Microsoft Forges Ahead With New Home-Automation OS 196
suraj.sun writes "More than a decade ago, Microsoft execs, led by Chairman Bill Gates, were touting a future where .Net coffee pots, bulletin boards, and refrigerator magnets would be part of homes where smart devices would communicate and inter-operate. Microsoft hasn't given up on that dream. In 2010, Microsoft researchers published a white paper about their work on a HomeOS and a HomeStore — early concepts around a Microsoft Research-developed home-automation system. Those concepts have morphed into prototypes since then, based on a white paper, 'An Operating System for the Home,' (PDF) published this month on the Microsoft Research site. The core of HomeOS is described in the white paper as a kernel that is agnostic to the devices to which it provides access, allowing easy incorporation of new devices and applications. The HomeOS itself 'runs on a dedicated computer in the home (e.g., the gateway) and does not require any modifications to commodity devices,' the paper added. Microsoft has been testing HomeOS in 12 real homes over the past four to eight months, according to the latest updates. As is true with all Microsoft Research projects, there's no guarantee when and if HomeOS will be commercialized, or even be 'adopted' by a Microsoft product group."
Thought this stuff died (Score:5, Interesting)
Used to be really interested in home automation. Had an x10 [wikipedia.org] setup for a while (terrible system by the way) and played around with some custom software.
There was a time when everyone thought this was the future (along with virtual reality and other such things). I bought into it. I figured by now I’d be casually shouting orders at the various appliances in my house.
We now have the technology to do all the cool stuff we dreamed about in the early 90s. The big problem however, is once you automate the lights, temperature, and coffee pot what else is there that makes any sense (and even the lights are more of a novelty than much practical benefit). The “house of the future” feeling is cool and it’s fun to play with... but most of it is impractical and would seem to add very little benefit for a whole lot of complexity.
Re:Interesting book by Bill Gates, from 1995 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting book by Bill Gates, from 1995 (Score:1, Interesting)
which is why he completely missed the internet and had to put out V2 of The Road Ahead. As goes the OS, so goes the man.
Actually, he didn't miss the internet. What he said was that the internet back in 1995 was only a beginning to the 'real', great internet and not really what he imagined it to be in the end. In many ways he was right - do you remember how bad it actually was back in 1994-1995? I do.
And internet has greatly changed from that, mainly by introduction of new technology on top of HTTP. Which is a common concern among slashdotters, as we rely on old technology and fix things by building on top of badly designed aspects. Even Google is trying to fix these issues with SPDY and API for embedded sandboxed executables.
Re:Microsoft Research uses LaTeX? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interesting book by Bill Gates, from 1995 (Score:2, Interesting)
Gates and the entire MS senior staff completely missed it (except for Rob Glaser, who jumped ship and started Real Networks). They thought of networking as LAN Manager running NetBIOS, with email transported point to point with remote sites. Oh, and there were walled garden communities/content providers like AOL, CompuServe, and (in development) MSN.
I remember Gates at the time was giving speeches about the wonders of CD-ROMs with their hundreds of megabytes of information, including rich text (RTF and PostScript), animation and audio/video.
The history is described fairly well in Jim Clark's book [amazon.com], including Clark's unintentional head fake that prompted Gates to commit 500 MS engineers to an abortive interactive TV project (his old employer SGI was sucked in too).
Re:Question is... (Score:4, Interesting)
If the Ford Sync system is any indication, Microsoft seems to be able to pull off something like this quite well.
You're kidding right? I have the Ford Sync system from Microsoft in my new F150. And you do, literally, have to reboot the truck sometimes to get the USB interface to sync up. I mean come to a stop, turn off the ignition, wait for a few seconds and then turn it back on and pray to the sync-gods that it works this time so you can finally be on your way.