By Bill Pytlovany
Most of the press this year has called this past CES either the “Year of the Smart TV” or the “Year of the Tablet”. Personally, I didn’t see anything that knocked my socks off. I did however notice off in the corner technology that I think will be the next big thing.
For many years my tech career revolved around convergence of your TV and the Internet. My work in the 90’s at Microsoft and Gateway was pre-appphone and the infiltration of WiFi networks in every home.
My prediction the next huge growth in the tech market will be “Home Automation”.
Until now the industry standard has been something called X-10. You can still buy X-10 modules at Radio Shack but it never reached wide scale acceptance. The main problem with X-10 is dependability. Signals are sent along your electrical network and I found many new tech appliances conflicted with X-10 signals. The protocol is limited and the modules vary depending on their power usage.
This post is excerpted with Bill’s permission from his blog
