Appliances Just Got Cooler
A Discussion with Hewlett-Packard's Jeff Morgan
Imagine a world in which you could control a range of smart appliances by using a single, simple control device, such as a mobile phone or a PDA, with interfaces based on existing Web standards. That just scratches the surface of Cooltown, Hewlett-Packard's online demo of how wireless technologies can be applied to everyday life. Web Techniques asked Jeff Morgan, Cooltown's technical director, to give us a tour of the future.
Web Techniques: So what does Cooltown's approach have that PC applications don't?
Jeff Morgan: The PC has a lot of utility, but one big problem: you have to be near it. The notion of mobility breaks the PC's application model. A mobile person is likely to encounter many different services and devices that he or she may need to interact with or manipulate. It's impossible for all of that software to be preloaded onto a device that's carried around. Instead, the Cooltown model supports two key generic use-models: Web browsing and beaming. Users with very simple devices can interact with Cooltown environments, and they're able to interact with a myriad of other devices—each of which might offer a different user interface.
WT: So my toaster would have a Web server inside it?
JM: Well, the only reason to put a Web server in something like a toaster is so that it has some kind of soft control interface. In general, you need to look at the operation and use mode of the device before you decide to put a Web server in it. But the roots of Cooltown do stem back to research we were doing in 1995, when we were looking for an infrastructure to support, control, and communicate with and between home appliances.
