Re: Why aren't most devices virtual web services?

On Fri, 8 Jan 2010, Kenton Varda wrote:
> >
> > I like this idea. It would mean, for instance, that Web-based contacts 
> > services (e.g. Facebook) could plug into the same API that the local 
> > contacts database uses. Similarly, sites could use a common Calendar 
> > API and the user could decide if it should use the system calendar, or 
> > some Web-based calendar.
> 
> Yep, this is exactly what I was trying to suggest a couple weeks ago, 
> though I may have presented it poorly.  I was arguing that web sites 
> should have the ability to expose virtual devices as web services.  I 
> should have clarified that the way I imagined doing this is by making 
> devices look like web services -- not by inventing a new standard for 
> web services to implement things that look like local devices.
> 
> If we do it this way, then your <device> element would presumably be 
> able to do exactly what I was asking for before:  allow you to "hook up" 
> web sites by filling in a <device> on one page with a non-local web 
> service rather than a physical device.

I don't know that it makes much sense for cameras or microphones; I think 
it's more something that would be suitable for contact lists, calendars, 
and the like.

For cameras, if we wanted to allow people to use Web-provided streams as 
their outgoing streams, I think we could do that significantly more easily 
just by using a URL scheme to represent online streams. No need for an 
entire REST API to be defined for that.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Sunday, 10 January 2010 06:13:48 UTC