smart appliances

This morning, General Electric (GE) announced that it's investing in SynapSense, a startup working to develop hardware and software that monitors data center power usage in order to help companies determine where they can cut data center costs.

Other investors in the company include American River Ventures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, DFJ Frontier, Emerald Technology Ventures, and Nth Power.

Existing customers of the SynapSense technology include Facebook, NBC, and Yahoo.

Smart grids and smart appliances are gaining a lot of mindshare these days. Utility companies, by gathering hundreds of billions of data points about us, could reconstruct much of our daily lives -- when we wake up, when we go home, when we go on vacation, perhaps even when we draw a hot bath.

They might sell this information...

New smart appliances from GE will do great things. They will save energy, reduce greenhouse gases, generate “green jobs” in America and -- oh, I almost forgot -- clean your clothes, wash your dishes and keep your ice cream from melting.

They will also be financed, in part, with your tax dollars, if, as seems likely, the company has its way.