Web Of Things - Discovery

In the web of things discovery is everything.

Once you start to think about connecting every thing to the web, you also quite quickly realize that finding the thing that you are actually looking for may be hard.


No, I am not talking about search. The technology for finding documents is already in place, the technology that now needs to be made available is the function of finding things that you can interact with, quite often things of a physical nature.

For me, internet of things is often mentioned in the same sentence as smart grids. That is one novel application for internet connected devices. But, once you start to think about the web of things, and my definition here is that everything now has an API, it becomes a different game.


Discovery is about finding the things you want - fast. You want to make sure that the discovery is seamless, if you want to interact with a printer (like with Google Cloud Print) you really want the system to narrow down the choices you have.


The other aspect of this is that things will be made web (or cloud if you like) aware. By this, the edge of the network will be far more intelligent than it has been before. We will see clusters of API:s being developed for different types of things. Manufacturers will start to implement, natively, the functions behind the API for their devices.


What needs to be common is how you find them - by common I also suggest open, in that you should be able to supply your own context into any discovery request, regardless of the host of the discovery service.


Your pointers and suggestions for making open discovery a reality are highly appreciated.

Web 2.0 Expo - On Social

Another obvious trend at the expo is that of social. Pretty much the fact that we are only at the verge of understanding what this can and will do for us.

Once we get to grips with the always connected approach to this we can start to harvest the social circles that we are part of. People have long been talking about how you can make use of your social graph for providing suggestions on what apps to download or what books to buy.

We see social platforms such as Facebook becoming gaming platforms for people that not associate themselves as gamers. The trend here is that we are seeing more and more games where you play with your friends directly. We are also seeing the whole entertainment and gaming business going from selling a game to selling a service.

Now, Charlene Li (co-author Groundswell) mentioned something that I think is far more interesting. When we can tap into social data sets at any time from any given application we can also start to use the information to apply another layer of intelligence. One suggestion was to enable the ability to sort your inbox according to the influence that the sender has.

Think about that for a second.

I think that is a fundamental shift in how we will approach things going forwards.

The HTML5 discussion at the web 2.0 expo

During the expo over the last couple of days it has been evident that there is a fundamental change going on. There have been so many words written about HTML5 vs. Flash. This is not about Steve vs. Adobe.
It is fundamentaly about being open.

My favorite example right now is the investment that Scribd has done in their platform to go from Flash to HTML5. They basically ditched a $3 million investment in Flash technology for an idea that they did not really know if it would work.

At the core, and this is important, is the fact that they realised that they had put all their content into an application platform. Being dependant on a particular runtime was not a dependency they wanted to have.

As a real bonus was the fact that they got mobile access for free.

You can then go on and argue about what Adobe should and should not do... I'll leave that to others.
Most people here, when asked, put their money on HTML5. Still, there are some companies such as Tiny Speck that base their innovation on Flash. It will be very interesting to follow their game, Glitch.

Web 2.0 Expo - take aways from Tuesday May 4:th

First day at the #w2e has been very good. It is hard to choose from all the very good tracks but I have tried to stayed tuned to the strategy track. There are so many things to pick up on but I will just quickly give my thinking on the general theme.


Mobile is not an additional strategy, it is the strategy. What strikes me is all the examples of companies that just do not get it, as in they do not have a site designed for mobile. Not even Apple. Similarly, companies seem to not look at device types. This strikes me as odd coming from a mobile operator in a previous life, where it was all about identifying the device.


Think about simplicity when thinking about mobile design. But as Jason Grigsby (@grigs) said, this does not equal dumb. Do not take away core functions just because you are trying to make the mobile site simpler.


I learnt a bit about API:s today. Not much news in that session but still very important. If you do not have an API you are missing the whole trend where data is king. Your API is how you will be selling through to your customers. Somewhere in the realm of 80% of traffic will come from beyond the browser.


API:s are the glue that binds mobile, social and cloud. It is a mechanism where you can get people, not on your payroll, to carry your experience and product to consumers. This is key to understand, because of the exponential change rate we are in, it is impossible to plan. The market is constantly changing. In order to make this happen, make sure you are re-mixable, look at your adjacents.


Being an advocate of open standards I got a very good insight into OAuth 2.0 and the upgrade that has been done to the protocol. It shows great promise and is already adopted by Facebook and Twitter (@anywhere) basically because it is so simple to get started for any developer.


The keynotes where of great standard. Loved the TED presentation and how it has evolved from conference to a platform for sharing ideas. Completely embraces crowd sourcing, free and open.


Last but not least, smule, have to love them. Impressive demonstration of their products and research.