I like reading/learning more than thinking/imagining. But this is a learned habit, and I’d like to change that. So here’s a little thought exercise:

Imagine you are living in a smart home where all your electronic appliances are connected to the Internet. Just like web sites do, your home appliances have APIs that let you programmatically access and control them. Not just yours, but all your neighbors are connected to this home appliance network as well, so you can interact with your neighbor’s devices as well. What kind of mashups would you create?

• You can’t improve what you don’t measur e: I’d like to have a real-time panel showing electric consumption of each device in terms of cost per minute, as well as aggregated measures, cost by room etc.
• Event based actions: While moving around the house, lights should go on an off automatically using sensors, no more light switches! I’d build a web based remote control panel that shows you the status of each device (temperature, on/off, time remaining etc.) and let’s you control them. When you exit the house, you should get a warning of devices you’ve forgotten to turn off.
• Smart control: Heating and air conditioning devices should retrieve local weather data from the internet and adjust the temperature accordingly.
• More interactive TV: You can see your friends’ text-based comments on the side while watching your favorite show. Or you can see related articles that help you better understand things referred in the show. I’d request a recording from my TV directly to my computer. Subtitles for shows in foreign languages. Reviews for movies I’d like to purchase…

There are definitely more interesting things to come …