How would you like your toaster to talk to your phone, without you being a part of the conversation? No, then you may well be missing out on the next wave of technology.
It is thought that the next wave in the Internet, and networking in general, is the ability for our possessions to connect. Not just the usual devices such as computers, the TV and your phone, but everyday items such as the oven, kettles, toasters, alarm clocks and the like.
There is much to be gained from such connectivity, it is claimed. Some of the suggested benefits include
Your smart phone connecting to the toaster to be able to tell it your toast preferences (burned, barely cooked etc).
You being able to set your oven to preheat from your phone, even when you are in the office, saving time on cooking.
Boiling the kettle in the kitchen when you are in bed, so you can pour yourself a cuppa straight away.
And much more besides. This allows you to use your phone as a hub for your entire home. As most of us are almost never without our mobile phone, this means that we will have an ever present remote for a huge amount of things in our lives.
Smart Phones
Of course for all this to be possible we will need smart phones which allow connection to Internet and other wireless networks. Without them such systems are not possible.
This in turn should fuel further growth of the smart phone, which is already dominating the mobile phone markets in the Western World.
For such interaction to be possible it will also need to be able to talk ‘software to software’ so to speak. Whilst it is possible for this to happen across the web, with the phone connecting to the web, which translates it’s commands, then connects to the kettle (for example), that system is rather clunky and open to problems.
Far more likely would be a direct access to the items via an app coded for the smart phones Operating System. For this to be a viable it would need for there only to be a small number of operating systems that are needed to be coded for.
Which is why such a rise is predicted as happening very soon. The operating systems for phones was largely fragmented previously, with individual companies running their own system. But more and more we are seeing companies adapting the Google Android software.
In fact recent years has seen Google take a 50% ownership of the smart phone operating system market. Considering a further 26% is made up of iOS, the operating system for the iPhone, you can see that the smart phone operating systems are currently polarised enough for such systems to be implemented across the 2 major operating systems, rather than working out how to do it across dozens. It allows market reach without worrying about marginalising all but the smallest selling systems.
Prepaid Smart Phones
Interactivity is set to be become big news in the next couple of years, as we all adopt smart phones. But such devices need not leave you at the mercy of contract operators. TracFone offer some amazingly cheap prepaid deals that are perfect for using on smart phones. Check out a TracFone promo code to get the cheapest possible prepaid deals that work with smart phones.