Best home technology will make people smarter-- not their houses By Amy Hoak , MarketWatch CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Someday, we may be getting fashion advice from our mirrors. Instead of digging through our closets to find the perfect complement for a new shirt, we may hold it up to our bedroom mirror for a computer to scan. "The technology required to do it is pretty much available today," said Jonathan Cluts, director of strategic prototyping at Microsoft. That's not to say that everyone will want it. And that hints at a major theme we'll see as more and more technology gets woven into our homes, experts say. First things first: To get most of these home innovations, the places in which we live will be networked, allowing all the computers and electronics inside to communicate. Technology is already on the market that can make this happen. With a digitally networked home, people can manage all their music and movie files on a media server so they can be heard or watched in any connected room. Applications that count /quotes/zigman/20493 /quotes/nls/msft
Reading a memory.dmp or other .dmp file - Scott Forsyth's Blog While the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) occurs less frequently with newer versions of Windows than it did in years past, there are still times when the BSOD reveals itself. I just ran into four BSOD’s on two Windows Server 2012 machines and I had the ‘opportunity’ to analyze a memory.dmp file today, so I thought I would post quick instructions on how to get a handy summary of the memory dump. I’ve had this ”I Found a Fix” debugging page bookmarked for years and I’ve used it many times, so I need to give full credit to ifoundafix for their helpful steps. The only change I have below is to include updated paths. It’s possible to debug remotely, and you may have requirements to do that. This can be accomplished with 7 easy steps: Step 1. Debugging Tools Windows All you need to install is the “Install Debugging Tools for Windows as a Standalone Component (from Windows SDK)” and during the install only select "Debugging Tools for Windows". Step 2. Step 3. Step 4. .logopen c:\debuglog.txt
House_n The PlaceLab The mission of House_n is to conduct research by designing and building real living environments - "living labs" - that are used to study technology and design strategies in context. The PlaceLab is a joint MIT and TIAX, LLC initiative. It is a residential condominium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, designed to be a highly flexible and multi-disciplinary observational research facility for the scientific study of people and their interaction patterns with new technologies and home environments. Hundreds of sensing components are installed in nearly every part of the home, which is a one-bedroom condominium. The home is being occupied by volunteer subjects who agree to live in the home for varying lengths of time. The PlaceLab is being used to investigate the following questions about human behavior, among others: What influences the behavior of people in their homes? The OPEN Prototype House Initiative may lead to the construction of additional living lab facilities. Acknowledgements:
Welcome to workaround.org | workaround.org The Seven Essential "Stations" Every Home Should Have When organizing our clients’ homes, we teach people there are some common “stations” that virtually every home should have. Here are the seven that we feel are most important: 1. Destination Station – This station belongs where you come in and out of the house. It’s where you put all of your things down when you come in, such as purses, keys, and backpacks. We often drill a hole in the back of a drawer and run a power cord through the back of it for cell phone chargers. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Lorie Marrero is a Professional Organizer and creator of The Clutter Diet, an innovative, affordable online program for home organization. 3D-printer (bouwpakket) Velleman K8200 in de Conrad online shop | 409630 Voordelen: zeer duidelijke handleiding, zit mechanisch goed in elkaar, als je er de tijd voor neemt is het prima te doen, goede support velleman, leuk voor jong en oud Nadelen: het solderen van alle draadjes is een hele klus Zoals al eerder gezegd: het bouwen is goed te doen, maar je moet er even de tijd voor nemen om het zorgvuldig te doen. Ook kinderen (ongeveer vanaf groep 7) kunnen het mechanische bouwwerk prima doen met behulp van de handleiding. Het solderen is wel een uitdaging, maar ook hier geld: goed de handleiding lezen en er de tijd voor nemen. Ook de support en service van Velleman bij vragen of problemen is prima. Al met al een verslavende hobby erbij!
2 | The Home Automation Panel That's Infographic Art We can video conference from two cell phones on opposite sides of the planet, but we still haven’t figured out the interface for our own living rooms. There are solutions on the market, sure, and the Nest is pretty interesting if you’re only worried about temperature. But we simply haven’t seen the brilliantly simple iPod or Facebook of home automation; no gadget or cloud service has commandeered our home lives yet. Music playback controls--the rings pulsate with the beat. Serenity is a different sort of home automation concept by Artefact. Whether that middle-America-approved tagline appeals to you or not, the Serenity OS is gorgeous. “The visual experience presents status data, menus, and controls as art and/or elements that are visually pleasing to look at and ask to be displayed and enjoyed rather than hidden,” Artefact writes. A wireless thermostat that’s vaguely reminiscent of Nike Fuel. Serenity OS’s flexibility is especially noticeable in the topic of energy consumption.
Home Automation: The next frontier for UX? If there is one thing that UX and UI designers should take away from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, it is that the next big thing is home automation, and we better be ready for it. From dishwashers with digital interfaces to smartphone apps that can manage an entire home heating and cooling system, this shift in home appliances means that these new digital interfaces will need just as much TLC as a new web app. These transitions present some incredible opportunities but also plenty of challenges. Our team at ÄKTA sat down to discuss the matter and here are our predictions for opportunities and challenges that will come from home automation: Opportunities Breakdown of current silos We imagine that this shift will create a breakdown of silos. Because of this breakdown, cross-system and cross-platform areas of expertise will become invaluable. “Big Data” takes on a whole new meaning The promise of the "smart grid" Challenges An appliance is no longer just a stand-alone product Conclusion
RFID and physical social networks Poken is offering a physical networking platform, with physical, RFID-based objects that plug into a PC via USB (where have we heard that before?) A Poken is a connected business card, when you meet people you want to connect to, you touch their ‘poken’ and get added to their Open Social network. Just tap your poken to theirs, activating Poken’s wireless technology. The poken “high-four” lets you share your online social network profile(s) instantly. They have a few interactions that are intended to deal with different social situations, I wonder how they came up with these ‘modes’: “If you simply touch your poken to another poken without having pressed the palm button, your “Normal” identity is shared. So they are attempting to create culture around the product, of ‘high fours’, ‘light shows’ and discreet ‘ghosting’. We are currently spoilt by abundant network connectivity, compressing time and space.
HomeOS: Microsoft Works on Bringing Smart Homes to the Masses Pop quiz: What’s the easiest way to wire up your entire home for smartphone and tablet controls? Unless you’re quite tech-savvy, chances are you haven’t the slightest idea. It’s a problem that Microsoft Research wants to solve with HomeOS, an experimental operating system for home automation. The group has tested its system in a dozen homes over the last couple months, with a prototype that can control lights, fans, TVs, cameras and other switches. HomeOS aims to be a “PC-like abstraction,” where connecting a new light or ceiling fan to the system is as simple as plugging a new mouse into your computer. Microsoft Research isn’t the first group to focus on a centralized system for home controls. Microsoft’s prototype looks promising, as do its experimental home control apps. HomeOS is just an experiment for now, and even if it becomes an actual product, there’s no guarantee that it’ll take off. MORE: Fifty Cameras, a Fake Home and Virtual Reality: How Tide’s New Detergent Came Together
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