Blog articles from 03/2009

Houston's CenterPoint Energy and GE team up to produce the Advanced Metering System (AMS) enabling consumers to track and manage electric usage and costs. Utilizing GE Digital Energy's MDS Mercury 3650 radios, AMS will translate electric utility meter info from homes/businesses to the CenterPoint's data center. With this real time technology, consumers will be able access energy usage/prices and remotely control appliances via the Internet. For March, CenterPoint began installing...

Personalized and Web-based content driving consumer demand -- Parks Associates reports that approximately 2.5 million broadband households in the U.S. and Canada are ready to purchase an Internet-connected TV if priced at a $100 premium over regular TVs. This figure translates into $250 million in additional revenues for the consumer electronics industry. Parks Associates’ latest consumer study, Digital Media Evolution, gauges market demand for Internet-connected devices and the...

From Reuters : Netflix Inc is the latest media company to integrate with social networking website Facebook, whose huge community of young, tech-savvy users could help drive growth of the online DVD rental service's subscriber base. Starting on Tuesday, Netflix users can use Facebook Connect -- software that links individual Facebook pages to third-party Web sites -- to share their ratings of Netflix rentals with their Facebook friends, the companies said in a statement .

Two interesting gaming announcements from this past week Here were a couple of interesting gaming announcements made this week at GDC: * Zeebo game console announced: A startup backed by Qualcomm announced the launch of a $199 game console for developing markets. The Zeebo will download games over 3G networks. This could be an opportunity for mobile operators to get into the hardware game and make money on services. * OnLive launched: The OnLive Game Service and OnLive...

Seems like everyone is courting TiVo. Between Netflix, Amazon, and now Blockbuster, there's more content on demand available on a broadband-connected TiVo box. Blockbuster will also hawk TiVos in some stores.

CTAM just did a study and found that - despite the economic conditions - most people won't cut their cable cord anytime soon. We had posted similar findings in December.

Despite work both in the IEEE and the ITU, there is still rancor around the powerline networking space, as Rick Merritt in EE Times writes. HomePlug supporters have indicated that one major problem with the 9960 spec is that it is not currently backward-compatible with HomePlug products already deployed (27 million nodes already). We will have representatives from both HomePlug and G.hn at our CONNECTIONS™ Europe Summit on Tuesday, so I imagine that we'll have an interesting...

According to CNET , Verizon Communications is exploring ways to use its Fios broadband service to give consumers ways to remotely control their thermostat and view their energy usage. Company engineers are now designing applications, including energy management, to work with the routers that come with its Fios service. The first application Verizon expects to roll out will be videoconferencing by the end of the year, according to company spokesman Jim Smith, who said home...