Everyone on the consumer side agrees that they'd like to have à la carte choices from cable companies, but beyond that there's no shortage of debate as to how effective the bill is likely to be and whether the end result would actually be any better for those consumers. The television market is badly distorted at all levels by monopoly interests and those whiffs of not-quite-collusion by groups of companies with a shared interest in maintaining the status quo, but is this bill capable of overcoming that? And is the practice of bundling really at the heart of the problem, or just a good public face for the deeper issues?

This is hardly the first attempt to stop the practice at either the network or cable provider level. Some courts have already found bundling by cable providers to be legal and not anticompetitive; meanwhile Cablevision is currently pursuing an antitrust suit against Viacom for the network's bundling of stations that it sells to providers. Most of the details of the latter are under seal, but one notable point is Viacom's claim that it already offers channels individually, they just cost way more. If that's true of all Viacom's content, then it wouldn't be affected by McCain's bill anyway, which still permits bundling as long as there is an à la carte option.

And even if it's not true, it just underlines the core problem of this approach: the bill doesn't give networks any reason to make individual channels affordable or desirable. They either already offer an expensive à la carte menu that nobody orders from, or they could easily do so. Moreover, it's not as though the justification for bundling offered by the networks is completely falsified: they can spend more money on niche channels and programs by subsidizing them with the revenue from more broadly popular fare. Of course, it's not as though that justification isn't exaggerated and twisted to suit their needs either, nor is it true that the same fundamental idea couldn't exist without bundling. Networks get more value from niche programs than just transmission fees: they care about audience reach, brand-building, competing with other forms of content, accumulating accolades for prestige shows and even, believe it or not, making good television. There's no reason their businesses could not be structured to continue subsidizing niche programming with popular programming in a slightly less direct manner.

So the final solution, as always, needs to be found in the market — and that's already happening. Basically every single noticeable trend in media consumption habits, not just in television but in music and publishing and every format, points towards a more à la carte world. It's not news that the networks and cable providers have dragged their heels on this in the hope of milking their incumbent position a bit longer, nor is it news that they are privately a lot more freaked out by the cord-cutting movement than their public statements admit. Ultimately, it will be consumers making choices that force these companies to either adapt or perish.

But for that to happen, innovators do need to be able to actually give the consumers those choices. If the market has become so badly distorted that innovators are being locked out, then legal action and new laws are needed. And that's why the aspect of the bill that is likely to be the most effective (not to mention the most interesting) is the way it all seems to come back to Aereo.

The fight that Aereo started sits at the core of almost everything in the bill. Network owners don't like Aereo because they don't want to lose their retransmission fees from cable providers. Cable providers don't like Aereo because they don't want to lose the appeal of the major networks which, despite the ascendence of cable channels, still sit at the core of their service bundles — and because, generally, they don't want cord-cutters to have more options. McCain's bill basically says: Aereo or no Aereo, consumers need choices, and they're going to get them, whether you like it or not.

Is it a worthwhile step? Yes — or, at least, it's hard to see how it could do any harm, even if it does prove ineffectual. Is it the best approach? No. It almost feels like a bet on Aereo's failure. If Aereo were permitted to innovate, rather than being forced to jump through endless technological hoops and still spend more time in court than in the workshop or the boardroom, then the market would already be giving consumers what they want and pushing the networks and cable providers to become more competitive. If there is to be legal reform, it shouldn't be another layer of conditions and caveats on broadcast licenses and the retransmission fee structure that attempts to force the hand of the networks and cable companies, it should be a clarification (and probably a relaxation) of the rules, removing the legal and regulatory uncertainty that holds disruptive startups back. Television doesn't need a Consumer Freedom Act — consumers already have lots of freedom, they just don't have many choices in how they exercise it. The heart of McCain's bill is in the right place, but a Television Innovator Freedom Act is what we really need.

Throughout the years, key breakthroughs inventions such as Polacolor film (1963), the flashcube (1965), the automated teller machine (1973), the halogen lamp (1974), the fax machine (1975), the liquid crystal display (1980), the printer (1986), the Kodak Photo CD (1991), the Nicoderm antismoking patch (1992), Taxol anticancer drug (1993), lab on a chip (1996), and HDTV (1998) have received the prize.

Canada does not recognize the 301 watch list process. It basically lacks reliable and objective analysis. It's driven entirely by U.S. industry. We have repeatedly raised this issue of the lack of objective analysis in the 301 watch list process with our U.S. counterparts.

The Chilean government said today it does not recognize as a valid instrument rating called "301 list" that makes the United States on violation of intellectual property rights and this year again includes the country in its Priority Watch section .

"This report is conducted outside the margins of the Free Trade Agreement between our country and the U.S., and therefore not recognized by Chile as a valid instrument rating," said a statement released this morning.

The "'301 List' lacks clear criteria for categorizing the different countries, but is rather a reflection of the interests of American industry selectively applying their intellectual property standards to other countries," it added.

• First up is the well-named Ferrocious, which not only shows you ferrofluid in action, but it also responds to music and dances around within the device. I've gone back and forth on whether or not I really like this project. The device is cool... but it seems a bit bulky, considering how small the space is where the ferrofluid is. It has that mad scientist vibe, but at over $100, seems a bit steep. They're also selling a simpler version that is just a more standard ferrofluid display with a magnet, rather than the whole "bounces to music" thing. The project is ways past its rather low goal, but it also hasn't taken the Kickstarter community by wildfire yet either.
• The second one is also a ferrofluid display, but the NeoDrop interactive display definitely has a much more polished look to it, even though it (like the simplified Ferrocious device) relies on hand held magnets to make the liquid do its thing. This device is also way overfunded based on a modest initial target. It's worth noting that this device seems a lot cooler looking if you're going for that modernist aesthetic -- plus it's a lot cheaper than the Ferrocious device. Either way, lots of people seem to be snapping up the devices to great fanfare.

Few would argue that the Musical Instrument Digital Interface -- MIDI -- is quite in the same league as the World Wide Web, and yet for musicians it has been hugely important in providing a common standard for playing and composing digital music. As an article in Fortune reminds us, one reason for that success is that like Berners-Lee, MIDI's inventor, Dave Smith, also gave away his brilliant creation:

when Smith collaborated with a handful of Japanese companies -- including Roland and Yamaha -- to bring MIDI into the world 30 years ago, he skipped the licensing fees, instead offering up his idea for the world to steal. "We wanted to be sure we had 100% participation, so we decided not to charge any other companies that wanted to use it," says Smith.

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The fact that music is widely seen as "intellectual property" is itself a product of that struggle. For a long time, the U.S. worked to separate intellect and property. In the early 1900s when copyright issues around sound recording were first being negotiated, the law "protected the tangible expression of an idea and not the idea itself," Cummings writes. Lawmakers struggled to figure out where sound recordings fit into that framework. Was the recording a tangible expression of a new idea? Or was it simply a copy of an idea? Congress initially leaned towards the second interpretation—and, as a result, sound recordings could not be copyrighted. For decades, pirates had to be prosecuted under common law or statutory bans on unfair competition. It was only in the 1970s that copyright was extended to sound recordings.

Unrestricted property rights in music, they feared, could create monopolies, harm consumers, and throttle innovation and competition This was the rationale, in part, for giving songwriters only limited rights over the use of their songs. Under the law, licensing was compulsory: Songwriters received a fee from recordings, but could not refuse the use of their work. You can thank this system for America's long history of cover versions. Indeed, in the years before it was common to play records on the radio, these remakes were central to the record labels' business model: Re-recordings of hit songs by different artists were a major source of income. A whole subset of artistic production and commerce, in other words, was enabled not by the expansion but by the limitation of intellectual property rights.

This apparent contradiction surfaces again and again throughout Cummings' book. Property rights in music are supposed to promote creativity, but often they seem to either be irrelevant, or else actively retard it.

Meanwhile the evidence of international patent filings is looking increasingly ominous. According to data compiled by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the world’s single most prolific filer of international patents as of 2011 was ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications corporation. Its filings were up an astounding fivefold from 2009. Another Chinese corporation, Huawei, moved up to third in the 2011 league table. The only United States corporation to make the Top 10 was Qualcomm.

All this is the more troubling because United States patent law has now been drastically weakened. Congress has made it much harder for small American inventors to protect their intellectual property from infringement and theft.

Pat Choate, the author of “Hot Property,” a book on the theft of intellectual property, maintains that if the new patent regimen had existed when corporations like Apple and Microsoft first got going, they might never have made it out of the little leagues. Their patents would have been quickly infringed by predatory larger corporations, and rather than engage in unequal litigation battles against deep-pocketed and ruthless opponents, they could have felt forced to share their technology on concessionary terms.

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then the have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want.

"I see a path to where this is crowd-sourced," Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com in the United States, said in a recent interview with Reuters.

Wal-Mart has millions of customers visiting its stores each week. Some of these shoppers could tell the retailer where they live and sign up to drop off packages for online customers who live on their route back home, Anderson explained.

Wal-Mart would offer a discount on the customers' shopping bill, effectively covering the cost of their gas in return for the delivery of packages, he added.

Since our founding, IV has efficiently and effectively identified strong patents covering significant and relevant inventions, purchased those patents, and marketed and licensed them to companies who need them. A properly functioning patent system is the foundation of IV's business model, along with the sensible notion that a fair price must be paid for use of a patented invention.

Patent infringement, however, continues to be a problem and the patent system cannot work as intended if infringement goes unchecked. When sophisticated companies turn a blind eye to infringement, we are forced to take action to safeguard the value of our patents and to protect the interests of our investors and customers. Infringers need to pay for the inventions they are using. An issued patent provides rights to the patent owner and when these rights are ignored, it impairs the incentives that spur invention and poses a real threat to innovation

We enter into litigation after careful deliberation and a thorough analysis of the patents we own and the products we believe to be infringing. The actions we take to protect our rights are with established, patent savvy technology companies – not start-ups – and we have reached settlements for significant amounts. In other words, our patent portfolios are being recognized for their validity and relevance to current industries and key technologies.

IV does not enter litigation lightly, and our actions are not frivolous. Asserting our rights is something IV, and any patent owner must do, when their patents are being used without license.

One of the key problems is that software patents are essentially patents on mathematical algorithms -- sets of instructions for carrying out a calculation. Since it has long been a principle that you can't patent mathematical formulae or laws of nature, there is a tension there: if software is just mathematics, why should you be able to patent it at all? New Scientist points to an interesting article in the April 2013 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society, in which David A. Edwards proposes a radical way of solving that conundrum (pdf):

At present, only those things which are made by man are patentable. Thus, the courts have allowed new forms of bacteria which have been engineered to have useful properties using recombinant DNA techniques to be patented but would not allow such a bacterium to be patented if it were naturally occurring even if it were newly discovered. This is the basis for the nonpatentability of computer programs. They are algorithms, which are essentially mathematical formulas, which -- as everyone knows -- are "eternal" and hence discovered by man and not created by him. This argument which, to say the least, is philosophically controversial, leads to our present unfortunate policy. From an economic point of view, there is no rationale for distinguishing between discovery and invention, and we would advocate dropping entirely any subject matter restrictions whatsoever on what can be patented. One should be able to patent anything not previously known to man.

One of his arguments is that this would spur people to make more discoveries. But that presupposes mathematicians aren't trying to do that now for glory, peer esteem and tenure, but there's no evidence to suggest that. The same argument is sometimes made in support of software patents -- that they stimulate the production of more software. But that overlooks the fact that the computer industry thrived for decades before the introduction of software patents, and that companies like Microsoft grew into hugely profitable enterprises without them.

Indeed, in 1991 Bill Gates famously warned about the problems that software patents would create for the industry and his company:

In a memo to his senior executives, Bill Gates wrote, "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." Mr. Gates worried that "some large company will patent some obvious thing" and use the patent to "take as much of our profits as they want."

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From the printing press, to motion pictures, to recorded sound, to the Internet, for its entire history, copyright law has evolved and developed in response to new developments in technology and the marketplace.

The result is that today the U.S. copyright system is a cornerstone of a vibrant creative economy that is unparalleled in the world – adding $631 billion and over 7.5 million direct and indirect jobs in 2010 [Department of Commerce, IP and the U.S. Economy study], and making the United States a world leader in creativity, technological innovation and economic growth.

MPAA member companies welcome a continuation of the ongoing discussion of the importance of copyright. We welcome a discussion based on facts, experience, and rational analysis.

And we are confident that such a discussion will result in a renewed affirmation of the benefits to all of a copyright law that encourages and rewards creativity and breakthrough innovation, promotes distribution and enjoyment of America’s most beloved stories and characters, and takes a firm stand against the criminals who would rob us of those.

Copyright Empowers Creativity, Innovation and the Dissemination of Knowledge
The promise of the opportunity to make a living doing what they love is what gives a creator incentive to transform his or her new ideas into reality and to take that new creation to the public. Creators deserve to be secure in the knowledge that they have a fair chance to earn a wage from their work and investment -- the works that contribute both to our shared culture and our national economy. The Constitution itself recognizes that the public’s interest in creativity and the dissemination of knowledge is best served by the incentives that result from recognizing authors’ and creators’ rights. If our creative sector is to remain the envy of the world, the law must ensure these public-interest purposes of copyright are not undercut.

Take Digital Rights Management technology, for example. Without the protection of effective DRMs, the business incentive to develop new and innovative distribution models, like UltraViolet, across multiple devices and platforms is lost. The technological and legal protections provided by current law allow content to be portable, enabling consumer flexibility on how to access it. Under current copyright law, the choice and cost curves are both bending in the consumer’s direction.

Copyright Benefits Consumers by Promoting Free Markets and Competition
Copyright as it is reflected in both the Constitution and in current law recognizes that the public benefits from a competitive environment in which clearly-defined property rights enable the market to drive the creation and dissemination of creative woks. These rights foster competition because they incentivize creators to take risks. They encourage economic development and economic diversity. That’s good for the consumer and good for the economy.

Enforcement of existing copyright laws is also essential to ensure that illegitimate websites that profit from the illegal sale of content do not have an economic advantage over the innovative platforms that our companies develop to deliver high-quality content to consumers. Undermining copyright law would serve as a disincentive for future technological development and would harm consumers.

Copyright Supports an Internet that Works For Everyone
There are those who would place the value of the Internet at odds with copyright. We reject that false choice. Freedom of expression is at the bedrock of both the Internet and the creative community. In considering policies surrounding the Internet, we need to recognize what the Supreme Court has stated repeatedly – that copyright is itself an “engine of free expression.” Not only does copyright itself promote creativity, but creative content has plays an important role in helping to promote the growth of the Internet. As we look at policy affecting the Internet, we must advance policies to promote an Internet that reflects the values that have been fundamental to us for hundreds of years, including freedom of expression, property rights, and protection of the rights of individuals. Good policy stays true to these values, resisting efforts that would pit one against another and recognizing instead that these values are mutually reinforcing.

Copyright Provides Creators with Modern Protections
Copyright law evolves over time. The last major overhaul of copyright law was the result of decades of Congressional work, much of it focused on fashioning a law that would be flexible enough to accommodate future technological change. But technology and the marketplace often evolve faster than the law. Fortunately, copyright law also provides the space for the private sector to collaborate to develop more immediate solutions. Content creators and intermediaries can and do engage in meaningful conversations about how to protect a secure, legitimate online environment for both creators and audiences. Any discussion of copyright law must include recognition of the critically important role that voluntary agreements play in ensuring the content and tech industries can both remain nimble in a rapidly-changing world.

Copyright Provides for Incentives and Accountability
The public interest in the creation of and dissemination of creative and innovative products cannot be served in an environment in which some are free to build businesses based on the infringement of the rights of others. As infringement grows more widespread, sound copyright policy must recognize that the solution to such problems is in society’s broad interest. Any review of copyright must focus on whether the system as a whole provides for meaningful accountability on the part of those who infringe the rights of others, and whether there are adequate incentives for cooperation and accountability among other stakeholders.

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IFPI believes the JRC study is flawed and misleading. The findings seem disconnected from commercial reality, are based on a limited view of the market and are contradicted by a large volume of alternative third party research that confirms the negative impact of piracy on the legitimate music business.

The fundamental problem of the music market place remains as true as ever: why pay for music when you can get it illegally free?

• Sad fact: Funding for basic science research makes up less than 1% of the federal budget. Even sadder is that cutting the small amount the government spends on basic science will have little impact on short-term fiscal goals, but its negative effects on the economy will be felt for decades to come, potentially costing the U.S. billions of dollars in missed future opportunities. [url]
• Lasers are an example of how a discovery in basic science can eventually lead to a revolutionary invention. The first laser was built in the 1950s, but practical applications for lasers didn't appear until decades later. Today, lasers are a multi-billion dollar industry and are key to many technologies used in manufacturing, communications, medicine, entertainment, and scientific research. [url]
• Cutting funding for basic science research will impact young investigators the most. Actually, brand new tenure-track professors are somewhat insulated because there's always some money set aside for them. It's the just tenured professors that will feel it the most, as they try to compete for grants against the entire population, which includes Nobel laureates, National Academicians, and more well-established researchers. [url]

In 2006, while a sophomore at Harvard, Zuckerberg created a website called “Facemash” which compared photographs of Harvard’s entire population, asking users to compare two photos and vote on who looked better. Zuckerberg allegedly got access to these photos by “hacking” into each of Harvard’s nine House websites and then collecting them all on one site. It’s not clear what this “hacking” was, but since the charges against him included “breaching security,” it may have fun afoul of the law.

Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu notes in the New Yorker that Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, did acts that were “more economically damaging than, Swartz’s.” The two college roommates made what were called “blue boxes,” cheap devices that mimicked a certain frequency that allowed them to trick AT&T’s telephone system into making free long-distance calls. They also sold blue boxes before moving onto bigger and better ideas.

In his autobiography, Allen told the story of when the two future billionaires “got hold of” an administrator password at the company they worked at before starting Microsoft. The company had timeshared computers and Allen and Gates were getting charged for using them for their personal work.

The two men used the password to access the company's accounts and set about trying to find a free runtime account so that they could carry on programming without having to pay for the time. They also copied the account database for later perusal. However, management got wise to the plan.

"We hoped we'd get let off with a slap on the wrist, considering we hadn't done anything yet. But then the stern man said it could be 'criminal' to manipulate a commercial account. Bill and I were almost quivering."

“Experiences like that taught us the power of ideas…And if we hadn’t have made blue boxes, there would’ve been no Apple.”

Right now, at Silicon Valley companies large and small, engineers and product developers are getting together late at night in what are popularly known as “hackathons.” Their goal is to see what kind of new products can be cobbled together in a few days. You know, for fun. The innovators are not even trying to disrupt your business. You’re just collateral damage.

Twitter, for example, began its commercial life humbly at the 2007 South by Southwest conference, following its invention at a hackathon the year before. Its developers wanted to test sending standard text messages to multiple users simultaneously, an experiment that required almost no new technology. Today the company boasts more than 200 million active users and half a billion tweets a day. Twitter has destabilized everything from the news and information ecosystem to unpopular national governments.

The adoption of disruptive innovations is no longer defined by crossing a marketing chasm. Instead, the innovators collectively get it wrong, wrong, wrong—and then unbelievably right. That makes it even harder for businesses wed to today’s products and services. All those failed experiments seem like evidence that the emerging technologies just aren’t ready. In reality, in today’s hyperinformed world, each epic failure feeds consumer expectations for the potential of something dramatically better.

Quickly and efficiently, a predictable next wave of technology will likely put a quick and definitive end to any “information empires” that have formed from the last generation of technologies.

Or, at the very least, do so more quickly and more cost-effectively than alternative solutions from regulation. The law, to paraphrase Mark Twain, will still be putting its shoes on while the big bang disruptor has spread halfway around the world.

1. First up is a game by Lat Ware, called Throw Trucks With Your Mind! And, yes, the name is quite descriptive (Lat jokes that we should imagine a world in which Call of Duty Gears of War is called "Hide Behind Chest High Walls," since he appears to prefer games to be named after their key concept). Lat was able to stop by our offices yesterday and let me try it out, and the game delivers what it promises. I did, in fact, get to throw some trucks with my mind, and it's pretty awesome. Lat has hooked up an off the shelf NeuroSky EEG device (which you can buy for about $80) to the game he's developing, and there are different actions that you can perform in the game based on how focused you are and how calm you are -- the two things measured by the NeuroSky. Moving around and selecting what telekinetic power you have is done via the keyboard. But staring at a truck and launching it at your enemy to crush them is an amazingly satisfying experience. You can also do other things like lifting, pulling, super jumping and "slow falling." As a fun test, Lat effectively has you jump off a cliff, and you fall slower if you remain calm, but if you get excited you fall faster and die. It's an interesting mental battle to try to keep yourself calm just as you start to fall faster and faster off a cliff.
   
   I've read some of the discussions online about TTWYM elsewhere, and some were concerned about how much fun the gameplay could really be, and let me just say that there shouldn't be any concern. After I tested it out for a bit, I called in someone else who works here, and we got to throw trucks at each other with our minds for a while, with the person more focused and more calm person winning. It's an interesting mental battle of wills when you're trying to kill your colleague by being the most calm. The game itself can handle up to 32 people at once, either over a LAN or the internet.
   
   The game itself is just the very rough pre-alpha version, built on the Unreal Development Kit. But the goal of the Kickstarter project is to bring in a team of kick ass video game artists to turn it into a very different visual experience that's much more whimsical and fun (there's some mockup art on the Kickstarter page). You can buy the NeuroSky device independently or one of the tiers includes one, but you do need it to play the game -- which may limit the number of folks who can play it early on. As of right now, the game is about half funded (to the $40,000 Lat is seeking), but it's definitely one of those things that feels like it's from the future, and gets you thinking about all the cool stuff that's going to be possible before very long, even if this example just involves using your mind to fling giant trucks at your friends.
   
   
2. Okay, move past that ability to throw trucks with your mind, and start thinking about controlling your computer with simple gestures, and then check out the MYO device, which has been generating a ton of attention mainly due to its amazing video highlighting how a simple arm band can create all sorts of useful gesture controls. For about a year, there's been a lot of buzz about Leap Motion's cool gesture control device, but the MYO may be equally as intriguing, supposedly recognizing different muscle movements in your arm to allow you to do things very easily. Since it's a wrist band, it can hook up to desktop machines, but also mobile phones or (eventually) something like Google Glass. The possibilities are pretty limitless.
   
   When I first saw the video, one of the first things I said to someone was that I was amazed MYO hadn't gone the Kickstarter route, as it just has the feel of a Kickstarter project. However, they apparently decided to go it alone, and it's working. The MYO website lets people pre-order the device for $149 and, within a few days, they claim to have received over 10,000 orders, or $1.5 million. Not bad.
   
   With both of these first two items, there are quite reasonable questions that can be raised about execution. Cool demos are one thing. Consumer-ready production is a different sort of challenge. I'm very hopeful that these two companies will succeed, but even if they end up not making it, just the fact that these kinds of offerings are being designed and built (by smaller teams, rather than giant multinationals) is really quite encouraging. We're about to enter a very interesting era concerning just how we control the electronic devices around us. The Microsoft Kinect and the Nintendo Wii were just the warmup round. A ton of innovation is about to appear in this space.
   
   
3. Finally, after those first two items that feel totally revolutionary, this last one might even feel a bit mundane (perhaps I should have put it first on the list!). But, it certainly caught my attention as soon as I saw it: It's the Almond+ Touchscreen WiFi Router / Smart home Hub from Securifi. Check out the video first: Almond already has a quite successful (and hugely popular) touchscreen wireless router, but this takes it up a notch by also adding in a smart home hub, and making the whole thing beautiful.
   
   This caught my attention for a couple reasons -- one practical and one inspirational. First, on the practical side, I'd actually just been exploring some of the latest in home automation. My house has an electronic door lock with a punch-button code, courtesy of its previous owner, and it's really handy, but a little simplistic and clunky. It can only store two codes, and we're constantly replacing the batteries. So I recently went looking around to see if the technology had advanced much in the past few years and, lo and behold, it appears that there are a growing number of "smart home" door locks that look similar but have a bunch of other cool features, such as the ability to receive email or text alerts when someone opens your door, or (much more useful) the ability to "schedule" codes to give people limited access, even from far away. But, for that to work, you need both the new door lock and a Z-Wave controller, which adds up in price. However, the Almond+ (beyond looking awesome) includes both a WiFi router and both Z-Wave and ZigBee support. And all that for less than the cost of just about any Z-Wave hub on its own. Just the Z-Wave part of this makes it really tempting for anyone interested in exploring the home automation field.
   
   The second reason it caught my attention was that it got me rethinking the home router a bit. My current WiFi router is shoved in a closet, where it belongs, because it's an ugly box with blinking LEDs. But the Securifi guys have turned the home router into something that looks really good and is the kind of thing that people would be proud to display out in the open. As we move towards a world where we have increasingly connected systems and devices, it strikes me as an interesting idea to actually make the central router/hub devices look good from a design standpoint -- because historically that's almost never been a part of the goal. As such, it makes me wonder how we'd treat our devices differently when we're not ashamed of them, but happy to display them.
   
   The Almond+ has already far surpassed its goal on Kickstarter, but still seems to be going strong.