RE: Orange advert

["Graham Howe" <graham@xxxxxxx>]

Funnily enough my plumber (who is currently installing a new shower and
bathroom) mentioned this this morning (as usual with anyone who comes to
our
house, I had already rambled on to him about all my HA plans and
specifically what Comfort will do) but he did not have any specific
details.
I just had a look at the Orange site and found the following press release:

------------------------
ORANGE ANNOUNCES EUROPE'S FIRST INTELLIGENT HOME
19 December, 2000 - Orange today unveiled Europe's first integrated
intelligent home research centre. The house, located in Hatfield
Hertfordshire will enable Orange and its partners to evaluate and test
advanced intelligent home systems and services.

'Orange at home' has been created around Orange's vision of delivering a
range of life services, all of which are designed to enable consumers to
manage their lives more easily.

Occupants are able to access and control the majority of systems and
appliances in the home using their Orange wirefree device, linked to either
their PDA, webtablet or PC as well as using voice commands through
Wildfire,
Orange's single speech activated interface.

Orange has worked with over 200 leading-edge suppliers and partners over
the
past 9 months including a team of architects, interior designers,
construction companies and technology suppliers.

Richard Brennan, Executive Vice President - OrangeWorldä said, "There
have
been a number of intelligent homes launched over the past year or so, all
attempting to portray a vision of the future. What makes 'Orange at home'
different is that we are working and researching with the best household
goods names in the UK providing them with both the interface and wirefree
connectivity they need to create an integrated solution.

With our partners, we intend to be first to make intelligent home services
commercially available. The house will enable Orange to remain a true
innovator in this exciting and potentially lucrative market area."
------------------------

What I thought sounded interesting was the mention of Wildfire which Orange
already use for effectively processing your Orange account options by voice
(eg. checking messages, managing contact numbers and so on). I have never
used Wildfire but the information on it
(http://www.orange.co.uk/wildfire/index.html)
shows that it understands a
limited set of commands and converts them to specific actions. I wonder if
it's use in the 'Orange home' will be similarly restricted. I would think
that many of the people on this list would want rather more flexibility
than
a predefined set of commands, probably wanting to create macros or
sequences
of events and then trigger them with voice commands. For example whilst I
may not be that interested in dialling up the home to turn on the heating,
I
may well want to dial up the home to tell it to fire up the web server and
connect to the internet so that I can control the house through it's web
interface (when I have done all the cabling, installed and configured
homevision and comfort (still sitting in boxes) and designed the house web
site).

Whatever their approach though, it is nice to see a major company in the UK
actually talking about intelligent homes.

Regards

Graham