| Home Networking Tutorial - The Benefits of Networking | |
Digital Picture Frames
Imagine a picture frame that plugs into a standard wall outlet for power and a standard telephone line for Internet access. Bill Gates' house contains very large and expensive frames like this, but a company named Ceiva Logic, Inc. offers a simple networkable picture frame at a very affordable price.
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| Ceiva press photo |
The Ceiva frame obtains its images from a company server on the Internet. Once a person subscribes to the service, their friends and family members can upload pics to the site. The frame includes a modem that dials out between midnight and 5AM each evening to obtain the published images. While the frame itself is quite easy to operate, sending images to it that format correctly on the LCD screen still requires significant technical know-how.
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| Kerbango press photo |
Internet Radios
The "world's first stand-alone Internet radio" has been produced by Kerbango, now a division of networking company 3Com. The Kerbango radio functions similarly to Internet radio on a PC. A person can tune into any of thousands of streaming audio feeds from stations across the world.
An Internet radio appliance offloads the processing of streaming audio from the PC, avoiding the annoying breaks in transmission that often occur when the PC is busy performing other tasks. The Kerbango radio also may be easier to move between locations in the home with Net access.
Internet Toasters
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| Siemens press photo |
One information appliance with dubious value is the Internet toaster. Siemens, for one, has produced research prototypes of "intelligent toasters" that use ribbon cable (right) to hook up to a network. Too bad that it is so difficult to imagine the practical value of making a smarter toaster. Andy Oram took this challenge and imagined one type of "Dialog With An Internet Toaster."
Smart Toilets
Millions of so-called "smart toilets" have been sold in Japan. These toilets automatically analyze fluids for indications of health problems. They also monitor a person's body temperature and blood pressure. The data from these units may not be so useful to the average person, but by transmitting results over a network to a medical care facility, doctors may remotely monitor the health of their patients.
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