Right now, even as I write these words, a conference is taking place in San Jose, California. A conference discussing the future of the connected home, called the Digital Home Developers Conference, which has as its intention "help[ing] technology innovators address challenges, opportunities, technologies, roadmaps and strategies for designing, developing and deploying winning digital home platforms and services." A good plan, no? As long as the house doesn't turn around and start demanding voting rights or try to electrocute me in my sleep, I'm all about the potential convenience of a digital home.

However, there seems to be a basic barrier to entry that manufacturers haven't figured out yet: if the devices are too complex to use, people won't adopt them and the concept will die stillborn. According to a panel at the conference, simplicity and hiding all of the acronyms that befoul our digital world on a daily basis (IP, DRM, HD, AAC, WMF, etc.) are the way to go.

Well, duh. Any marketing person who doesn't know that doesn't belong in the business, or they're going to be marketing to tech heads and tech heads alone. The CNET article I just linked to suggests that this conference may be encouraging manufacturers to avoid closed standards and go for something open that a group of companies can embrace, reducing complexity for the user and presumably leading to more sales. It's an uncomfortable idea to embrace, I'm sure, because it requires a leap of faith, but as standards like mp3 and IP have proven, the rewards for not going proprietary are huge.