Home automation means different things to different people, but generally speaking it covers remote control and monitoring technologies that most of us don’t have, either because they’ve been too expensive or too complicated to install and use. That may be changing: Verizon is launching a $10-a-month (OK, $9.99) service that will support scores of devices, from webcams to thermostats.
The service, initially available only to Verizon’s 4.5 million FIOS subscribers, will empower customers to use mobile devices (such as cell phones and tablets), computers, and/or FIOS TV to monitor and manage equipment based on Sigma Designs’ Z-Wave technology. Z-Wave devices use wireless mesh network technology (not Wi-Fi) to communicate with a base station or gateway that interfaces with the outside world through a broadband network.
Today’s 
One of the neater features on many recent smartphones is support for displaying high-def video stored on the phone on an HDTV through an HDMI connection. I just bought an adapter for doing this with my iPad, but using it can be a little awkward: Once you hook up the phone to the TV, you often have to worry about also connecting it to a power source, and to pause or otherwise control the video on the phone you might have to crouch next to the set since connector cables typically aren’t that long.
Can setting up a Wi-Fi network ever be drop-dead easy for non-technical folks? Maybe not, but Cisco gives the problem its best shot with
When Las Vegas cab drivers start asking you about the 3D TVs at CES, you know 3D is a big deal. The question is, how soon will it become a real deal for most of us?