More evidence that magic as an interaction metaphor may be viable for some applications. Themeaddicts, a company with some former Disney people involved, is making a kind of home talking mirror, a la "Snow White." They're claiming it as potentially useful for home security stuff.
When your home automation / security system senses a change in your environment, the character within the mirror theatrically appears and notifies you of the change. Once notified you may choose to directly view a camera feed on the stealthy monitor.
From the description it sounds pretty limited. Unless it has a lot of different ways to do that one function, I can imagine it'll get old awfully fast, like the novelty talking GPS voices. They're planning to charge a lot for it (see below), so if it's to be broadly accepted, its novelty and/or utility will have to stay high for a long time (much longer than, say, for a singing bass from Walgreen's).
It is important to understand that these devices are not inexpensive due to the limited production numbers and direct production and equipment costs.
That said, technology transfer from Magic Kingdom expats is of course welcome and I'll be interested to see how it actually works. For now, it seems like it's little more than some software running a simple animation and video switch connected to a security system. If the experience is really compelling, maybe that's enough, but I'm dubious. Originally seen on Engadget.
this is so not what im looking for!!!