Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Gordon van Zuiden, owner of cyberManor, displays a wireless keyboard that he uses with the computer hooked up to his television, which is part of his home-networking system.
CyberManor offers a look at the home of the future
By Shari Kaplan
On the outside, the van Zuiden home in quiet Monte Sereno looks very much like those of its neighbors'--three-car garage in front, spacious yard in back and attractive landscaping all around.
If the walls could talk, however, they'd reveal that what's going on inside the home is a far cry from what's going on at the Joneses.'
Although they cannot actually speak, those walls are nevertheless a buzz with a constant cacophony of letters, numbers, music and images, all traveling in fractions of seconds throughout the entire house, a house that's as wired as a 3-year-old drinking espresso.
Fortunately for the van Zuidens--Gordon, wife Michelle and children Claire and Brett--these digital conversations are only between their computers and various other electronic devices, thereby leaving the family free to enjoy their "cyber home" in peace.
Gordon van Zuiden, under whose belt is tucked a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, an MBA and many years of work in the high-tech industry, used his family and ranch-style home as "beta testers" for what, in 1999, became his own start-up company--the appropriately named cyberManor.
Originally run from his home, van Zuiden gave cyberManor its own storefront in fall 2000, when he opened for business at 324 Los Gatos-Saratoga Road in Los Gatos. CyberManor, as he describes it, is all about "Internet home solutions." That is, the design and implementation of home computer networks that are combined with fast broadband Internet access to enhance and simplify the lives of busy families--even if they're not techno whizzes like the van Zuidens.
Within a few months, van Zuiden plans to make the cyberManor office a scaled-down, working model of an Internet home and its various attributes. In the office, as well as out in the field, where 75 percent of his client base is in Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and Saratoga--van Zuiden relies on business partner Silicon Valley Installation Company to do the physical work of wiring or rewiring homes and installing various equipment. While many of those homes are simply being upgraded, van Zuiden also works with several home builders who want to construct technology-friendly homes from the ground up.
Until his downtown Los Gatos office is completely outfitted in true "cyber manor," van Zuiden shuttles prospective clients just a few miles down the road to his own home.
"With cyberManor, we want to have a showcase where people can see how the Internet can impact the way they work, play and live. This is not a future-oriented thing; this is something people can use right now," he says.
"When electrical wiring first came out, people weren't sure of all the things they could do with it. We're at the beginning stage of that now with the Internet," van Zuiden adds.
CyberManor, he says, not only allows all the computers and peripherals in one home to "talk" to each other on a local area network (LAN), but it also can provide homeowners with customized family web centers, home theater setups and even ways to remotely control their homes' lighting, heating, air-conditioning and security systems via special password-locked websites, accessible through any Internet browser anywhere in the world.
"More people are getting multiple PCs in their homes, and high-speed, broadband Internet access is becoming more common. Also, the next generation of home appliances are going to have an interface so that they can 'talk' to an 'intelligent device' like a computer," he says.
For more information about cyberManor, call 408.399.1717, or visit www.cybermanor.com on the Internet.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
