The concept of Savant's system is similar to the iffy Domia X10 lighting controller we saw a few years ago: it takes an image of a room, and triggers certain commands when an item, like a light or a TV, is touched onscreen. This difference is, instead of relying on a programmable touch layer placed over a static photograph, Savant's Virtual Control (a temporary name, by the way) actually displays a dynamic digital photo of a room—or really, lots of rooms—which doesn't just control the various parts of your automated home; it reflects their states.

For example, if you switch off a light in your billiards room, (which you have, because you're clearly an extremely rich person), the light pictured on your Virtual Control will go dark too. A simple finger swipe takes you to another room—say, a your private library—so you can spin up your antique gramophone, or whatever.

There's no special tech voodoo here, just a bunch of preloaded image data, which Savant will send a photographer to collect and curate for you. And weirdly, although the system seems to be intended to manage your whole house, its 9-inch base station is tethered to one place by power and ethernet cables. So there's that. [CEPro]

Probably fiberboard stuff, on par with Ikea, by my initial judgment. The UI itself is based around floating or aligned icons, with no text labels, for control of many things by RS-232 or IR, like many home theater gear and home automation equipment. You drag icons to the enter button, or click the enter button and click enter, to open em. I saw demos of a touchscreen satellite TV controller, with a favorites mode that showed off TV station icons and a easy channel scroll bar on the bottom. The software has iTunes interfaces that can turn album art into these floating icons, too.

The multitouch is pretty shoddy, and the refresh rate is not too good on the screen. Multitouch is defined here as being able to have things like your hand on the screen while still being able to select other items. I saw one screen that was very buggy. The other Rosie was not so bad, but not great either.

I think I saw a picture application, as well. But I also saw icons for a Gameboy Micro and YouTube. Huh? Gameboy? Making floating icons is one thing, making applications for a touchscreen UI is another—who knows if these are currently functional. I attempted to push for more info, but the man cut off to talk to someone else. We'll report again when Savant has more info or pushes past beta, but for now, it seems like Wonky custom installer gear. [Rosie on Giz]

Osterville, MA. September, 2007— Savant Systems LLC, with a visionary approach to home automation that emphasizes reliability and a maintenance-friendly open platform, has announced the first Apple®- based coffee table surface product. The ROSIE Coffee Table Touchpanel Controller supports all the capabilities of the Savant suite of ROSIE In-wall touch panels plus new and exciting interactive multimedia capabilities, such as integration and interaction with iTunes® multimedia content, digital cameras, IP network cameras, business card readers, and many additional high-tech devices. Victor Saverino, director of product management at Savant said, "The ROSIE Coffee Table brings the converged functionality of a touch panel to an interactive surface technology that is practical on the one hand, entertaining and exciting to use on the other. The ROSIE Coffee Table is truly the evolution of interactive technology—it can seamlessly download photos from digital cameras, play music, movies, and TV shows as well as accomplish complete home control all fromwithin one elegant forty-inch interface." Savant plans to offer the ROSIE Coffee Table in a number of different furniture styles ranging from contemporary to traditional.

While we have no specifics on hardware, the ROSIE claims to have "integration and interaction" with iTunes content. And it will also perform functions like downloading content from digital cameras, and supporting business card readers. And...there's not much more there.

Yes, it all sounds a bit fishy at the moment. So for now, we see the product as a glorified box around some Apple product featuring a fancy display and third-party OS. Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this at CEDIA. And hopefully it's actually a super cool device that makes our lives perfect and beautiful and unicorns and flowers and free porn. [cepro]