In the Bible's Book of Genesis, all the world spoke one language. They all got together and were building the Tower of Babel until God came down and confused the languages. A new group, called the AllSeen Alliance, think they have found a way around God's curse...at least for machines. Qualcomm, one of the members of the group, is giving the AllSeen Alliance the source code to a piece of software called 'AllJoyn'. AllJoyn is a sort of universal translator that will enable different devices built by different manufacturers to talk to one another.
Their ultimate goal in all of this is to promote the long-talked-about-but-never-realized 'internet of things'. The internet of things is a system in which your home appliances, electronics, automobile and pretty much anything else you can think of will all talk to one another over an internet connection. And it is all supposed to make our lives better by eliminating the effort of doing things such as adjusting the thermostat in your home or adjusting and tuning your radio. It will know who are and where you are. It will develop a profile for you of age, preferences and schedule. And it will all be perfectly confidential, just like everything else on the internet. Yes, that is sarcasm.
One standard to sync them all: AllSeen Alliance forms to accelerate Internet of Things adoption
Eighteen months ago, Qualcomm SVP Rob
Chandhok succinctly explained why the internet of things was failing.
Instead of working together, manufacturers designed their smart
televisions and appliances to only communicate with their own
proprietary applications. Instead of building an ecosystem of devices
that could talk to one another, they only built for themselves. Is a
smart light bulb really "smart" if you need a special
switch, too?
Now, Qualcomm believes it can tackle
that problem — with a little help. Today, the Linux Foundation has
announced the formation of the AllSeen Alliance, a new consortium
dedicated to building and maintaining an open-source framework that
lets devices of all shapes and sizes seamlessly communicate with each
other. Qualcomm, LG, Panasonic, Haier, Silicon Image and TP-LINK are
headlining the initiative, which also includes names as diverse as
Cisco, Sears, and Wilocity.
But the star member, for now, is
Qualcomm — because the entire AllSeen Alliance is based on a piece
of Qualcomm technology. After failing to make much of a dent with its
AllJoyn tech over the last couple of years, the company is giving up
ownership of the code to the AllSeen Alliance.
That could wind up being a pretty nifty
thing, because what AllJoyn already does is quite useful. Instead of
dictating that devices have to connect with each other over Wi-Fi or
Bluetooth or Zigbee and having users painstakingly pair those
devices, AllJoyn can do it all, automatically discovering devices and
negotiating connections with whichever protocols are available.
