In this guest editorial, Jason Briggs paints a picture of a future in which we are surrounded by myriad smart devices, each running the combo of an embedded Linux OS along with a Java application programming environment. Briggs writes . . .

“You've no doubt already read predictions about the house of the future: network enabled devices connected to each other and to the Internet. The fridge that orders milk when you run out. The washing machine that knows when it's about to run out of powder and emails a distress call to the pantry.”

“But have you sat back and thought about how some of these ideas might actually work in the next few years — rather than some indeterminate time in the next decade or so?”

“The backbone of the connected home will obviously be a computer of some sort. This computer (or “home services gateway” as I've heard it referred to) won't be the desktop PC sitting on the end of your desk that crashes half the time you install new software on it, or gets infected by a virus every time your children download a new game from the Internet.”

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