Slashdot Mirror
Talking Mirror, Pirate Skull Security System
junger writes "Themeaddicts, owned by a Hollywood animatronics guru famous for doing the T-rex in Jurassic Park, has created a home security system with a talking mirror (complete with floating head), talking pirate skull, and talking toucan. It informs the homeowner of things like a car coming up the driveway or the jacuzzi reaching the right temperature, and it turns into a surveillance camera."
"There's someone prettier than you walking up the driveway, preparing poisoned apple now..."
Task Mangler
Mirror, mirror am I stoned?
Your image is now goatse.cx guy,
My home security must be pwn3d
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1640/1jq5.png
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1937/2yv7.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3663/3fj4.png
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3041/4ty1.png
Although you know it doesn't run on linux. Knowing slashdot, if it ran on linux it would say so in the title of the article or at least in the description.
This being slashdot you're more likely to see: To run Windows you'll need a bigger mirror.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...you see the headline "Talking Mirror, Pirate Skull Security System" and immediately think it's about a filesharing mirror site that talks.
Yes yes yes, shiny gadgetry to do little of import.
On the other hand, it is "kewl", and could evolve into some genuinely useful stuff.
For example, a friend came home last weekend to find his live-in elderly mother, already incapacitated by a stroke, had been lying on the floor for 3 hours after a bad fall. If a house system had been able to identify someone was unmoving in a non-stationary part of the house it could have informed him, supplied images to his cellphone, tied into his intercom system to communicate with her.
(Yes, there are all sorts of other things to be done for his mother, and he has, including an emergency-call amulet - she didn't use it. The point is these technologies could move into these areas improving them)
For another example, an former boyfriend of mine has a condo in a resort area several hours from his primary residence. Setting up a webcam to monitor it visually was an obvious step towards maintaining the home, but a "smart" system that could make limited 'decisions' such as thresholds for activity before alerting him, monitoring temperature or water levels, etc. would be quite valuable. Yes one can really geek out now and do it with X-10 etc. gadgets but he's not, he's just an average fella willing to spend a few bucks on some easy to install/use package for his vacation home.
Then there's the partner-factor. If the significant other isn't comfortable having it in the home, using it, then it's a no-go. If putting a friendly interface on it makes it that much more usable then that is, as Martha would decree, "a good thing".
Personally I'd love a front door "window" that would direct package deliveries to my always-home neighbor, display to religious proselytizers an animated rendition of them (complete with inserted photos of their faces) dropping into the pits of hell, and inviting everyone else to record a video message that will be relayed to me. Allowing me to respond with unlocking the door or lawn sprinklers as appropriate would be a cherished upgrade!
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
It'll be interesting, though, to see this in mass production. All of the sudden, Joe Average and his generic home alarm will be rocketed forward into the 21st century. Suddenly, the "Home of the Future" will have a toe-hold with the Late Adopter market segment.
How cool would it be when AI technology progresses to a point to interface with something like this? All of the sudden, the kid-sitting industry will taper off. Of course, we'll need to avoid any HAL like behavior.
Husband: "Open the car-bay door, HAL."
HAL: "I'm sorry Dave, I cannot do that..."
Wife: "I told you not to hire that cheap garage door repairman... And stop calling it a car-bay."
Husband: "I'll go get the Yellow Pages."
I'd rather it talk to someone who breaks in. I mean if I walked into some guy's house looking for something to gank and all of a sudden the mirror was like "What are you doing here?" I think I'd be gone FAST.