Roving Internet Appliances
By Michael Trachtman
As wireless Internet technology becomes cheaper, increasingly more portable appliances will become Internet enabled. With an Internet-enabled car radio, for example, listeners could order the CD or MP3 file of a song they just heard by pressing a button. GPS mapping systems would also benefit from Internet connections, which would allow them access to updated traffic and weather information.
Though these types of consumer devices are exciting, industry will be the greatest beneficiary of these technologies. For example, UPS and FedEx truck drivers already use roving appliances to obtain electronic signatures from delivery recipients. The appliances' network connectivity helps make package tracking accurate and timely. (See Amber Howle's "Recipes for Network Appliances" in this issue.)
It has been predicted that businesses will spend billions of dollars developing other roving Internet appliances in the coming years. Some of these appliances will have displays that can be used as Web browsers; others will not. Rather, the software that's running in each appliance will make use of Internet services transparently to transfer information to and from conventional servers.
For effective delivery of such next-generation devices, several challenges will need to be overcome. Roving Internet appliances are a special class of network appliances because they're constantly moving around. They must continually adapt to the environments in which they find themselves whenever they change locations.
In the past, companies like UPS were forced to invent their own technologies to address mobility issues.
