Thursday, October 02, 2014

IoT: Google project: "The Physical Web" (!)

Physical-web by google
"Walk up and use anything"
"What is this?
The Physical Web is an approach to unleash the core superpower of the web: interaction on demand. People should be able to walk up to any smart device - a vending machine, a poster, a toy, a bus stop, a rental car - and not have to download an app first. Everything should be just a tap away.

Why is this important?
The number of smart devices is going to explode, and the assumption that each new device will require its own application just isn't realistic. We need a system that lets anyone interact with any device at any time. The Physical Web isn't about replacing native apps: it's about enabling interaction when native apps just aren't practical."


google/physical-web · GitHub
"The Physical Web is, at its base, a discovery service where URLs are broadcast and any nearby device can receive them. This takes the web we know and love and unlocks exciting new ways to interact.

The URL is the fundamental building block of the web, giving remarkable flexibility of expression. It can be:
  • a web page with just a tiny paragraph of info
  • a fully interactive web page
  • a deep link into a native application."
Example interaction


Nice attempt from Google, but appears to be falling short on very important issue of semantics: machine understandable data. Without common "vocabulary", human languages (English?) are just not practical for handling very large amounts of transient data expected from devices. Yes, using "web" instead of "apps" is much better solution, super important.

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