Disney Gets Innoventive
Tomorrowland has seen the future and it is now. Since opening half a century ago, the fabled Disneyland destination has provided millions of visitors with glimpses into tomorrow’s homes. Now a new generation of visitors to the Anaheim, Calif., theme park will get a peek at future habitats, tha...
X10 Explained: Controlling Your Home Without Re-wiring
X10 is a popular technology that allows you to control electrical devices throughout your house with existing 110-volt wiring, eliminating the need to run new wires - a costly enterprise in some cases. Because X10 equipment simply plugs into wall outlets, it's usually simple to install and use. But ...
A Household 'Fuel Gauge'
Home automation systems can sometimes seem a bit, well, superfluous. It's nice to be able to control lights all over the house or pre-program the heat, but is it really all that useful? Smart Systems Technologies has developed an automation system that it insists really is useful. Its Em-Power syste...
A guide to the language of cellular technology
CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) - The most common digital technology in which information is digitized, assigned a unique code and spread over the entire bandwidth available to the phone. The receiver uses the same code to reassemble the signal. CDMA allows as many as 10 separate calls to occup...
The Lowdown on High-Definition TV
If you want the best picture money can buy, high-definition television (HDTV) offers jaw-dropping clarity. But when you start making decisions about which set to buy, that picture looks muddy. As with any new technology, the prices are falling - they already dropped about 40 percent over the last th...
The Home RF Alternative
You may have heard of another wireless networking technology called HomeRF. HomeRF uses the 2.4-GHz band just like Wi-Fi, but the standard is squarely aimed at the home and has had a slow start due to late approval from the FCC for a faster version that closely matches Wi-Fi's speed. Wi-Fi has built...
TV Goes High Tech
Television has never been easier to watch. But a visit to any home electronics store shows that choosing which new television to buy has never been more complicated. Over half a century, television has evolved as a portal for information and entertainment. Despite the Internet, it remains...
The Case For Pre-Wiring
If you're interested in home automation and you're building or renovating your house, give serious thought to pre-wiring it for the future. Installing an advanced cable system will serve your needs now and well into the future, and it's a lot easier to do before the drywall goes up. Cabling needs to...
The Un-Wired Lifestyle
Multiple computers sharing one printer, family photos stored on a PC shown on a large-screen TV, music files stored on a computer but played through a stereo system, no more waiting to go online until someone else finishes, digital images displayed on any PC in the house showing the view from a wire...
Where Wi-Fi Operates
Wi-Fi uses part of the radio spectrum - the 2.4-gigahertz (GHz) band reserved by the Federal Communications Commission for unlicensed use. This means that although the equipment you purchase has been approved by the FCC (and its regulatory counterparts if you're outside the United States), you don't...
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