Seattle— July 1999— X10.com and freshmeat.net knew they had something different when they joined forces last Friday to offer freshmeat’s loyal members the chance to receive one free FireCracker kit and pay only the administrative and handling charges ($5.90).

You heard it correctly, we are giving away one million dollars worth of product. For the bean counters keeping score at home, that equals 13,366 units at a retail value of $73.00 each.

What exactly is a FireCracker and why should anyone care? The FireCracker is a way to automatically control lights and appliances using a combination of your home’s existing AC wiring and radio frequency (RF) signals together with a wireless remote. The FireCracker is your "starter" kit for creating 21st century Wired Homes.

We were the first company to develop a way to do this before it was considered cool. X10 is all about low-cost, do-it-yourself wireless home automation solutions using our powerline technology. That is just a fancy way of saying that our products are based on the premise of using your existing A/C wiring to control lights, appliances and security systems. From the beginning, we committed ourselves to an open standard, meaning other smart folks like us could develop software that enables X10 products to operate on alternative platforms and operating systems. That’s where Linux and freshmeat.net come into play. Since 1991, Linux users have taken advantage of our open standard to write some really cool software to run X10 products.

"Congratulations to the Linux community for having the guts to not accept the fact that X10 products wouldn’t work on their O/S," said Alex Peder, president of X10 (USA) retail sales division. "Pat yourselves on the back and grab a free FireCracker kit while they last. Thanks for a great 20 years, full of fantastic Linux solutions for our products. You can look forward to always being on top of X10’s latest technology breakthroughs."

"It’s refreshing to work with a manufacturer committed to an open standard policy," said Patrick Lenz, founder of freshmeat.net. "X10 has long been considered a close friend to the Linux community by supporting our efforts to make the products compatible. The chance to receive a free FireCracker kit is an added bonus to our readers."

Here’s what you get for $5.90:

FireCracker Components

Availability

The FireCracker kit is now available for an administrative and handling fee of $5.90 only at www.x10.com/freshmeat/index.htm or by calling 1-800-675-3044.

About X10.com

Based in Seattle, X10.com is a division of privately held X10 Ltd., the world leader in design and manufacture of proprietary home control, entertainment and security technology products for over 20 years. To date, X10 has shipped well over one hundred million units of home control products worldwide. X10 has received numerous consumer and industry awards. X10.com sells and promotes X10 products direct to the consumer through its web site at http://www.x10.com. Recently, Media Metrix has ranked X10 as a top one hundred e-commerce Web site based on traffic and sales.

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