Smart Mobs points to an ITU report:

The report takes a look at the next step in "always on" communications, in which new technologies like RFID and smart computing promise a world of networked and interconnected devices that provide relevant content and information whatever the location of the user. Everything from tires to toothbrushes will be in communications range, heralding the dawn of a new era, one in which today’s Internet (of data and people) gives way to tomorrow’s Internet of Things.

We are heading towards what can be termed a “ubiquitous network society”, one in which networks and networked devices are omnipresent. Early forms of ubiquitous information and communication networks are already visible in the widespread use of mobile phones today: there were over 1.8 billion mobile phones in circulation by the end of 2004, and the number is set to surpass 2 billion by the end of 2005. Mobile data applications such as SMS, i-mode and Vodafone Live! have brought Internet-like services to the pockets of many mobile phone users. But what if much more was connected to a network: a fridge, a car, a cup of tea?

At the dawn of the internet revolution, users were amazed at the possibility of contacting people and information across oceans and time zones, through a few clicks of their mouse. In order to do so, however, they typically had to sit in front of a computer device (PC) connected to a global network. Today, they can also use mobile phones and portable laptops. The next logical step in this technological revolution (connecting people anytime, anywhere) is to connect inanimate objects a communication network. This is the vision underlying the Internet of things. The use of electronic tags (e.g. RFID) and sensors will serve to extend the communication and monitoring potential of the network of networks, as will the introduction of computing power in everyday items such as razors, shoes and packaging. Advances in nanotechnology (i.e. manipulation of matter at the molecular level) will serve to further accelerate these developments.

Michael Parekh writes:

With Google Base, the company now POTENTIALLY has a human-powered directory of it's own, that can supplement results to it's core search engine. It's Yahoo!'s early approach in reverse.

And this time around, it's not just dozens or hundreds of humans powering the directory, it's potentially millions.

To put it in fashionable Web 2.0 terms, it's a microchunked directory powered by peer production.

To put in mainstream terms, Google Base is a Lego set for users to submit and categorize any kind of content that's important to them.

David Berlind digs deeper into Dan Bricklin's new product:

...the underlying fundamentals to WikiCalc's three-tier architecture [are] designed to accommodate either thin or thick client computing. The first tier — the one that the end user touches — is the browser-based authoring and publishing tool. The second tier is the Web site that drives the tool. Much the same way that Userland founder Dave Winer designed the authoring component of Userland's personal blogging solution (Radio) to be browser-based and driven by a Web server that runs locally on the PC, WikiCalc does exactly the same thing. Then, both do the same thing with the content that they can respectively author — they store the native files in local storage (for example, on the hard drive) and then they publish the resulting Web pages to the third tier, which could be a Web server on the Internet (like I did with my Comcast-based Web space) or to one on a corporate Intranet. Like other Web authoring tools that publish directly to Web servers, WikiCalc needs to be configured (once) with the appropriate FTP login information to transfer any newly authored or edited Web pages to the target Web server.

So, much the same way Radio has a browser-based authoring tool but is really a thick-client solution because of the way the browser-based authoring tools are driven by a local Web server that requires local processing power and storage, WikiCalc in its default configuration is the same thing. But that architecture — with its usage of local resources – is also what facilitates working offline with your documents or content when you're not connected to the Internet (a key advantage of thick client computing). But what makes WikiCalc unique is that Bricklin developed the entire second tier — the local Web server the drives the browser-based authoring environment — in Perl. In his alpha release, Bricklin relies on ActiveState's Windows-based Perl runtime for interpretation of his source code. But, because his source is based on the Perl standard and because such runtimes exist for just about every operating system imaginable, the WikiCalc source code is 100 percent portable to other operating systems.