Posted by Judy Rapa on Wed, Jul 15, 2009 @ 10:45 AM
I have a confession to make. I still own an analog TV. It is a 4 inch black and white SONY Watchman complete with tin foil on the antenna. They were all the rage in the early 90's. Some of you may even remember them. It was my Mother's Day present in 1991 and holds great sentimental value. This old friend had sat on my kitchen counter for the past 18 years. When my children were young and watching Sesame Street in the family room, I could get my fix of The Today Show every morning and The NBC Nightly News every evening without exposing them to the horrors of the daily news. Once they were teenagers, I could watch the news without being exposed to the horrors of their reality TV shows playing in the other rooms. My Watchman had been my companion through good times and bad and it still worked perfectly well - except for the obvious problem - no audio and no video. I heard rumors that the end was near, but I chose to ignore the warning signs by thinking that President Obama would keep postponing the cutover - forever. My hopes were dashed when on June 12, 2009 my little analog friend became a victim to the digital age. I later found out that I am not alone. My neighbor Beth was using the same wishful thinking strategy for her bedroom TV. Perhaps I should form a support group for those of us in denial - Analog Anonymous anyone?
Now you can only imagine the reactions my high-tech simpleHome colleagues had to my latest low-tech announcement. They seem to have barely recovered from the fact that when I first came to work here I did not own a DVR box or a GPS. (I have since then acquired both thank you very much and my life has been greatly enhanced.) No, this response was far more dramatic. It went something like this: "BLACK AND WHITE! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! (chuckling) ....HOW BIG?! (louder chuckling), HAVEN'T YOU HEARD OF CABLE?! (knee slapping)...TINFOIL??!!! (hysterical laughter). Then there was the joke email sent around the office on cutover weekend. I laughed along with the gang and tried to put up a brave face in spite of my loss.
As it turns out, my story does have a happy, albeit bittersweet ending. After the teasing subsided, my colleagues rallied around me - pointing out that I work at simpleHome, the place dedicated to making life simple, fun, and easy! Thanks to them, I now have a sleek-flip up and down-color-cable connected television mounted under my kitchen cabinet. I have modernized my 1980's vintage kitchen by bringing it into the digital age. Now if I could just get rid of those darn white Formica counter tops. I will always have fond memories of my Sony Watchman and the time we spent together, but I have to admit that Matt Lauer and Brian Williams really do look even better in color!
Posted by Mark Komanecky on Tue, Jun 09, 2009 @ 02:41 PM
The simpleHome team is looking forward to staying in touch with our clients, partners, architects and designers, custom builders, and other interested parties via our new blog. Over the last few months, we have been very busy developing our new web site and we think you will like what you see. We will continue to enhance and expand our site with more infomation on our latest projects, new partnerships, and our emerging work in the energy management area.
Our new web site is not as "flashy" as our previous one, but it will be much easier to find us on the Internet. That is because we have made it much more "search friendly" for Google and the other major search engines.
Now for a bit of news.....we are very excited to be featured in the Project Gallery section on Control4's web site. They selected simpleHome because of our work on a challenging project in rural Connecticut. You can find out more details by clicking here. As you can see, this is a example of how we can integrate smart home and home enertainment technology into an existing home--even in an almost 300 year old farmhouse.
simpleHome worked in conjunction with Control4 to equip the home of techology industry analyst Danny Briere. We installed many of our coolest features, including whole house music, whole house video, lighting control, video cameras and even a driveway sensor to alert the Briere's that someone is entering their driveway.
The Briere's home is located in a rural area of New England where milk is still delivered, so we equipped their milkbox with a Control4 sensor and they now get an alert that says "you've got milk!" One more feature the kids like....they each hear the song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" at 6:30 AM every school morning.
The Briere family is thrilled to be living in an 18th century home filled with 21st century technology!
Just a quick note on Danny Briere....he is the CEO of TeleChoice, a leading strategy and advisory firm and also the co-author of several books on home technology, including Smart Homes for Dummies, Home Theater for Dummies, and HDTV for Dummies. You can find a list of all his "Dummies" books on the Digital Dummies web site.