Now here's something we might be able to sink our teeth into someday.
Technology News
Top Firms Plan Home-Appliances Link To Net
(03/01/99, 6:09 a.m. ET)
By Reuters
A global alliance of 13 major computer, phone, and electric utility companies will unveil plans Monday to forge a common software method for linking consumer and small-business appliances to the Internet.
The group is designing a way to connect wired and wireless devices alike -- computers, telephones, televisions, stereos, and VCRs, along with security alarms and electric meters, and even refrigerators or toasters -- to the Internet.
The alliance said in a statement that it aimed to secure ways for Internet-based service businesses to deliver home services such as security, energy management, emergency health care, and e-commerce.
Founding members of the alliance include telecommunications equipment suppliers such as Alcatel, Cable & Wireless, Ericsson, Lucent, Motorola, and Nortel Networks.
Computer companies taking part include IBM, Oracle and its Network Computer affiliate, Philips Electronics, Sun Microsystems, and Sybase. Also signing on is U.S. energy giant Enron's communications unit.
Mark Bregman, general manager of IBM's Pervasive Computing Group and the official charged with representing the world's largest computer maker in the alliance, said the new standard would offer a single gateway to a vast array of appliances.
"The problem in the household environment is there are more standards than you can imagine with some of them international and some not," Bregman said in an interview.
The new software standard will be known as the Open Service Gateway (OSG) and would offer various levels of security and privacy protection, letting home- and small-business owners dictate when outside service providers would be allowed temporary and selective access to install, maintain, or repair equipment.
The group will incorporate existing and emerging standards that say how electronic devices should communicate with other devices including Bluetooth, CEBus, CAL, HAVi, HomePNA, HomePnP, HomeRF, Jini, LonWorks, and VESA. The OSG would establish a common framework for these emerging standards for home networks, not supplant them.
The OSG will be based entirely on Java, a programming system that lets software developers create new applications that can run on any kind of computer-controlled system, its backers said in a statement.
The standard will cover the delivery, installation, and management and repair of new software to control these appliances -- opening vast new markets for Internet service and software developers.
As Internet delivery is made easier for services such as home alarm, medical alert, food-service delivery, intercom, telephone services, and others, demand among home- and small-office customers is expected to boom.
Eventually, other telephone- and cable-service providers, as well as energy-management and computer-technology companies, are expected to join the group, Bregman said.
Missing from the list is Microsoft, which has been focused on making its own Windows operating system as a standard for connecting a similar array of consumer electronics.
The initial working group said it plans to publish an initial version of the OSG specification by the middle of 1999.
By the end of the third quarter, a number of products based on the standard are expected to be on the market, including a home network system from IBM that connects multiple PCs in a household, Bregman said.
I have to keep telling myself we are the only java native processor on the planet. Yes I know compilers can and will be
used with other chips, but for the cheapest, most efficient, and
most cost effective solution...........
|
