Hasta La Gadget!

Home automation and jetpacks are surprisingly similar in that both of these space-age technologies have, for decades, been over promised and under delivered. Who here wouldn’t love to tap a single button when exiting the house to activate the alarm, shut off the lights in the kids’ rooms, lower the thermostat, and lock all the doors? That’s the convenience, the promise left unfilled as we say goodbye to 2010. We live on a planet that still requires humans to manually close the blinds at the end of the day and flip on a light switch some 90 years since the commercial introduction of the incandescent light bulb. How primitive. And it’s downright criminal in ecological and financial terms that we still can’t easily
monitor and control the power usage in our homes let alone the trickle of wattage vampired off the individual electrical sockets feeding our greedy horde of household electronics.

How is this possible given all the advances we’ve seen? Wireless and sensor technology has advanced far beyond what’s required to automate a home. Just look at smartphones, for example, that now ship standard with 3G (and even 4G) data, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS radios in addition to sensors for motion, temperature, moisture, proximity, and even direction. We don’t have the answer to home automation’s dilemma — to dig into that topic we’d require a few thousand more words, at least. All we know for sure is that the biggie consumer electronics companies are reluctant to sort it out. As such, dozens of small companies are left to deal with a mess created by an industry incapable of coalescing around a set of interoperable home automation standards.

One such company is Mi Casa Verde. A tiny startup that launched its linux-based Vera home automation server back in 2008 with a renewed promise to make home automation setup and control as easy for novices as it is robust for techies and enthusiasts. We’ve been using a recently launched second generation Vera 2 for a few weeks now. Sure, we haven’t quite reached one-button nirvana, but as home automation newbies we’re proud to say that we’ve automated a few helpful in-home lighting situations while skirting the clutches of the Dark Angel sequestered within our fuse box. Better yet, we can control it all from an iPhone — including the Christmas tree. Click through to see how we did it.

Continue reading Mi Casa Verde Vera review: Home automation, simplified

Mi Casa Verde Vera review: Home automation, simplified originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s a PlayStation app coming soon for the iPhone and Android handsets. The bad news is that it doesn’t actually do what you’re hoping it does–i.e. play games.

The app is more of a supplemental resource for PlayStation owners. You can use it to check things like trophies and friends’ statuses, discover information about new games, read the PlayStation Blog, and share info via Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail. PlayStation phone it’s not.

The app is coming “very soon” to European markets like the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. More markets will follow later.

RIM execs hint at when the company may release its tablet, saying that the device’s revenue impact will occur in its fiscal first quarter, which starts in late February.

Originally posted at The Digital Home

Still in disbelief that Big Red will one day be home to Palm’s Pre 2? Can’t say we blame you, but the evidence is certainly building. Just three months after taking a peek at inside information hinting at the smartphone’s arrival on Verizon, along comes an eBay auction for a nondescript P102EWW — known amongst the FCC hounds as a CDMA Palm Pre 2. After the folks at Pre Central started questioning the seller, the auction was mysteriously yanked, possibly due to worry from the sudden stroke of enlightenment. It’s obviously impossible to know if the phone up for sale was indeed an early build meant for America’s largest carrier, but the photos capped before the auction was pulled sure are hard to discredit. So, can we just get this out in the open now, or what?

Verizon’s Palm Pre 2 shown briefly in pulled eBay auction? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Of course you knew this was coming, you probably just didn’t expect it so soon. If Apple keeps up with its usual schedule, we don’t expect an iPhone 4 successor to rear its head until summer 2011, but already some KIRF scientists are making forward-looking projections and produced what it thinks might be the KIRF iPhone to go tête-à-tête with the presumed iPhone 5. Resolution’s apparently low, but it does its best to make up for it with dual SIM capabilities, WiFi, Bluetooth, a microSD slot, built-in camera with flash, an all-too familiar UI — all at a price guaranteed to assuage regret: about 700 yuan (US $106). The future is now, why wait? Video after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake: iPhone 5 provides foresight to a falsified future (video)

Keepin’ it real fake: iPhone 5 provides foresight to a falsified future (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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