Sort of like the Wall Street Journal, as we are heading to the weekend, I believe it is good to step away form the business world and look at our personal worlds.  This week, we have been discussing mash-ups in the retail business world.  Many home computer users – especially Generation Y users have become interested in Web 2.0 communities.  The latest craze to hit this new space is on-line financial communities.  Users can post their information on-line, much like many of us have done with Quicken or Microsoft Money – but now they can have their friends see their spending patterns and comment on them.

Many of us that have more assets then we might feel comfortable sharing with others (or less).  Or maybe it is just a generational thing.  However, we use Web 1.0 tools (our browser) to log into a number of different financial services accounts and audit the information in them.  We might automate this to a degree with our financial management software.

Many people have also “automate their homes and created or are creating smart homes with integrated energy management systems, security, and lighting and home entertainment systems.  These same people often times travel extensively and want remote access.  What if we had a mash-up tool that allowed us to customize access to the things that we need the most – access to our financial information, access to our home systems and perhaps access to things like our children’s use of the Internet, or their location - if they are very young.

Our dashboard would present our world – the state of the home(s) systems, our financial state, our children’s activities to the degree that we need to monitor them – or our children’s (college-age) financial balances.  This information would be available to our cell phone, a laptop, our office computer or from our primary home systems.  We could designate agents to act for us in one consolidated place from one interface.  This interface would have vice recognition so that we could set the thermostat to 50 degrees for the next week, or record Desperate Housewives tonight even though we never watch it, but something struck us in the morning paper about a guest star that is on it that we want to watch. The most interesting application or me – would be – did I turn off the gas on the stove before I left – kind of  like – “Hello ON-Star….”