ABSTRACT
From the Book: Technology is invented and advanced by, well, technical people. However, a truly successful technology is marked by its adoption by people in their daily lives. Few ponder radio frequency modulation when they turn on the TV, or the internal combustion engine when they drive around. The technology has disappeared behind the utility. The last decade saw two new technologies begin to blend into our lives: the computer and the Internet. We only need to launch a browser and the resources of the World Wide Web are at our fingertips, and we are hard pressed to tell the difference between a computer and a game console, a personal digital assistant (such as PalmPilot), or a cell phone. It is now entirely feasible to bring services to smart consumer devices at home and to small businesses through the Internet. Utility providers and network, computer, wireless, consumer electronics, and home appliance companies recognize the tremendous potential and have started to tap into this market. As a result, new horizons are open for application developers. This book may be of interest to those who are involved with component-based software construction in general. Interestingly, nothing in the underlying programming model limits the kinds of applications that can be written. It aims at residential gateway applications at the "small" end of the spectrum in terms of code size and resource consumption, but it is just as viable for developing applications for desktop and enterprise environments. Indeed, the task will be made easier and the end result will be more powerful when fewer constraints on computing resources are imposed.
