I’m not sure how to wax enthusiastic about this without it getting really geeky, but here it goes.

The ZigBee Alliance is a group collaborating on extremely low-power, low-bandwidth, dynamic networking standards. Where you’ll see this appearing first is likely in Home Automation applications, where you’ll be able to control your theormostat from your cell phone or have your TV mute itself with the phone rings. I had a pretty extensive home automation system set up before we moved to San Marcos, but had become frustrated enough with the slow speed and unreliability of the X-10 technology that my system was based on that I was never able to muster enthusiasm to get back into it in the new house.

Beyond home automation, this appears to be an excellent platform for building mesh-networked sensor arrays, and for building management and industrial automation. Potentially very cool stuff.

Oh, drat. I went and got geeky after all.