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15 May 2007
Ubiquitous Web: Dave Raggett
Posted by Rob Styles at May 15, 2007 12:55 PM
I'm in a full day session of ubiquitous web presentations/discussions over at XTech in Paris, France.
It's kind of difficult to blog, as the wireless is non-existent! People keep running up their rooms to plug in and post stuff. Very 1996. I've scrounged a login to the wireless 'cause I'm still trying to prep my slides for Thursday am (late notice, got given a slot to talk about licensing). Anyways...
Dave Raggett is up first, essentially giving an explanation of what the day is about, for those not familiar with the term already.
Broadly, his introduction boils down to:
Moore's Law now applies to RF Circuitry. That is, it is increasingly possible to connect lots and lots of things to the network, at very low cost and this trend will continue.
Connectivity can be added to anything; home security devices, tv, heating and lighting equipment. There is a mix of networking technologies that help make this possible in different circumstanced - WiFi, Bluetooth, Infrared, Copper, Optical Fibre and Powerline networks. These are used both on large scales and domestically.
RFID chips also have come down to the point where we have RFID "dust".
The ubiquitous web also means that applications and devices can combine local and remote services. This is much the same as what our CTO, Justin, talks about as "Internet Inside" applications.
Getting everyone up-to-speed, Dave gives us simple examples like using your TV and Remote to control all kinds of household appliances. Essentially the market Microsoft and others have been playing for; the Home Hub.
Dave is chair of the Ubiquitous Web Applications WG at W3C, this group succeeds the Device Independence WG. It looks like it will be well worth following.
Defining UI in the ubiquitous web space, with the diverse number of possible appliances, should be done with XML + Events + RDF + Object Model. Dave pops up a couple of diagrams and talks about "Hidden Messaging" between devices. This appears to strike a nerve with Dave Beckett who suggests that this model is "Web Services", implying SOAP, and therefore flawed. Dave's point is that abstracting/encapsulating the underlying networking model prevents the application from handling service failures properly. He also suggests a RESTful approach would work better.
After conversations last week at WWW2007, I think I have to agree with him.
And on to the next speaker...
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Comments
It's kind of difficult to blog, as the wireless is non-existent! People keep running up their rooms to plug in and post stuff. Very 1996.:-( I was in last years' XTech and fortunately we had wireless anywhere in the hotel... Anyway, isn't this years' XTech about the Ubiquitous Web? What happened to ubiquity, like using your cellphone as a GPRS/UMTS modem, or simply blog using it? ;-)
Posted by: Mind Booster Noori at May 15, 2007 03:37 PM
