Wouldn't life be simpler if you could walk into your home after a long day, plunk down your keys, and let the house itself tell you what it needs? Like: You're out of bread for Junior's lunch tomorrow. That plant on the ledge could use some watering. If you pick up some cinnamon, you have the ingredients for a great rice pudding ...
The dream of a Jetsons-esque "connected home" has been in the works for years -- Microsoft showed off its first "Home of the Future" in 1994 -- but it's becoming reality thanks to embedded devices. Anything from a washer/dryer to a pen can become a computer.
Sensors littered throughout your home are still a few years off, but some standalone devices are already sneaking in, like the $250 Nest Learning Thermostat. After you install the device, it spends a week monitoring when you're home and how you use your heating and cooling systems. Then it automatically controls the temperature to help you cut your energy bills.
Some embedded devices are portable. The Livescribe Smartpen, which retails for about $100 to $200, is a dutiful college student's dream. It looks like a regular pen, but it digitizes handwritten and audio notes. Users can upload their notes to a PC or tap the notepaper to find out what was being said when they wrote a certain note.
It's tough to categorize embedded devices, which makes them a marketer's nightmare. As Forrester put it: "Would you look for smartpens in the pen aisle, the computer peripheral aisle, or -- as they're placed in Best Buy -- the e-readers and gadgets aisle?"
Forrester thinks those marketing channels will get straightened out by 2014, when it expects sales of smart appliances to take off.
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