Features
Real-world wide web
The world's first location-based multimedia tour, History Unwired, was jointly developed in 2005 by MIT and the University of Architecture in Venice. The location-based technology used for the tour was a combination of assisted GPS - a 3G technology that uses the mobile phone network to improve the performance of GPS in urban areas with poor satellite coverage - and Bluetooth. Bluetooth was used to trigger a couple of interactive artworks that had been installed along the walking route when a signal from a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone was detected.
Taking the form of an interpreted walking tour around Venice's Castello neighbourhood, visitors were guided by the voices of locals who related anecdotes or gave their insight into art and craft, history and folklore. Some just
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The face of tomorrow
The World Wide Web is around 15 years old, and the Internet of Things is in its infancy. So will the Internet of Things be influencing the world of tomorrow as its predecessor does today? On the face of it, the evidence is not compelling. After all, the ITU's report was published two years ago and, although a few pilot studies were completed in 2005, nothing much seems to have happened since in the UK.
However, if we look to Japan we see an entirely different picture. Here, QR code has become ubiquitous over the past two years. The codes appear in business cards, magazine adverts, on posters and even on the packaging of a Big Mac. So why is there such a great divide? The big difference is that in Japan nearly all mobile phones are shipped with software for reading QR codes already installed, whereas in Europe you'd have to download it from the web and install it on your phone. As long as this state of affairs continues, the Internet of Things will be nothing more than a plaything for the technically minded here in the UK.
