Monday, August 1, 2011

New Microsoft Operating System HomeOS Already Dogfooded

As the official label implies, HomeOS is nothing more than a platform designed for the home, and OS focused on streamlining the management of technology in the household as well as make it easier for developers to build applications for the users’ houses.

Developed by Microsoft Research, HomeOS is just a prototype at this point in time, but this doesn’t mean that it cannot already be “installed” in homes, even if only for research purposes.

As I said, there are already early adopters dogfooding the new platform. The term dogfooding means eating one’s own dog food, and as far as Microsoft is concerned, it refers to company employees testing the software their putting together.

“HomeOS provides a centralized, holistic control of devices in the home. It provides to users intuitive controls to manage their devices. It provided to developers high-level abstractions to orchestrate the devices in the home,” Microsoft noted.

“HomeOS is coupled with a ithrough which users can easily obtain applications that are compatible with devices in their homes and obtain any additional devices that are needed to enable desired applications.”
In addition to the HomeOS early testing program, the operating system is available to academia, free of charge.

A number of students have already built various projects designed to run on top of Microsoft Research HomeOS, as you will be able to see in the video embedded below, or in the additional demos offered by the Redmond company. (via IStartedSomething)

“We are licensing (free; non-commercial use) the HomeOS prototype to academic institutions to encourage teaching and research on connected homes and devices,” the software giant said.

“About ten research groups have licensed our prototype, including those at the Georgia Institute of Technology the University of Arkansas, the University of Michigan, the University of Washington, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Waterloo.”

HomeOS can be used for a variety of tasks around the household, from user tracking and delivering personalized presence-aware services, to boosting security, automating actions, create intelligent notifications, enhancing control over the home to unmatched levels via NUI, etc.