Tizen, Prometheus and the Internet of things

Intel’s position is also clear. The company says that Tizen combines the best of LiMo and MeeGo and provides a ‘complete, cross-device open source software platform’ for a range of new and emerging device categories.

Tizen places heavy emphasis on HTML5 with APIs based on web standards. This includes messaging, multimedia, camera, network and social media. In a recent ‘MeeGo’ posting one of the faithful said his means that APIs not visible to HMTL 5 are not as rigid and can evolve with platform technology and can vary according to market segments.

In plain speak this means that a developer’s task in creating applications becomes a lot more straightforward.

It’s going to take time for Tizen to gather pace and the resistance of many developers will need to be overcome. Indeed, as one said, a million plus Tizen devices will need to be shipped before he takes the operating system seriously.

For Samsung that may be no big deal.

Tizen is set for release in the first quarter of 2012.  One of the interesting areas for development is in the automotive industry. The industry is already exploring the potential for Linux operating systems in developing tomorrow’s applications for vehicles. These range from in-vehicle on-board systems to cloud solutions for vehicle-to-vehicle communication and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications.

This certainly indicates just where the industry is moving in terms of future potential and it’s not difficult to imagine some very clever uses.  I’m thinking transport fleets, the military, taxis and public transport.  There are probably some great opportunities for those planning ahead.  You can find more detail right here.

A little closer to home are the app development opportunities presented with the emergence of ultrabooks. This is a new category of computing defined by ultra-thin, sleek, powerful, instant-on, embedded security and so on, computing. Intel is putting a lot of muscle into these devices, its biggest push of 2012, says Intel's enior VP Tom Kilroy.

Amid the smoke and furore and the fanfares that greeted the Tizen announcement one thing was left unsaid. An important thing: Tizen is a long term project and one that aims to dovetail with the anticipated profusion of Internet-connected devices in the coming years. 

This movement is slated to be as promethean to our lives as the car has been on our infrastructures. And it needs open source code to make it work.

* This blog post is written by Softtalkmobile, and is sponsored by the Intel AppUp developer program, a single channel for distributing apps to multiple devices, multiple operating systems, and multiple app stores.