Coming soon: Cooperating appliances

NEW YORK -- The future of computing might look something like this:

You're sitting at home watching a cooking show on television. The chef is doing something with chicken that looks appealing, so you take your remote control and raise a small window on the TV screen.

Clicking it, you indicate that three people are coming for dinner. You'd like to serve them the chicken dish.

The television thanks you electronically and e-mails the recipe to the microwave oven and refrigerator in the kitchen. The microwave notes that a coupon good for a discount on one of the ingredients in the recipe is available, and notifies the refrigerator.

The refrigerator, in turn, surveys itself for the recipe ingredients and then e-mails a shopping list for missing items to the local supermarket, asking for immediate delivery.

Meanwhile, you haven't moved from the couch.

It sounds like something out of The Jetsons, but such scenarios are among the topics to be discussed at the sixth annual fall Internet World trade show, which opens its exhibit floor here Wednesday.

On Thursday, a session titled "Have Your Toaster E-mail Me" will consider a not-too-distant world in which everything from automobiles and wallets to toys and toilets will have a Net connection.

"As computer chips get cheaper, it becomes possible to put them in lots of different devices," says Bud Tribble of Sun Microsystems, which is working on licensing its Java Internet software as a key ingredient in making home appliances Net-friendly. "The value of doing that goes up tremendously when you connect that device to a network," he says.

The ubiquitous Internet

That trend toward home networking is known as "ubiquitous IP," the IP standing for Internet protocol. It's akin to an old political promise -- but instead of a chicken in every pot, there'll be an Internet connection in every device.

Although consumer products with Internet connections still exist mostly on the drawing board, the use of network devices is already common in industry. Light and temperature sensors in office buildings monitor usage, turning themselves on and off to accommodate human traffic.

Home appliances talking to each other in similar fashion is the blueprint for the consumer market.

Jack Powers, director of the International Informatics Institute and chairman of the Internet World conference, says high-speed Internet connections like cable modems and digital subscriber lines now rolling out across the country are the key to building such a world.

Unlike the modems now found on computers, cable modems and DSL are always on, making them a natural to work with devices like refrigerators and security systems that also operate constantly.

"Once you have them, it becomes more and more interesting to start thinking of applications, and you start building on top of that," Powers says.

Some networked consumer products are already in development, both for inside the home and out.

British company NCR is working on a microwave with an Internet component. The microwave was chosen because it already has a fairly high degree of sophisticated computing in it, says Stephen Emmott, director of NCR's Knowledge Labs division.

"It just hasn't got a screen and a keyboard on it. It does have a display on it," he says, referring to the time and temperature control. That, says Emmott, will be expanded to an information display. The company looked at what people do in their homes and decided the kitchen offered the best possibility for introducing the masses to networked living.

"What our research seemed to suggest is that when people are in front of a TV, that's definitely relaxation mode," Emmott says.

"We've arrived at the kitchen as being the center of work activity, like paying bills."

Going in the right direction

Outside the home, Sun's Tribble sees automobiles as a natural for Net connections. Notification for oil changes, tuneups, or even mass auto recalls for defect parts are likely, he says. It's even likely that the computer in your car will be able to notify the police if you get in an accident and your airbag deploys.

Microsoft is working on this "Auto PC" technology, and Mercedes is building a demo car.

Marketing to your car computer is another possibility, particularly as satellite navigation systems become commonplace, which should happen within two years.

"Ultimately, in addition to map information, you may find that a display pops up with a voice message saying, 'In case you're hungry, there's a McDonald's around the block on the left.' " Tribble says. "If you are hungry, you push a button and it actually tells you where the nearest restaurants are, even what the current wait is at that restaurant."

Internet World's Powers notes that advertisers and promoters can't wait to try out some of these new marketing possibilities.

"There's some very interesting blue-sky thinking going on about how you use it to sell and promote," he says. "You open your refrigerator door and it scans what goes in and goes out . . . Every Monday, your toaster may get a special e-mail with either a coupon or perhaps, 'Here's the right timings when you cook a Pop-Tart vs. a piece of bread.' "

Type of Net connection not decided

While Emmott says NCR's Net microwave could hit the market in about two years, many companies are reluctant to talk in detail about their products and timetables for competitive reasons.

Tribble says Sun has licensed its technology to Motorola and Sony, but won't give specifics, except to note that washing machines, wallets and particularly audio/visual devices wait in the wings.

But before any of this can happen, there are issues to be resolved.

Foremost is just what sort of Internet connection will bond devices. Instead of telephone lines, connections through electrical circuits are under consideration. And compatibility between appliances is still a problem, although Sun has developed a new software technology, called Jini, that should hit the market by the end of the year and make such interaction possible.

One of the biggest problems, as any computer user knows, is the unpredictability of computers themselves. "Increasing functionality leads to increasing complexity," Emmott says. In devices aimed at the vast majority of consumers -- most of whom still don't operate PCs, that's a large hurdle.

"The engineers designing these consumer devices need to have a much different approach to the whole thing than what the engineers designing computers have traditionally done," Tribble says. "You don't want to take Windows NT and put it in your refrigerator and have your refrigerator come up and say 'Unable to boot.' "

The embedded technology that Sun is working on doesn't let the consumer know there's a computer inside a device.

"The moment that computer shows through to the user and throws up an error message, you've failed," Tribble says. "You do not want error messages coming up on your TV set."

By Bruce Haring, USA TODAY