The great thing about being a great company is you can make mistakes and get away with them.
Microsoft makes lots of mistakes. Think "Bob." (The illustration to the left is from a Toastytech tribute to Bob, by Nathan Lineback.) IBM has made mistakes, the most notable being losing control of PC operating systems.
Intel has also made mistakes, especially in the area of communications. And, at least in public, it's compounding that mistake this week.
Its home networking concepts are smart, but they're being packaged stupidly.
This is partly because they were introduced at the Intel Developer Forum by Louis Burns, who is general manager of Intel's desktop platforms unit. Burns' business is the WinTel monopoly, and the vision of home networking he offered is 100% compatible with Microsoft's own.
The problem is folks aren't buying it. They prefer a consumer electronics (CE) vision. They look at their TV, DVD and VCR and think moving their data should work like they do, not like their kludgy computer does. And this is bad for Intel, because CE makers don't know from platforms, and don't care to pay a premium for chips that create platforms.
Both Intel and Microsoft are focused on entertainment applications because this is the only kind of "big data" they see floating around the home of the future. But there is much, much more out there:
- There's data about the stuff in your home, which can be collected through RFID chips.
- There's data about the conditions in your home, which can be collected through sensors or cameras.
- There's data about you or your pets, which can also be collected through sensors.
- There's environmental data, which can be collected by thermostats and other meters.
A lot of this data takes a lot of analysis to be useful. The inventory goes into a database. A camera at your door needs programs to determine whether to alert you (or the alarm company) to who is at the door. The condition of your soil must be analyzed to see if it needs feeding or watering. (The type of plant in the soil also makes a difference here.)
You also need new user interfaces to make all this useful. Remote controls, PDAs, cell phones, and your voice are all good candidates.
There is a lot of work to do here, but the benefits are enormous. Medical applications can keep you at home longer, even save your life. Inventory applications can reduce the hassle of daily life. Security applications can keep you safe.
But they all start from the same basis, that is, collecting data that is not currently being collected, rather than moving data that you already have in front of you.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Brian on February 18, 2004 09:55 PM writes...
The problem that companies like Microsoft and Intel have is they still think in the "general" computing mode. There are advantages to being able to multi-task and being flexible, but it does not work as well with consumer electronics. Consumer electronic devices, although they interoperate, have specialized functions. They must have a high tolerance for public abuse while also being simple to use. As is evidence, they only real successful CE device that had multi-purposes is the clock radio.
Permalink to Comment2. Dana Blankenhorn on February 18, 2004 10:10 PM writes...
You forgot the boombox.
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