As I may have mentioned before, I’m an old embedded systems / consumer products guy. I’ve fought in the trenches of the “converged devices” wars. I’ve had to define products that early on in the marketing cycle it became clear that no one really wanted. And I’ve had to convince various emperors that they actually had cloths on, which was often shamefully easy to do.This week’s edition of the Economist features a special report on “The Digital Home” aptly titled, “Science fiction?” The article mentions that these complex converged devices of the digital home are invariably complex and people like simplicity. It goes on to mention the often touted “spoke and hub” architecture of the digital home where all the various devices are connected to a central hub. Of course the one thing that can’t be settled on is who’s technology makes up that hub. This issue has been the stumbling block for the digital home for as long as I can remember.Two intrepid engineers at HP are working on a project called GridLite. GridLite is a proof of concept effort that is pushing the limits of the types of devices that make up a Grid. They are taking embedded devices such as PDAs, smart phones and other mobile platforms (the very devices that are usually mentioned in the same sentence as “device convergence” and “digital home”) and equipping it with a Grid middleware. Central to this is specialized resource manager that orchestrates this abstraction of device connectivity. In a nutshell, GridLite brings the promise of Grid to embedded devices. Enabling the integration of distributed services and resources, using general-purpose protocols and infrastructure, to achieve useful qualities of experience.I’m not saying that Grid can solve the problems of technology that no one really wants, and it can’t put clothes on the emperor, but it just might be able to end the hub and spoke mentality and the digital home can finally move on to its next incarnation. Whatever that may be. Technology Industry