Last year we highlighted some innovative lightng products from Philips. Recently they have expanded the range to include a new mini version of the "LivingColor" LED lamp.  With its built in colour wheel you can light your room with any one of 256 colours, or leave the lamp to gently cycle through each one automatically.  Check out the video after the jump...

Despite many emails to Current Cost we were disappointed that they seemed unwilling to reply to us, let alone sending any info or photos of their new unit.  However, our forums have some information and links to a great review of the new hardware from Dale Lane...

AlertMe - the innovative UK based smart home security system based on Zigbee technology - is taking another step forward with the details of v2.0 of their software.  Read on for the summary and link to the demo system...

Idratek announce the release of Cortex V24 - As well as the usual multitude of detailed enhancements this latest version of Cortex has been influenced by increasingly large and complex installations of the IDRATEK system. To this end this version includes features to better support installers as well as to improve the user’s management and interface to these larger structures...

As a festive treat, Bye Bye Standby are offering readers of Automated Home a free Energy Saver Starter Kit , with purchases of an Online Controller and 12-Months Premium Subscription. The Online Controller provides secure remote access to your Bye Bye Standby Smart Sockets, allowing you to control your home from anywhere*. The Premium Subscriptions enables additional features such as Scenes and Schedules...

Convergent Home Technologies based in England have produced a new smart home system called "Dianemo".  Designed to control lighting, heating, air conditioning, windows, blinds and shutters as well as look after security, multimedia, computing and communications requirments in the home.  The system supports control of bus systems such as EIB / KNX and PLCBus.

Read on for more details and a link to the rest of the videos...

An Automated Home reader has posted a bargain netbook deal on our mailing list this morning.  At under £200 delivered , the Acer Aspire One A150-Aw Netbook is one of the few NetBook with huge storage in the form of a proper 120Gb hard drive.  This makes it useful as a movie player for example, as well as a sofa surfer.  The netbook come with Linpus Linux Lite installed and with its large drive and 1Gig RAM it will easily run Windows XP.  There are also hacks documented how to install OSX on it too...

The new Addonics NAS adaptor will convert a USB hard drive into network attached storage.  It works with most versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and various Linux distributions.  In addition, the $55 NAS adapter can also be used as an FTP server, a print server, DHCP server or as a Bit-Torrent downloading appliance...

Asian manufacturers, TrickleStar has launched an Apple Macintosh Z-Wave-compatible system.  Using their USB stick and software widget, the Mac can now be used as the central controlling unit for Z-Wave home control networks. Mac users will now be able to control their lighting, heating, entertainment and security systems with just a few clicks of the mouse, while improving comfort in the home and reducing energy costs. The widget will be available as a free download by December 17 on the TrickleStar homepage....

We've been contacted by Control4 in Australia, who were keen to show us how they've integrated XBMC into their professional home automation system...

"Control4 Australia's XBMC interface allows IP control over the open source XBMC media center. Full control can be accessed via Control4's wireless and wired touchscreens, zigbee remote controls, keypads or Control4's onscreen graphical user interface.  What this means is that you can create a full on demand theatre experience with automated blinds, lights and temperature control and touchscreen movie selection or perhaps a multiroom distributed audio/video system.