July 04, 2006
Ubiquitous VoIP Communication and SED Service-Enabled Devices
Imagine for a second an "Internet of devices". These are devices that can communicate with each other over the Internet Protocol. IPv6, that is. IPv6, the next version of the Internet Protocol, has been touted by some as the next version of the Internet (or maybe Web 3.0, depending on how you look at it.) IPv6 will allow SEDs, Service-Enabled Devices, to be interconnected, thus allowing consumer electronics gadgets and appliances to talk to each other.
SEDs know their role and how they need to interact with specific other devices. Besides computers, the list of future SEDs is reputed to include digital cameras, stereo systems, toasters, stoves, refrigerators, lawn sprinklers, your lighting system... Well, you get the idea.
An example of an SED-to-SED interaction might be as follows. At the press of a button, a digital camera sends a packet of photos, via WiFi, to a laptop running software that then publishes the pics to a pre-configured website gallery. The laptop, of course, can be connected to the Internet either directly through a local network, or even via a Cellular WiFi data card.
Another example would be to log on to your home's hypothetical web server and turn on your lawn sprinkler or even the air conditioning. (In this situation, you would be overriding scheduled activities.) Sure, this sounds like something that media mentioned, oh, in the 1980s, 1990s, and so on. But it's now possible.
Where's the VoIP in all that, you're asking. Well, what if you could do the same as described above, but by just speaking a few commands into a VoIP-enabled SED, which would then communicate to your sprinkler or whatever?
There's a very real possibility that VoIP capability will become ubiquitous. Thus, all kinds of consumer electronics will be SEDs and VoIP-enabled. You'll be able to talk to your gadgets, order them around a little with a few voice commands. When that happens, you'll also be able to give authorization for various transactions [VoIP Lowdown] via any VoIP-enabled device in an office, home, store, or wherever. Alternately, gadgets will be able to VoIP you.
Of course, we'll have to work on voice-recognition software as well as language translation, but there's a lot of work already going on in those areas as well audio-search, audio-to-text, and text-to-audio.
We're not quite yet at a state of communications as on TV's Star Trek Enterprise, but we're not far off. When that happens, however, you just might want to be careful what you say out loud.
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