Opera, which just went public in Norway, has announced a "talking browser," based in IBM technology.

This is important stuff, and not just for my blind mother.

What's being provided here is an interface, between the Internet and voice, which can be embedded in other devices, not just PCs.

Opera and IBM are talking up the value of putting this into cell phones, which is cool. But what about putting this into Always-On networks? Now you can simply write interface routines in HTML, and interact with those routines from wherever you are in the house.

Say, for example, you have a kitchen inventory program and you're sitting at your desk in your home-office. You collect data with a UWM radio, through the refrigerator wall, and collect that on a Web page. You do the same thing with what's in the pantry, using RFID tags. You interface that inventory against recipes on-command, either from a private collection or a Web site like Food Network.

Anyway, I'm sitting in the office, remembering a recipe seen during a "study break" earlier in the afternoon, and I ask the computer whether we've got what's needed to make it. The computer consults the recipe (which is written in HTML), consults its "database" and tells me. I don't even have to look up from my work -- most of this happens in the background.

Now, how much work have I saved? Today I would print the recipe, then go through the pantry and refrigerator manually, calculating my supplies. Maybe I'm only saving a few minutes this way. But remember, I'm getting older (as we all are), and you can multiply this savings many times over the course of a day. Where's my dental floss, where are my keys, where did my wallet go off to...anyone with ADD (heck, any messy man or woman) goes through this frustration all the time.

Now it can be banished. And if it runs on a network you already have, using interfaces you already know, why wouldn't you consider it?

That's just one application, just one of many, that can be had in today's homes with technology available today -- 802.11 networking, UWB radios, RFID, and the HTML-voice interface announced by Opera this week.

Are you starting to get excited?