Let's explore blogging, personal web pages, buildings and a web Integrated World 101?
Last Spring (2006) MySpace announced the marriage of 60,000,000 personal web page customers with a traditional TV and movie channel in MyTV (not to mention one if not THE premier world wide provider of traditional news delivery). This has / had the potential to do what had not been done before. For those who don't know it, Rupert Murdoch pioneered satellite delivery of worldwide communications. Oh yes did we establish that he sells a few newspapers too?
Anyway CNN/Time Warner and AOL tried to merge the two domains of Web content and traditional news and entertainment legacy media to HUGE SEVERE financial outcome (Ted Turner lost something on the order of over $6 BILLION US in that deal).
Rupert and NewsCorp bought about 30,000,000 MySpace accounts for around $580,000,000 US and that account base nearly doubled within 6 months (read that as ad revenue doubling in six months) or 100 PERCENT GROWTH in AD SALES in first 6 months if one follows the numbers in simplistic fashion.
Current MySpace account base currently reported as over 143,000,000.
To look at this deeper we will need to explore the netherworld basics of Login security, the likely next big thing of Biometrics, and also the behind the scenes manufacturing and utility and energy automation infrastructure in the digital automated world, and the inherent vulnerabilities that go along with it. (Follow up with this later).
What are the chances you think I can tie all this together in a coherent fashion and make a valid point? Let's see.
Most of us are fairly well grounded in Blog pages and Web pages for news and information. The whole idea of personal web pages takes us not only to a new level if interaction with each other, but with our buildings and society “systemsâ€. We have to look at the buildings we live work and play. Along with that are all the buildings that are critical behind the scenes infrastructure, that support our day-to-day lives.
Building slowly but gaining speed BACnet and Zigbee and web based automation systems have been a transformational force on the landscape of Building Automation. Briefly let me explain. Some years ago, out of the American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers a standardize controls protocol for interoperability was developed, and subsequently became and ANSI standard (American National Standards Institute). Without putting you folks to sleep with Engineering Speak I offer an analogy. BACnet offers for building control vendors, the same sort of standardization that paved the way for the type of explosion as the PC Compatible computer enjoyed. As in computers where any hard drive or floppy drive or graphics card or sound card or memory chips were interchangeable with any other from any brand of machine so the BACnet standard offered compatibility across the board for HVAC electronic controls manufacturers. In theory at least, it's been a slowly developing ideal with lots of big deep pocket entrenched legacy players in the marketplace.
But what about wireless? We've all been able to call each other from Nextel networks to Alltel systems via Motorola to Nokia with interoperability for years. Not so with wireless building controls components. Until only a couple months ago (Fall 2005 I think). BACnet officially adopted the Zigbee wireless standard as THE protocol standard for building automation. Cheap programmable interoperable devices with no need to run wires and conduit. The possibilities and flexibilities and ease of installation and modification over time are endless.
The thing is you (we and I) must remember that building automation controls are no longer only about heating and air conditioning. We are also speaking to the other building functions of life safety (fire alarm as well as emergency services and security protection), access control, lighting, irrigation, parking management for purpose of client billing, maintenance, purchasing of both supplies and services, custodial care, ALL managed via a centralized integrated interoperable computer system.
Lets not leave out automated window blinds per solar loads, automated ventilation air volumes for indoor air quality control via Carbon Dioxide sensors in the occupied spaces, energy optimization for both day-to-day energy savings and dynamic real time modifications based on minute by minute rate-structure changes from the power utility, HVAC response to emergency events (smoke management for fire, Biohazard terrorist attack) emergency lighting during power failure, back up power generation, the list is endless all in the name of comfort, safety and cost efficiency. Doing more work with fewer people and optimizing the economics.
How about a luxury hotel where the individual room AC is controlled via the check in function. No AC can be on for an un-rented room. At the time of check in the computer automatically enables HVAC as the door key is programmed at the front desk which allows for the room to be ay comfort conditions when the guest arrives, but also prevents heating and cooling energy wasted when the room is un-rented and thus not generating revenue.
How about the lawyer, healthcare or other professional office where the parking ticket mechanism is automatically linked to the leased space and the parking fee is automatically charged to the service provider and billed to the client? All automated with little or no customer interaction required simply take your stub on entry and turn it in when you leave. No change or cash? No problem.
How about all maintenance service call, work order generation, skilled trade labor and repair parts cost tracking, and scheduling automated via a Smart Building System that is capable of Fault Detection and Diagnostics, and self determination of malfunction severity and capable of interfacing to occupancy schedules for access to spaces and systems, so as to minimize disruption to occupants and schedule the service call?
How about everything we just mentioned tied directly into accounting systems for labor planning and payroll, supplies procurement, expense tracking for business management and planning purpose, as well as tax reporting?
How about a house where you walk in and voice command the door locks, gas fireplace, home entertainment, thermostats, appliances, lighting, emergency services?
I also forgot that I promised to tie it all together.
Web based digital signage. You all see them when you move about in your buildings, on the streets, ( Times Square? ), and now also in your homes.
The building operating systems, the delivery of local building centric information and well as macro world media, and local immerging alarms and instructions, and at the same time the Fed’s monetary transactions, retail banking transactions, your phone calls, IPTV, email and our blog pages are all streaming over the same information highway.
Packet by packet.
Think it's in the future? Think again.
For a taste of the state of the art here's a guy that will show you, Jim Young @ www.realcomm.com [1]
Want to learn more about automated buildings? Here are a few good places to start:
Automated Buildings art and science:
http://automatedbuildings.com [2]
Continental Automated Buildings Association:
http://caba.org [3]
Paul Ehrlich
http://buildingintellegencegroup.com [4]
American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers
http://ashrae.org [5]
The BACnet organization
http://BACnet.org [6]
The Zigbee alliance:
http://zigbee.org [7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Network_TV [8]
Welcome to our Web Integrated world folks I hope you make the most out of it and enjoy.
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