking to myself, where was this when I needed it?! My brother bought a new ReplayTV for Christmas and he needed help to set it up for a broadband connection. Luckily, he already had a cable modem, but he didn't have a network (let alone a wireless one) and I couldn't find much online to help diagram everything he needed to do.

Eventually we got it to work though, and now he's another PVR convert! Next up, my Dad. If you're going to be buying one of the new Replays, definitely read this article first. Not because of the negative comments (which are somewhat off-base) but because it describes what we had to go through to get everything set up.

"Jenny found true convergence.  Digital cameras combined with personal storage (MP3 player).  Next:  Video/camera devices combined with copious, mobile personal storage.  Add in glasses mounted displays and surround sound and you have a movie theater-like set-up that can span personal/family generated content to professional content.

Hey, let's stretch our brains a little more.  If combined with a OQO PC, voice control of a weblog app, and a next gen P2P network, it would be possible to totally document a life in full surround sound, video, stills, writing, and audio narration." [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

My mind feels like Stretch Armstrong....