Much of our digital lifestyle is about convenience and entertainment, but there's a more serious role for Home Automation technologies too.  Life expectancy continues to climb and older people can start to become less independent.  Enter Comfort from Cytech, a comprehensive home security and domotics system that can be employed to help keep seniors safe in their homes for longer...

While the Plex dev team works hard on the v9 release, they've just managed to integrate the Apple Video Decode Acceleration Framework Reference into v8.  At last the GPU is being employed to decode those lovely 720P and 1080P H.264 videos (kudos Ryan).  Dev team leader Elan Feingold just posted the news on the Plex blog along with a link to the new binary...

Our friends over at AV Jungle have just sent us a new Automated Home readers offer.  As they unpack the newly arrived Squeezebox Touch consignment they've given us a discount code for the new unit...

So the iPad has been available in the US for around a week now.  We're still waiting for a firm date (and price) here in the UK and to add to the teasing photos from our friends in America, here are a couple of new Home Automation iPad App videos...

Philips have launched their smart home lighting brand, Dynalite, in the United States.  The range includes trailing edge dimmers, relays, ballast (1-10V, DSI, DALI), and multipurpose controllers with multipurpose sensors for presence detection and daylight harvesting, user control panels and touch screens, plus network gateways, bridges and other modules that permit integration of third-party systems such as HVAC, security, AV, blinds and building management systems.  Read on for the full PR...

We've been following the OpenRemote project for a few years now.  Here's a new video from the team showing the improved UI for their BOSS v2.0 (Building Operating System Standard) software that lets you use iPhone and iPod Touch to remotely control devices, lights and audio/video systems around your home...

New website www.avjungle.co.uk has just launched bringing home automators favourites like lighting control, HDMI over CAT5 and the Squeezebox and Sonos ranges.  To celebrate the opening they are offering a 5% discount for all Automated Home readers during March and April - just enter 'Automated Home' at the checkout...

Crestron have announced their 'Crestron Mobile' and 'Crestron Mobile Pro' apps are now ready for the iPad.  The new versions will be available to run on the iPhone and iPod touch as before, with the addition of the ability to run at the iPads native resolution...