Two of our favorite companies are now set to become one as Dell announced its planned acquisition of Alienware yesterday. Dell has dominated the PC space for a while now and brings more of a home entertainment feel to the company with Alienware and its line of unreal products. The guys over at HD Beat pose the question “Dell buying Alienware: What does this mean to us?“ That’s a great question with potentially industry changing answers.
We can’t wait to see what these guys are able to pump out using that amazingly efficient Dell business model. Take a Dell plasma television, hook it up to an Alienware Microsoft Windows XP Media Center, add a Control4 home automation solution and you’ve got one awesome setup! One would think that Dell will take advantage of Alienware’s focus on the consumer electronics side of things to gain an even bigger foothold in that market but we’ll have to wait and see. The innovation in each company by itself was out of this world and now they’ll each have access to the best parts of the other…brilliant!
This brings up another idea. How long is it before we start seeing Control4 applications that can interact with Media Center? Both Control4 and Media Center have APIs that developers can use to enhance the product lines, making it easy to integrate both as a single solution instead of separate but connected solutions. We do know that there is a company out there called Exceptional Innovation that’s already doing this type of integration with Media Center so it looks like Control4 might need to catch up. Maybe Control4 should buy Exceptional Innovation and merge the best parts of its lineup with the life|ware platform. Oh the possibilities…
Don’t look now but I just mentioned a dirty concept in our business, IT. Mention those two simple letters to many of the professionals in our industry and you’ll get all kinds of angry stares, not to mention harsh comments about integrators with IT roots. I’m not exactly sure why this happens and am even less sure why it does with such amazing frequency. I can’t tell you how many times our company has been ripped on by others because we’ve built our business based on concepts from our past experience in IT. Maybe they had a bad experience working with companies that sold them PCs (or Macs). Maybe they’re scared that the industry is changing. I really don’t know for sure but they have their opinions and they’re entitled to them.
Our opinion is different. First off, bashing competitors isn’t a wise decision which is why you’ll never hear us doing it. We like to spend our time making our business better instead of worrying about who’s putting us down and getting back at them by doing the same. Secondly, we wear our experience in the IT industry as a badge of honor and believe whole heartedly that it’s what sets us apart from the crowd. After all, it’s this experience that gives us the ability to implement amazing products from companies like Control4, a company that’s taken IT concepts and completely changed the face of home automation.
Control4 offers a product line of completely IP (Internet Protocol) based home automation controls that truly connect every aspect of your daily lives. Each of Control4’s intelligent devices lives on and can be operated from your own personal home network, wired or wirelessly, with the touch of a button. What we like the most about the Control4 product line is that it’s affordable, easy to use and offers unparalleled scalability for any solution. You can start with the Home Theater Controller or Media Controller and immediately realize the benefits of a connected lifestyle. Manage your entire digital music collection with ease streaming your digital music over your home stereo, right from the controller.
Control4 controllers can exist by themselves in a home theater solution on those merits alone but they allow you to accomplish so much more. Owning a Control4 system gives you the ability to add devices at any time, at your own pace. Add a light dimmer switch here, an outlet there, and pretty soon you’ve got a fully functioning automation system without any new wiring. Swap the old “dumb” switches with the new Control4 intelligent switches, add the device to your network and you’re done. And that’s just scratching the surface.
Control4 solutions work in any home, anywhere. Old homes, new homes and all homes in between are perfectly suited for Control4 solutions which is another reason we’ve absolutely fallen in love with their products and have installed them in our own homes. Hop on over to www.control4.com and take a look around. We promise you’ll enjoy your visit!
This is the most frequent question we hear on a daily basis. The business we are in is confusing, not to us, but to most everyone else. Vocabulary that we can use to describe our business includes:
- Low-Voltage
- Custom Electronics Professional
- Home Automation
- Home Security Installer
- Home Systems Integrator
- Home Technology Integrator
- Network Engineers
- Smart Homes
- Systems Integrator
And the list goes on. People know our industry by so many different names that it often makes it difficult finding common ground when answering the question. It makes our day when we can give our pitch and actually find someone who understands what we do. In the same sense, it scares us to death that we have friends and associates that we do business with on a daily basis that have heard our pitch hundreds of times, heck, they’ve even seen the technology in action, but still haven’t got a clue what we do. We have to figure out a way to change that.
Part of our solution to the problem is this blog. Blogging allows us to connect with people in ways which we couldn’t possibly have connected in the past. It gives us the ability to give you the story straight from the horse’s mouth helping to educate you in the process. After all, if we’re experts and we can’t figure out a better way to educate our customers about what we do, we’re in trouble.
Our challenge to you is for you to tell us what you don’t understand about our business, the products we sell and the services we offer. Anything and everything is fair game so don’t be afraid to come at us with whatever it is that you’d like to learn. We don’t want you to have to spend all day researching what we do just to figure it out. Instead, we want to figure out a way to condense all the education you need into easy to use guides that you can refer back to over and over again, whenever you need them. Anyone can post a FAQ page, but can anyone take it a step further and actually make FAQ’s more useful? We intend to do so.
I know that we still haven’t answered the original question that titles this post but we’re hoping you stick around as we engage in conversations that will help shape the answer. We like to think that it is a living answer.
I referred to the “Grandma” test in my last post and thought I should elaborate. The Grandma test as it’s referred to for our purposes relates to the ability of a grandmother to operate any sort of technology related system(s). If grandma can walk up to a thermostat, keypad, remote control or any other device and operate it with minimal effort, that particular device passes the test. If not, it receives a big red “F”.
The Grandma test can also refer to a test applied to conversations with your customers in any business. I found an article that refers to this application of the Grandma test when I Googled the term “grandma test”. I’m adding this Grandma test to our repertoire as well. Call it Grandma2.
It’s no coincidence that I am on the subject of the Grandma test today, although I think about it quite a bit anyways. Today’s thoughts were brought on by one of the blogs I regularly read, the Wibrary at Untangled Life, and their To Heck with Tech feature. Well done guys.
Note: I’m purposefully not tagging the Grandma test in Technorati as doing so led to some unfavorable results. I’m not an expert at tagging as of yet so any suggestions on how to properly tag it without producing these types of results are greatly appreciated.
It has, up to this point, been easy for most integrators to ignore the middle because it didn’t fit their business models. The margins weren’t there and too potential customers felt that they were being taken advantage of by profit hungry salesman that over promise and under deliver and who didn’t really care about their needs. That or you’d run into a company that lowered their prices so low that nobody in the market could compete. These types of companies use the strategy making their margin up in volume while providing an inferior solution in every way shape and form. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been told of situations like these, none of which are good for business.
It has been a main focus of ours since day one to provide access to our products and services to anyone that wants them, left, right and middle. We want to let you know that home automation is affordable for everyone. Are you interested in basic lighting control? Interested in saving money on your energy bills? Is your family safe and secure? These are questions that we want you to feel that you can always answer yes to without remorse. The best part is that you can start with the basic core for your home systems and gradually increase capabilities over time. Stating this is not just hype or marketing hyperbole, it’s the truth. Any integrator that isn’t willing to work with you on your timetable and budget only has their own personal agenda in mind.
Your agenda drives our agenda and that will never change. It is in this spirit that we are creating some new and exciting tools that you can use to design your own home systems with a few mouse clicks. These tools will not only help you build your system, but will also help teach you about it at the same time. These tools will be accessible to anyone and everyone that would like to use them and will be free of charge. Everyone likes free don’t they?
Horner Networks, ensuring that all of our home solutions pass the “Grandma” test, since 2003.
There’s been much discussion about rumors of Google’s GDrive plans in recent days and it got us to thinking. Wouldn’t it be easier if each individual user could have their own storage built into their home or business and have all of their applications online instead of on individual devices? The software as a web service business model is brilliant and would be perfectly suited to take advantage of a setup such as this. Instead of constantly installing the latest software on your PC and saving files to a remote location (for data integrity purposes), you’d do just the opposite. You would use applications on the Internet that saved directly to your own personal GDrive right in your very own home enabling convergence with all of your home systems without having to cross the wire to retrieve the data. No worries about data theft from a security breach on someone else’s servers. Set your privacy and security concerns at ease as the data is stored in your home, under your own mattress!
There are obvious issues with a setup like this including firewalls and data backup, but those solutions can and should be pretty straightforward. The GDrive could have a firewall built in (no backdoor of course). Next issue. Soon after your personal GDrive showed up, you could subscribe to an offsite disaster recovery service whose job it is to manage your backed up data. Your GDrive burns its backup DVD on a weekly basis, tells you when it’s done, you drop your DVD into a secure drop box (think bank vault) down the street and is shipped off to another vault somewhere that nobody can ever access, except you of course. Run into a problem? House burns down, hardware failure? No problem, get some new hardware (from an insurance check, sorry about the house) as well as the latest backup from the secure location and you’re back up and running without missing a beat. Open up a new business model for the “Data Bank” while you’re at it. Have a few branches in every town.
Maybe banks can start handling all of your data as well as cash? Hmmm…
The stranglehold on the last mile is nothing new to any of us. There are a handful of companies that control the communications networks that connect our homes to the rest of the world and they, at their discretion, let us know when we need more bandwidth, better services, etc. Wait a minute… Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Since when is the customer on the outside looking in? But I digress…
What would happen if we figured out some way for every home in America to be a node facilitating the construction of a larger network owned solely and individually by the homeowner? As the network begins to grow, each node comes in contact with an adjacent node and another adjacent node and another adjacent node, until each home has formed an entirely new network in true mesh topology. Think of the possibilities such an infrastructure could create. If we’re all eventually connected, can’t we then just go around the monopolies and connect to each other without their oversight? What would be their purpose if such a network existed? There’s obviously some mixture of wired and wireless technology that would need to be involved in a project like this but it’s not out of the realm of the possibility. We’d also have to involve local and state governments but they work for us remember! We could effectively redefine what it means to be truly connected.
What we have pondered over the past few years is a way to make this type of scenario possible. A combination of wireless fiber products, mesh wireless products, other mesh wireless products, WiMax and some creative thinking should overcome current network obstacles. How about creating a company that’s sole purpose is to manage said network and that’s it? They wouldn’t provide any type of service on the network itself; they’d just provide the infrastructure. What if it was some type of consortium (maybe like UTOPIA) whose sole purpose would be to oversee operations and was specifically governed by network neutrality and forbidden from ever offering their own services over the network? We think that this type of setup would open entirely new business models for services we can’t even imagine and allow everyone, regardless of income level, to have access to everyone else, all the time.
I could go on all night about this particular topic and am happy to share the close to two years of research and ideas we have on the subject if you’d like. Just say the word.
It’s our business to give our customers advice on technology and its applications in the connected home. We want to make choosing technology the easiest decision you’ll ever make because you deserve it that way.
What’s on the horizon for tomorrow? It’s obvious that the Internet is providing bigger, badder, more efficient methods of distributing content and managing applications by the day. All of these content streams and new applications that we can’t live without come at a price however and that price is heavily rooted in bandwidth and infrastructure. I was half way though the writing of this post when I decided to take a break to catch up on some feeds and I’m glad that I did because I’m now armed with even better ammunition.
Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks and co-founder of HDNet is a forward thinker. I’ve been a loyal reader of his Blog Maverick blog for a little over a year now and I’m consistently amazed at the ideas he turns out. Why should I be? Good question… He’s a billionaire for crying out loud and he didn’t become one by accident. Mr. Cuban’s latest post, Bandwidth to the home, how much is enough, is chock full of the brilliance I have come to expect from him. He’s dead on with his assessment of coming products and services driving the need for bigger and better pipes. America’s bandwidth problem is getting worse before it’s getting better and there are new startups opening up shop every day with yet undreamed of products and services that will utilize the Internet as their primary distribution method. How do you as a homeowner ensure that you are able to take advantage of these products and services? That’s simple, plan ahead.
The number one question we’re asked on a daily basis: How much structured wiring (Category 5e/6, RG-6, etc.) should I install in my house and why? That too has a simple answer. As much as you think you’ll ever need! Wire is cheap compared to the cost of retrofitting your home down the road. We always tell our customers that there is no such thing as too much wiring as demonstrated by the needs discussed by Mr. Cuban. We can’t possibly tell you the ways in which you’ll utilize your home network in the future but at the same time want to ensure that you’re able to keep up with technology as it becomes more and more integrated into your daily life.
The next questions we’re asked are along the lines of: Won’t Category 5e/6 be outdated in 5-10 years? Possibly. Should I install fiber? Maybe. How can I guarantee that the investment I’ve made in my home’s infrastructure is safe for the long term? Flexible solutions like Carlon Resi-Gard! Won’t there be wireless technologies in the future that will make all of this wiring obsolete? Let’s not go there yet as that’s a topic for another day. One word: interference. It haunts my dreams…
The obvious truth is that it’s impossible to plan for everything that might come about in the future. It’s fairly easy to be ready for tomorrow but it’s often times overlooked and underappreciated when all of the tough decisions are being made about your home’s budget. I promise you that including a structured wiring infrastructure in your home could potentially be the easiest decision that you make. We guarantee it will provide you hours upon hours of joy now and into the future!
Check out some of the links in the Connected Home section to the right of the page for additional information regarding the benefits and technologies driving the industry. Also, stay tuned for more in-depth information on the subject straight from us in the coming weeks. Happy hunting!
Why is it that every product we buy comes with an instruction manual or directions that have become required reading? I can still remember the day when this type of information was only used as a reference, especially by those of the “directions are for morons” variety (of which I’m ashamed to have once belonged). There was a time that you could buy a brand new television with a remote that only had buttons you absolutely needed for crucial control. Buttons like volume up/down, channel up/down, numbers, an enter button and the mighty on/off button. These “clickers” (or whatever you might refer to it as) were easy enough for every user to understand. You could figure it out even if you hadn’t ever seen or used a television before. Where has this ease of use gone?
I understand just as well as any other technology advocate that with more features comes more complexity, but does it really have to be that way? A recent thesis by Dutch student Elke den Ouden (Reuters) suggested that fifty percent of all malfunctioning products returned to stores are in full working order but due to complexity, cannot be figured out by the user. Has it really gotten that bad that people would rather return a product and forego the conveniences and enjoyment promised by its manufacturers (and my profession) rather than deal with the hassle it takes to own the device? This is a fundamental problem with an easy solution: better design.
While not all of today’s high tech gadgets are hard to use, too few can be labeled easy. Take TiVo for instance. Much of the love and loyalty given to this particular brand of digital video recorder (DVR) is due to its brilliant yet simple design. Everything from the remote control to the software itself was designed with the prime goal of simplicity and function. Yet it seems to perform everything I and so many other TiVo addicts need it to. Another company that has always been acclaimed for their simple and elegant design traits is Apple. Apple consistently changes the way the market moves based on its ability to be basic but brilliant at the same time. It’s obvious to me that what Apple and TiVo have figured out and so many others haven’t is that feature creep (or overload) is a bad, neh, terrible thing. We don’t need more features that accomplish fewer tasks; we need fewer features that accomplish more tasks. Thumbs up? Thumbs down?
I feel that there is a great deal of responsibility on those of us whom call ourselves professional technologists in refining the way users interact with technology. While I am now a noble convert to the religion of RTFM, I don’t feel that it should always be absolutely necessary to do so. Things need to just work. Computers, Televisions, Stereos, you name it; I want them to just work. I didn’t go to college just to learn how to read an instruction manual to make my life more complex. I want to make my life easier and more efficient and so does everyone else.
I’ve always had a problem with ease of use but this rant was brought on by a blog related to web usability by Dino Baskovic, an old college friend of mine. Dino references Steve Krug’s second edition of Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, as an essential teaching reference for each of his web design students at Lawrence Technological University. This fine work (the first edition actually) helped me along when I was building web applications back in the day. Perhaps my favorite book (and required reading of TiVo engineers) is The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald A. Norman. This book was originally published in 1988 (as The Psychology of Everyday Things) but still rings true with many concepts that design engineers should be required to implement when designing any new product or service.
It’s our goal to help our customers simplify their lives through technology and these are just a few of the tools we are using to ensure we do so. While we will continue to provide a wealth of information readily available on our web site and through our planned customer portal, our hope is that it is as a reference, and not as required reading.
On a side note, I want to commend the brilliant marketing campaign by Staples. I now think of the Easy Button every time the issue of ease of use is brought to question! I want an Easy Button!
We’ve had an idea for a while that just seems like a no-brainer to us, but then again we’re the ones who thought of it. I know that we can’t possibly be the only ones to have pondered the possibilities of the idea but we haven’t seen anyone else pushing for it here in Northeast Ohio. If someone else has, please let me know because I’d like to see it. First, a little background before I get to the idea.
The residential construction world seems to be focused on the Master Planned Community these days, whereby developers build not only homes but other commercial facilities to support the community as a whole. These types of communities are sprouting up all over the country and are huge investments for the developers, for business and for the local community. It’s amazing how many local and sometimes regional political battles are fought over how these communities are secured yet none of these communities include anything more than homes, the ever so hip lifestyle centers and basic commercial development, of which we see over and over and over again. Do these types of developments boost local economies and populations? Of course. Is there anything really different being done to increase these boosts even more? Not that I can see.
We live in the age of the cookie-cutter. “This One” is the same as “That One” which is the same as “The One They Developed Last Year” and “The One They have planned for Tomorrow”. Where’s the innovation? Anyone can throw up more shopping and expect to attract an influx of commerce, but what happens when there’s a new lifestyle center on every corner in every town? I don’t think I want to know… I can see the traffic now… What does your community have to offer that my current community doesn’t?
The nature of our business keeps us involved in such development projects around the clock for which we are eternally grateful; these projects keep our business alive. That being said, as a subcontractor we have little if any say in the planning that goes into these communities. We’re pretty much dealing with the builder and the homeowner and that’s it. While we feel that we’re pretty darn good at what we do, we know that we could help serve the builder, homeowner and the community better. This brings me back to the idea. Master Planned Technology Ready Communities.
Think for one second what it would be like to live in a community that had mobile broadband access everywhere. An entire community wired with fiber-optic cabling to every home and business. Access to control your home from anywhere on the Internet. Instant communication between homes and schools for homework and distance learning. A house that you move into and are instantly connected with work, your neighbors and the rest of the world, without lifting a finger.
These are just a few ideas of which none are new, but for some reason are not being included when master planned communities are developed. Think about the type of residents it would attract. Residents that would more than likely seek to start businesses within the community because they have access to so many resources already within their neighborhoods. No more brain drain. It would put that particular community on the map, no pun intended.
We want to help educate homeowners, developers and communities alike because we understand technology and the impact it can have when implemented in such a way. We want to partner with everyone involved in projects like this not only because it helps our business grow, but will help improve life for everyone around us; our family, friends, neighbors and customers. We love our community as much as we love technology and putting the two together is something that everyone could be proud of.
