It’s been a busy week in the world of technology and the KMB Comm Technology Week in Review reflects the rush to close the year strongly as we wind up the holiday season.
This week’s roundup of news includes items from Residential Systems, Commercial Integrator, Mix Magazine, LinkedIn, and Yahoo Finance. These items cover a range of topics from D-Tools’ latest partnership to some unexpected, good news regarding the economy.
KMB Comm Look at the World of Residential Technology
Like always, let’s start with a look at what’s going on in the smart home industry. Covering the latest firewall from Firewalla, Residential Systems states the new networking product—the Firewall Orange is a portable Wi-Fi 7 firewall and router. The portable firewall supports up to 50 clients, and Residential Systems adds the device is good for users in locations such as hotels, shared workspaces, client sites and more.
Check out the new Firewall product here.
Normally, content from Mix Magazine would be placed within the KMB Comm coverage of commercial AV news, but the publication’s story on a documentary produced by the audio production software company Waves Audio will interest the audiophile community.
Mix Magazine has a writeup on the origins of the “loudness wars,” and the story points out that according to the documentary, “How Music Got Loud: The Untold Story of the Loudness Wars,” the audio industry has made considerable efforts to balance the popularity of “loud mixes” with the ability to maintain dynamic range.
To learn more about Waves Audio’s loudness wars documentary click here.
Moving onto Parks Associates’ latest study, the research firm finds that 51% of Americans are using generative AI tools for applications such as work, personal activities and learning. As part of its research, the study notes that Chat GPT is the top AI application, but products such as Google Gemini, Apple Intelligence, and Samsung Galaxy AI are increasing in usage.
Here’s a link to the Parks data, which was posted on LinkedIn.
Commercial AV Happenings for the Week of Dec. 15-19
D-Tools, the popular provider of dealer software tools that helps integration firms run their businesses more efficiently, recently announced a partnership with the AiN Group. Commercial Integrator has details on this newly announced alliance that includes special pricing rates for members on the company’s D-Tools Cloud and System Integrator (SI) tools.
Here is the complete story from Commercial Integrator.
SCN has a nice holiday item on a mapping display in London. As part of the holiday happenings in the international U.K. city, Outernet is treating visitors to a winter wonderland experience using 8K display technologies.
The exhibit runs through Christmas, and the story includes a YouTube video to provide a more visual element to the SCN write up.
Important National News
KMB Comm always has an eye on the economy, and several outlets including Yahoo Finance are reporting just announced government inflation data. Yahoo says the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data from November that reveals the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose just 2.7% over the prior year. This number falls in less than the 3.1% that economists were expecting for the month.
Yahoo Finance emphasizes the November numbers are the first inflation report that’s been released since September, and overall, the story cites comments from Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economic research at Fitch Ratings, that raises hope for optimism, but he adds there is a lack of detail, which does raise some concerns.
For more on the inflation numbers go here.
Looking ahead at what lies ahead economically, LinkedIn has a post on what some experts are saying to expect for the upcoming year.
Here is the entire LinkedIn post on what the experts are expecting with the economy in 2026.
With all of that said, we at KMB Communications would like to wish everyone a happy and safe Holiday season.
KMB Communications hosts a podcast called AV Trade Talk. Listeners can check out the podcast to learn about the latest happenings in the custom installation electronics industry. To listen to the KMB AV Trade Talk Podcast, click here.