America Online's First Wish
By Dale Dougherty
Since 1984, computer science students have been connecting unusual items such as Coke machines to the Internet. Yahoo now has a category called "Interesting Devices Connected to the Net." You can use your Web browser to access these devices -- for example, to check the temperature of soda cans in a Midwest college dormitory. You can see when the doorbell was last rung, and even turn on the ceiling fan in "Mike and Anthony's Wired Room" at Dakota State University. These experiments are often short-lived, and end when the clever developers move on to more useful work.
What makes such experiments interesting is not just the display of data but the ability to interact with devices over the Web. The Web can serve as a generalized communications interface to a device you never have to touch physically. One device I found through Yahoo was at javaradio.com, the Swedish home of the short-wave radio that anyone can control through a Web browser. On the day I went there, another guest arrived and announced in the chat room that he was tuning the radio to the frequency of the BBC to hear news on the hour. "Should be interesting," he said. Moments later, I learned for the first time that British and American forces had begun air strikes on Baghdad.
Most devices that we use today are peripherals connected to a PC. A printer is a typical device that is usually fixed in one place. Another example is the Palm III, a mobile device that's easy to sync up with a PC using its cradle. These hand-held devices are really extensions of the PC.
