There will be many Always-On application spaces. There will medical applications, there will be home inventory applications, there will be home automation applications.

Once you see the wireless network as your platform, rather than a specific hard-wired device like the PC, all sorts of things become possible.

A few weeks ago I wrote glowingly of Zigbee and I still like it. Sensors that last a year and pass data on 802.11 frequencies? What's not to like.

But this is an open standard, and most of the firms working on it haven't delivered product. Those that seem closest to delivery, like Ember, seem focused on the industrial automation market.

All of which means there remains opportunity for a proprietary standard, if you deliver product supporting it, and if you know your niche.

That's where Smarthome is going with a new standard it calls Insteon.

Insteon is focused entirely on home automation. Smarthome, the company behind it, has previously been working with X10 (remember all those pop-up ads for tiny cameras?), of which you may have heard. (X10 is still in use, and under intense study. Check out Peter Stepniewicz' page at Carnegie-Mellon where the illustration below came from.)

What's new? Insteon combines powerline networking, which X10 used, with wireless technology in the 900 MHz area, which is where your old cordless phone lives. By using relatively low frequencies, range is increased, but the power output is also increased. That, however, may not be a problem if you plug the thing in.

The real hope is that Insteon can help people connect devices like thermostats, which are plugged-in but difficult to reach, with remote controls, which live wirelessly but are readily accessible.

Silicon for all this isn't due until 2006 but Smarthome hopes to get into the market early next year by retro-fitting existing products. But look at their Web site -- they've got a ton of products. And a ton of customers.

We wish them well.