AOL AIMS TO MAKE US ALL JETSONS FAMILIES
America Online and Gateway have hooked up to develop an integrated set of futuristic "household appliances" that will employ the Instant AOL service to bring Net conveniences to "every room of their homes," as the clever AOL spinmeisters would have it. That means people will be able to use the little high-tech trinkets for daily planning (via the trademarked My Calendar standard AOL feature), virtual coupon-clipping, online checking, recipes, grocery-ordering and other previously mundane analog tasks. Did we mention they'll be able to do these things in every room of their homes? Oh.
The three pieces of AOL Gateway hardware are a simplified desktop computer, a countertop appliance with a flat-panel LCD touchscreen display that can be mounted like a picture frame and a wireless Web pad that parallels the household mobility of the cordless telephone. The desktop device and the flatscreen thingamabob will be available by year's end, while the wireless gadget allowing household-based space odysseys will appear in early 2001.
"These easy-to-use appliances are an excellent way of providing the whole family convenient access to AOL's many features, content offerings and services from anywhere in the home," AOL President/COO Bob Pittman threw down, sounding like a 20th century pitchman.
These neat-o-sounding doodads will make use of the LINUX OS and the Gecko browser developed by AOL-owned Netscape, which could use a new lease on life in the Microsoft-dominated browser world.
In related news, a preview version of the Netscape 6 browser became available for downloading today on netscape.com. Zzzzzzz….
