Comment Re:Fad (Score 1) 196
I agree these are not something most grandmas are going to use anymore than they would have used a smartphone in 2005 or even today. That doesn't mean there won't be a huge market in the coming years as costs come down and ease of use improves. My mom died 5 years ago having never really used a computer let alone grasped the Internet, but the Internet was still huge and impacted her. Further, one thing that have could have helped her independence later in life was an Internet connected pill dispenser. She had a pill dispenser that we paid a service to keep track of. It would know for example if she hadn't taken her pills on a given day and call one of her family if she didn't. Let me qualify that. It would sort of know. A much better system would have allowed the family to monitor it directly and leave the service out of it. The thing was a bear to program because it had a clunky interface. A web interface would have been much nicer. Incorporating a camera that would capture her removing the pills would have been another improvement.
That's just scratching the surface. There are all kinds of automation related things that could be done to help people with various disabilities stay in their homes.
Then there's security. Think about it. People today spend good money on complex and expensive security systems that aren't very user friendly and don't provide near as much convenience as the newer "smart home" products that are becoming available. Home security is where many of these systems will get a foothold. Once they're in the home there is so much more potential.
Back in the 90's when the public first started venturing out on to the Internet, I doubt many of us realized the potential it had and the ways in would change the world. Think about what something like twitter alone has done.