Perhaps one reason for their emphasis of home telecommunication networks, is that unlike many home automation experts who come at home automation through their mastery of home-based technologies, it was in the telecommunication industry that Danny and Pat have made their careers, prior to writing Smart Homes for Dummies. Briere is CEO of TeleChoice, Inc., which he started in 1985. "Today, just about every major telecom player in the world is our client," he says. And Pat Hurley is a consultant and DSL analyst for Telechoice.

Thinking Outside the Box

This background has helped them to come up with a number of ideas that are "outside of the box" of the traditional home automation industry.

It also grew out of a practical need to expand their own knowledge base. In the mid-1990s, Briere began to renovate his then recently purchased house in Maine, to convert it into what he calls a "'vacation home for the next sixty years' type of place". Briere often spends a month at a time both working out of there, and spending time with his family. (His primary residence is near the University of Connecticut, where Briere's wife is an assistant research professor.)

When Briere began to ask his contractor about what would be needed for a sophisticated home office in his vacation home, Briere says, "he didn't know anything. And we started talking to all sorts of people, and we went to various stereo stores, and other people, and couldn't really find anybody who knew anything."

Fortunately, Briere says that Pat Hurley, his friend and associate, "has a lot of background in tinkering and he's just very, very knowledgeable on the whole computer and networking side of the equation. It became almost a hobby trying to figure out how could fix up my house. Finally we said, 'You know what? We learned all this great stuff.' At the time, we couldn't find any books on the topic, and we said, 'why don't we write a book on the topic?!'

And the rest is home automation history. Because Briere and Hurely and written previous books for IDG, Smart Homes for Dummies was put on the fast track for publication, and originally released in mid-1999. While it's aged very well, because of Briere and Hurely's emphasis on building a wiring infrastructure, rather than emphasizing the technology that's attached to it, obviously, the bursting of the dot.com bubble has put a crimp in some of their recommendations. On a more positive note, since its initial 1999 publication, 802.11 wireless networking technologies have exploded (and their prices have dropped dramatically), and this new version of Smart Homes For Dummies reflects that as well.