White Paper Details Benefits, Development Opportunities for Consumer Applications
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 5, 1999– The Salutation Consortium today published a white paper challenging developers of palm-size and handheld computers to use the Salutation Architecture as a common standard for locating and controlling devices, services, and applications, instead of vendor-specific solutions.
The white paper, titled “Geographic Computing: Enabling New Markets for Hand Held and Palm-Size Information Appliances” is available on the Salutation Consortium website: .
The Salutation Consortium is distributing the white paper to vendors and industry organizations, discussing with them opportunities for using Salutation as a common standard for ad hoc communications initiated by palm-size and handheld computers. Such a standard could, for example, allow the user of a handheld computer ad hoc walkup network connectivity, a key attribute of many consumer applications for information appliances.
The Salutation Architecture is an open communications protocol for locating and controlling peripherals and information appliances. A Salutation-enabled palm-size or handheld device can send a wireless query to another intelligent device. Based on the response, the palm-size or handheld device is able to make full use of the capabilities of the second device.
“To provide the most user-friendly operation, these pocket computers need walk-up networking regardless of platform, operating system, or LAN technology. There’s time to get out in front of vendor-specific solutions with Salutation’s nonproprietary APIs that support interoperability and extend ad hoc interoperability to other applications, as well,” said Robert F. Pecora, managing director of the Consortium.
In related efforts to investigate the opportunities for ad hoc discovery technology, Pecora attended the recent Palm Computing Platform Worldwide Developers Conference. “I spoke with more than a dozen companies about how the wireless networking links for Palm computers could be made more useful with creative applications that take advantage of the Salutation Architecture’s ability to locate another device and negotiate how to make the best use of its resources,” said Pecora. “Followup and specific proposals will continue over the next few weeks.”
About the Consortium
The Salutation Consortium is a non-profit corporation with member organizations in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Member companies include Adobe Systems, APTi, Axis Communications, Brother, Canon, Cisco, Fuji Xerox, Fujitsu, Granite Systems, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Kobe Steel, Komatsu, Konica, Matsushita, Mita, Mitsubishi, Murata (Muratec), Okamura, Oki Data, Ricoh, Rios Systems, Sanyo, Seiko Epson, Sharp, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba, and Xerox.