Over the course of the past decade and a half, the technology embodied as the World Wide Web has effected dramatic and sweeping changes in the way people around the world live their lives -- from the ways we access information to the ways we conduct business to the ways we interact socially with each other, from the personal to the global level.
A plethora of devices, services, and applications is emerging, many requiring some level of interaction and interoperability with other such entities. They are being deployed over the Web, but critical pieces of the required infrastructure to enable complex solutions are missing. With no dominant and comprehensive industry-standard infrastructure on which to base the desired end-user solutions, organizations are left to craft 'creative' solutions with many shortcomings; these band-aided implementations will likely over time create a legacy nightmare. Hewlett-Packard believes the W3C is uniquely positioned to address this gap and provision the world with the tools we need to take the Web to the next level of capabilities.
This paper describes a few use cases HP would like to see enabled by comprehensive open standards. We look forward to discussing the role of the W3C in addressing these use cases and the continuing evolution of the ubiquitous web.
There are currently many solutions encompassing devices, services, and applications that HP would like to offer to its customer base that are just too expensive to deploy broadly without the benefit of underlying standards. We have invested fairly heavily in other standard forums to this end (UPnP, Bluetooth, OMA, CIPA, CES, etc.); but none of these forums is positioned to address the entire scope of the domain, as is the W3. Many of the necessary pieces have been standardized by various bodies in various forms, and it may be that this work can be strongly leveraged. But much work remains: it will take time and it must all integrate seamlessly.
HP believes there is huge market potential in delivering on the Ubiquitous Web promise. From printing to various forms of content delivery to managing your image database to providing best-in-class support, the World Wide Web must continue to deliver on its promise of simple and immediate access to all one's assets and resources from anywhere, anytime. The use cases we propose are centered around printing and imaging, but HP's interests in this activity are not limited to that domain.
As stated previously, HP believes the W3C is the right organization to tackle this large and important work. We believe some keys for success will be:
High on HP's list of interests are:
Note that none of the use cases below requires any new technology for a vendor-specific implementation. Each one is possible today. What is not possible today is the enablement of these use cases with vendor-, device-, and context-independent, open standards.
Janine has pre-configured her camera to archive automatically whenever it has more than 40 unarchived images stored internally and it comes within range of a hotspot or other suitable access point.
Frank is visiting his folks, and takes a great photo of his kids and their grandparents with his Wi-Fi camera. They want a copy, so Frank presses the 'Print and Store' button on his camera, and prints them out a 5x7 and 2 wallets on the spot, using their Wi-Fi networked printer. The printer also transparently uploads a copy of the image to its default image archival server, which is the folks home computer. His folks are reaffirmed in their conviction that their son is brilliant.
Marie is meeting with an important client, and is on the verge of closing a deal. All attending have verbally confirmed their acceptance of virtually the entire Statement of Work (SOW). The client is 95% of the way into the Ubiquitous Web Age but their last required procedural step before contract signing is that each member of the oversight team receive a review hardcopy of the SOW. All reviewers' final comments are noted, initialed, and will be stored in the company archives after the final SOW is approved.
Try to print downstairs at client's office. If no fast, collating, multi-copy, stapling printer is available, then print across street at Kinko's and have it delivered.
9-February-2006 Hewlett-Packard Co.; Melinda Grant, Gerrie Shults.