Inversion of Control
A few of the things I’ve been playing around with on the side lately have the common theme of inversion of control. Making one side of an interaction consume something that it normally emits or emits something that it normally consumes. Take the PAMP stack post at dev.mobi for example, a handset running Apache, PHP, and Mysql. On my own I’ve been working on HTTP controlling the Mac mini hooked up to my TV. I want a generalize HTTP interface to the stuff I normally do on my television so that I can control it with my N810 or iPhone.
The whole theme of “your mobile as your remote control of the world” has been floating around for a long time. And I’m kinda curious how easy it would be to get there at this point. For instance if I sit in front of my TV I normally do so with at least one of my devices in my hand. Admit it, you do the same. We’re all ADD now, so better to just embrace it and figure out how to feed the demons rather than spending naval gazing time figuring out if we should be doing it or not. What I would actually like to be able to do is to “switch channels” to something from my device. I’m watching Scrubs for instance, but I run across a video that someone linked to while I’m dicking around reading feeds on my N810. I want to be able to use the N810 to send that video to my TV, switch channels to youTube so to speak.
There’s MythTV stuff out there for controlling your DVR from the N810 (there’s a dedicated package actually). But they’re all point solutions. I want raw exposed APIs for this stuff. Today I want to send videos to my television, but who knows what I might want to display there next. Maybe a dynamic web page that I want to toss up on the big screen while I dig through the details about something else on my device. Although videocasting and the like have really increased the unbundling of media, and DVRs and related technologies given people much more control over reintegrating their own channels, the viewport itself still remains somewhat under external control.
