My friend Doc Searls describes the benefits of having an electronic place online for everyday things. He calls that place for a thing a “Cloud For Things”. For example: The house where I’m a guest in London has clouds for all its appliances. All the clouds are physical. Here they are: Each envelope contains installation…

You have WiFi all around your house, and because you are security-conscious, you have activated some kind of WiFi security that requires a password. Great. Now you go out and buy some cool internet-enabled Things, like lightbulbs, garage door openers, sprinklers, a scale and so forth. And because you are still security-conscious, of course you…

Doc Searls and David Weinberger are very nice people. Doc I count as a friend. David I only met a few times, but he clearly is a nice guy, too. When they oppose something, they don’t do it lightly. When they call somebody by a less-than-flattering name, you know it’s important. And we all better…

By “inverse”, I mean where the Thing with the beacon wants to talk to the person, instead of the person to the Thing. Here it is: doing the laundry. I carry the dirty laundry to the washing machine. I have my cell phone with me, but in my pocket. My hands are full with laundry…

Let’s say @scottjenson and the Google guys are right (and I wasn’t completely crazy 10 years ago either) and many physical objects begin broadcasting URLs over some local wireless connection like Bluetooth Low Energy. Let’s say I’ll have several dozen of those in my house. How are we going to interact with them? Here’s a…