Now playing: Hack a house

Related link: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,69075,00.html

This short piece from today's Wired news talks about a new housing development in St. George, Utah. For those of you who haven't been there, St. George is primarily a place for people from colder Utah climates to retire.

While the entire idea is very interesting to me - the ability to completely control all of the systems in your house from anywhere, I forsee a few problems.

Security. The article says "To gain access to their home network, residents can either use a touch screen mounted inside the home, or connect to it from any personal computer, laptop, personal digital assistant or other device that can display a web page."

To me, this is a huge potential security problem. Does this mean that my home controller has a public IP address? There's not a lot of detail in the article, so it's hard to tell.

A quick Google for "sunriver st george" returns their website, but you have to go a few layers deep to get any information at all on the internet capabilities of these houses. In particular, there is a case study from Honeywell on the site that has a little detail, but still not enough to make me comfortable. All it really says is that the house systems are controllable through an "IP-based Web interface."

Speaking as a current homeowner, I would be seriously wondering about the security of said system when I'm going to shell out anywhere from $200-$400k for a house.

Maintenance. Let's suppose at age 65 I retire to one of these houses. When the heating system malfunctions, not only do I have to call an HVAC repairman, I need to call a computer technician too?

Compatibility. Does the home system meet W3C standards? Is it cross-browser compatible, or am I stuck using Internet Explorer? I'd be extremely dubious about purchasing a house the requires IE to operate.