Sunday, November 16, 2003
Is Your House Smarter Than You Are?
Imagine calling your house as you are leaving your work about turning on the lights, adjusting the temperature controls, having a dinner recipe ready and opening the garage door. But you are not calling a spouse, your child, or your roommate. You are, literally, calling your house and giving it these commands. The house of the future has arrived, and the reality of the Smart House becoming as common as the Internet is not too far off in the future. CISCO and Sears have teamed up to form the Internet Home Alliance, a collaboration of 14 different electronic companies, to advance the home technology market. Products to be installed in a Smart House may include Electrolux, a screenfridge that is a refridgerator with a computer built on the door. But this computer doesn't just show nutrition facts; it can digitally record video for family members to send messages to one another, it can send and receive e-mail, surf the Web, watch television, be a security camera, provide recipes according to diet, check the fridge for foods necessary for a particular recipe, and order food that will be needed as well! Another product that may be installed is HAL (Home Automated Living), a software that can control all systems in the house by voice from anywhere in the world.
All systems in the house would be able to communicate to one another and to the inhabitants of the house as well. Examples would include the television telling the stereo to turn off or lower its volume, the lights turning on and off depending on where an inhabitant is walking, or the toilet seat adjusting itself after someone leaves his/her bed. The house would not need much upgrading because it works using radio wave frequency and the Internet.
A Smart House sounds very complicated, and perhaps it is because technology always has faults and is pretty tempermental. One user says he can no longer touch the lights because when he does, the whole lighting system shuts down and leaves him in the dark. And of course, what happens when there is a power shortage? Would the people in the house be forced to sit still and not do anything, or be locked inside their homes because leaving it would set off the security system? But despite all the doubts and speculations, a Smart House will become a common item some time in the future. And once it does, it would not be long before all business and academic buildings begin building a Smart Office or Smart Convention Center. Integrating every attendee with the system would be tedious and probably crash a computer server. But by that time, computers should be stronger and run much better, allowing attendees to let exhibitors know they are coming to the booth with such and such questions, or checking to see which restrooms have no line, the nearest exit, stairwell, or snack bar; or for a conference planner to know which equipment is located where, to be able to adjust the lighting, to direct traffic with people, shuttles, buses, doors, to control what is being shown on the large plasma screen, or to adjust the volume of music and/or sound.
Monday, November 10, 2003
Grid Computing
Grid computing allows communication worldwide by virtualizing distributed computing, data, and resources. Similar to intranet but on a much larger scale, grid computing provides access to everything on a large, central, virtual computer. But unlike intranet, each user has privacy of what he/she is accessing that no other user can know. Grid computing allows different businesses in different locations to collaborate towards a common goal, file sharing, resource sharing, and virtualization for different Internet technology resources. The integration of resources brings collaboration, productivity, networking, power, and flexibility. Information is distributed globablly and the infrastructure of the grids makes the system resilient to recovery from failures.
The use of grid computing can allow meeting planners worldwide to collaborate with different businesses with more efficiency and productivity. Working together can produce fantastic results, ameliorating events. Planners do not have to be limited by their resources because with grid computing, practically everything is available and disposable. Imagine accessing information from a European botanic gardens facility to learn more information on the gardens for an event, or speaking with a representative for a major city convention center to discuss the logistics of a future event, all happening from the United States, on the Internet, and in real-time. Time and money can be saved, events coordinated with more flow, and more ease of mind to the planner.
Sunday, November 02, 2003
CATT-Acoustic
NY Times article
Problems with figuring out sound quality in an empty room? Welcome auralization- real-time process of stimulating the acoustics of a room or building to forehear how a filled room would sound like. One software that uses auralization is created by CATT-Acoustic. The software determines the shape of the room, the characteristics of the room, wind and air elements, and an approximation of sounds that would be produced once the room is finished, all based on a 3D CAD design. The process involves digital signal processing and Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs).
However, auralization is not perfect and cannot predict all acoustics. It is mostly used to predict how sound can and will change, but it cannot predict how much. Using auralization can help the meeting planner play with the sounds of the room, to see how sounds will change as more people enter a room, as more equipment, items and glasses are brought in, etc. This way, the planner can adjust and plan around unnecessary echos and reverberation.
