[MUSIC PLAYING]
What a great looking movie.
When's the next showing?
Can I see a preview?
[TROMBONE BLOWING]
Nowadays, nearly everyone has the internet
in their pocket and access to the world's information
at their fingertips.
However, getting and interacting with that information
isn't always easy.
So where did I put that bar code scanner?
Do I even have a bar code scanner on here?
[TROMBONE FAIL SOUND]
However, if we believe in Moore's law at all,
we can project that there are going
to be millions of smart devices in our homes, in our work,
and everywhere in between.
Accessing functionality from these devices
can be just like using the web.
You just walk up, tap, and go.
Cool.
There's a show in just a few minutes.
[VICTORY SOUND]
Hello, I'm Scott Jenson, and this is the Physical Web.
So how does this work?
The poster is using a Bluetooth low energy beacon
to broadcast a URL once every second.
The device here can run for five years on a single charge.
There's a simple scanner on the phone that looks around
whenever you wake it up.
It won't do any scanning if the phone is in your pocket.
The user must always ask to see if anything is nearby.
If the scanner discovers something,
it'll give you a list to choose from,
ranked and filtered, to reduce spam, and bring the most
relevant content to the top.
You select a web page, and it opens,
just like clicking on a search result.
One of the reasons we use URLs is that they are very
well understood and flexible.
They can point to a simple web page with information, a more
interactive web app, or could even deep
link into a native application in your phone.
As these beacons are really just small computers,
the URLs can even dynamically change,
reflecting a sensor value or even an authentication token.
Check out this parking meter example.
The user walks up to it and pulls out
their phone to see a list of nearby devices.
They tap on the parking meter and are taken to a web page.
They just add the time they want and hit Pay.
All of the billing is taken care of in the cloud.
And once that's done, it just authorizes the meter.
So what's happening here?
The Physical Web URL points to a web page on a standard web
server that connects to a small controller
here, inside the parking meter.
When the purchase goes through, it
uses a WebSocket to message the board,
which then adds the time.
While the movie poster took you on a journey from the beacon,
to the phone, and then straight to the web, here,
the parking meter completes the loop interacting directly
with the machine right in front of you.
All just using standard web technologies.
I want to stress this just a bit.
The Physical Web is only about getting the URL to the phone.
Everything else after that is just using the web.
In this example, all of the real work
is done by using WebSockets.
That's the idea behind the Physical Web.
Objects can broadcast URLs wirelessly
to the area around them.
Anyone with a phone or a tablet nearby can scan the area,
pick an object, and interact with it on the spot.
Unlike most apps today, the Physical Web
enables very small interactions, things that you'd never
consider using an app for.
A dog collar can let you find its owner.
A bus stop could tell you when the next bus is coming.
You could rent a bike, get a mall map,
or even watch a new tutorial on a new home appliance.
The web is powerful because it works so well
for the long tail.
Nearly anything could have its own web page.
The value of the web is having access
to millions of small web pages.
This same power can be applied to smart devices
and even places.
Each one of these Physical Web interactions
is moderately useful, but taken together,
they demonstrate how letting everything be interactive
opens up a new long tail of ephemeral interaction
for the entire world around us.
The Physical Web is just an extension of the existing web.
Like all web technologies, it's open
and anybody can build on it.
Because it uses URLs as the core building block,
the entire system is decentralized,
so nobody controls it.
With the discovery of web pages made frictionless,
we're excited to see what kind of next generation experiences
developers like you will build on top of the web.
Thank you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]