This week ReadWriteWeb is running a series of posts analyzing the 5 biggest Web trends of 2009. So far we've explored these trends: Structured Data , The Real-Time Web , Personalization , Mobile Web / Augmented Reality . The fifth and final part of our series is about the Internet of Things , when real world objects (such as fridges, lights and toasters) get connected to the Internet. In 2009, this trend has ramped up and is adding a significant amount of new data to the Web. In this post we'll see how companies as big as IBM and as small as Pachube are building up this new world of Internet data and services. Sponsor Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb! What is The Internet of Things? The Internet of Things is a network of Internet-enabled objects, together with web services that interact with these objects. Underlying the Internet of Things are technologies such as RFID (radio frequency identification), sensors , and smartphones . The Internet fridge is probably the most oft-quoted example of what the Internet of Things will enable. Imagine a refrigerator that monitors the food inside it and notifies you when you're low on milk. It also perhaps monitors all of the best food websites, gathering recipes for your dinners and adding the ingredients automatically to your shopping list. This fridge knows what kinds of foods you like to eat, based on the ratings you have given to your dinners. Indeed the fridge helps you take care of your health, because it knows which foods are good for you. However, we're not quite at that level of sophistication yet in the Internet of Things. As we discovered in our Internet Fridges State of the Market in July, current Internet fridges are more about entertainment than utility. IBM and The Internet of Things One of the leading big companies in Internet of Things is IBM , which offers a range of RFID and sensor technology solutions. IBM has been busy working with various manufacturers and goods suppliers in recent months, to introduce those solutions to the world. For example IBM announced a deal at the end of June with Danish transportation company Container Centralen . By February 2010, Container Centralen undertakes to use IBM sensor technology "to allow participants in the horticultural supply chain to track the progress of shipments as they move from growers to wholesalers and retailers across 40 countries in Europe." Specifically this refers to transportation of things like flowers and pot plants, which are very sensitive to the environment they travel in. Having sensors as part of the entire travel chain will allow participants to monitor conditions and climate during travel. Essentially it makes the travel process very transparent. Pachube: Building a Platform for Internet-Enabled Environments IBM is a leading bigco active in the Internet of Things. At the other end of the spectrum is a small UK startup which has impressed us a lot this year: Pachube . It was one of 5 Internet of Things services that we profiled in February and we followed up with an in-depth look at the service in May . Pachube, (pronounced "PATCH-bay") lets you tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments both physical and virtual. In a blog post by Tish Shute, Pachube founder Usman Haque explained that Pachube is about "environments" moreso than "sensors." In other words, Pachube aims to be responsive to and influence your environment - for example your home. Conclusion What's the point of all this new object data from the Internet of Things? As well as the new types of functionalities it will enable, such as health monitoring by Internet fridges, the sheer amount of new data about an object should lead to better quality goods and better decision-making by consumers. For example when you buy a loaf of bread from the grocery store, it will have its own RFID tag - which theoretically can tell you when it was produced, when it was packaged, how long it traveled to get to the store, whether the temperature during its travel was optimal, the pricing history of the product, what the precise ingredients are and associated health benefits (or dangers), and much more information. That ends our look at the 5 biggest trends of the Web in 2009. First thing next week we will post a round-up, along with a downloadable presentation. ReadWriteWeb's Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Structured Data The Real-Time Web Personalization Mobile Web & Augmented Reality Internet of Things Discuss

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Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Internet of Things

At the close of a whiz-bang year, OpenID has a lot to be proud of. With a community of 9 million sites that use OpenID logins and 1 billion individual users, OpenID has effectively revolutionized the way we are able to create and maintain portable identities. Best of all, it's not just bloggers and geeks who sang OpenID's praises: The U.S. federal government got on board this year, too. Sponsor OpenID accounts are enabled by such providers as AOL, Blogger, Flickr, Google, LiveJournal, MySpace, Verisign, WordPress and Yahoo with announcements of upcoming OpenIDs from Microsoft and PayPal. Sites that allow users to login with OpenID range from major retailers and music labels to news organizations and social sites. As for the government, at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, DC, earlier this year, the General Services Administration and several government agencies announced they would adopt OpenID as part of the White House's Open Government Initiative. Participating companies included Yahoo!, PayPal, Google, Equifax, AOL, VeriSign, Acxiom, Citi, Privo and Wave Systems. On the government side is the Center for Information Technology (CIT), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and related agencies. Not only is the government's involvement a vote of confidence for OpenID's innovation; it also speaks to the product's security progress, which was spearheaded by security committee head and PayPal exec Andrew Nash. In addition to developing and spreading the OpenID product, there's also the OpenID Foundation, which appointed its first executive committee, including Chris Messina and Don Thibeau, in 2009. Portable identity is one of our favorite themes from this year, and we applaud what OpenID has been able to accomplish. What do you look forward to seeing from the product, the foundation and OpenID partner sites in the year to come? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Discuss

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OpenID Ends 2009 With 1 Billion Users

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Facebook's Privacy Move Violates Contract With Users

Through the bravery and efforts of people such as our good friend Drew Olanoff and the LIVESTRONG campaign, many social media users are much more aware of cancer and what this disease does to the body, mind, soul and community. Today, on World AIDS Day, we'd like to direct your attention to a few folks on the social web who are facing lives with HIV/AIDS and have made the same brave choice to share that experience with the rest of us. Read on for bits and pieces of their stories as well as feeds and lists that will keep their struggles and triumphs in your thoughts. Sponsor Shawn Decker's ShawnandGwenn.com Decker, who is a public speaker educator and advocate, blogs with girlfriend Gwenn Barringer about his own struggles with the virus and the challenges of being in an HIV-asymmetrical couple. With the success I've had keeping my numbers stable, I broached the topic of trying one week on, two weeks off meds... My reason for wanting a longer break has been absent-mindedness and lethargy... It's especially frustrating on the days when things just aren't clicking in the old nugget; like when I wake up feeling exhausted instead of rested or, in the middle of a shower, I wonder if I've already washed my hair or not. This tends to happen after a couple of days on meds. Steve Schalchlin's Bonus Round Schalchlin is one of the first HIV/AIDS bloggers, beginning his blog in 1996. Also a songwriter, Schalchlin put his story into music that his partner, playwright Jim Brochu, turned into The Last Session , a musical about a man's struggle with AIDS. In Flash Forward, some of the characters are saying, "The future saved me." I remember when I could see my future. And like this character, there was a certain comfort in knowing I had only just so much time and no more. I'm reminded of the old Chinese saying about how a child who dies has the longest life and an old man, the shortest. I know that that state of mind, of perfect freedom, is available. I know it is because it's only a state of mind. Having gone there, I know what it feels and tastes and smells like. The question is whether I have to know when I'm gonna die to get there again. Kenn Chaplin's My Journey With AIDS Chaplin is a blogger who faces AIDS and is a survivor of childhood and adult trauma and adult-diagnosed mental illness. When diagnosed with HIV in 1989, and AIDS a few years later, it was suggested that I probably had a maximum of ten years to live. In fact I did nearly die of cryptospoidiosis which my doctor still talks about with a sense of marvel. It only seemed logical that I should accept the reality, with countless friends dying around me, and try to live into death with as much grace as I could muster. What I asserted was realism some friends took to be pessimism. One I think of in particular eventually drifted away as, it seems to me, she could neither tolerate what I believed to be reasonable thoughts of dying nor the fact that my health was, to her, no longer of imminent concern. James McLarty-Lopez's Still Arriving McLarty-Lopez is a young, recently married gay man. His blog references medications he takes, side effects he experiences and his general feelings about this part of his life. Chad and I last night were discussing Justin's passing. While very sad it was only a matter of time... I have been tired many times. I have been weak many times. However, through the times in the valley I have always said "I want to live." In comparison, Justin too said he wanted to live, the difference being, he waited far too late to make that decision. He was only 24 and ravaged with HIV and AIDS defining illnesses. Who knows why Justin never really sought treatment? Perhaps the stigma of having HIV stopped him. Perhaps he just didn't want to have to acknowledge the fact he had it. The only person who could have answered that is gone. Speculation will neither ease the pain nor bring him back. Now it's about remembering his smile and moving on with the lesson of I want to live. To subscribe to a 12-blog feed of blogs from folks living with and writing about HIV/AIDS, click here . Also, we've put together a Twitter list of people who live with HIV/AIDS and people who medically treat, advocate for and work with HIV/AIDS sufferers. What better way to observe World AIDS Day than by actually reading the words and understanding the challenges of those who actually live with AIDS or HIV and are unashamed and courageous enough to share those stories with us? Discuss

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Positively Social: Blogging & Tweeting with AIDS/HIV

Research firm Gartner has just put out a list of the top ten mobile applications of the future. Well, not the distant future, but the far off year of 2012. Nothing on the list is all that surprising or, in many cases, even all that new. Instead, the list includes the sorts of technologies that are just now coming into their own and haven't yet seen widespread adoption as well as the already common technologies that are still experiencing growth. Sponsor For many of the categories on this list, there are a number of mobile apps that are already available today. But what Gartner makes clear is that we're just getting started when it comes to their use. For example, location-based services (LBS) - there still isn't one single app which everyone uses to find each their friends out in the real world via their mobile phones. Instead, we have a number of similar but competing applications all vying to be the Facebook of location-based apps. Another example is money payments - this type of service is having more of an impact in the developing world right now where access to banks is more difficult than here in the Western world where people just want the convenience of paying through their mobiles. When was the last time you paid someone or paid at checkout through your mobile phone? Never? That sounds about right. The List The full list is as follows: Money Transfer: This refers to people sending money via SMS messages. Like mobile payments, this service has more appeal in developing markets for now. However, there may come a time when even using your debit card seems passé, while paying for something with actual cash seems downright ancient. Location-Based Services: As mentioned above, there are still far too many services to choose from when it comes to location-based social networking, fragmenting the market. Your friends on Loopt are often different than those on Brightkite and that list is different than those on Foursquare . But LBS extends to more than social networks - it includes any application that taps into your phone's GPS capabilities to offer up location-based services of any kind, whether that's local business reviews or directions to the nearest Starbucks. Gartner says this will be one of the most disruptive technologies in the future, with a user base growing from 96 million in 2009 to 526 million in 2012. Mobile Search: No, mobile search isn't new, but on the mobile platform, it may get shaken up a bit. Gartner predicts that consumers won't necessarily be sticking with the search services they know and use on the Web (think Google, Bing, Yahoo) and instead experiment with using a few different search providers that have "unique technologies" for mobile search. While that statement is a little vague, it sounds like good news for services like Taptu who have entered this field with search offerings designed from the ground-up for mobile devices. Mobile Browsing: Saying that mobile browsing technologies will be heavily used in the future sounds a little bit like stating the obvious. But as Gartner notes, mobile browsing capabilities currently exist only on 60%+ of handsets today. By 2013, that number will climb to 80%, meaning that those who are still using the app-less,more basic feature phones will still be joining the mobile web in mass numbers over the coming years. That's also good news for web developers who can build mobile web applications to cater to this bunch as opposed to focusing all their efforts into building apps for the numerous mobile platforms like the iPhone, Android, RIM, and others. Mobile Health Monitoring: Another technology whose impact will be felt more heavily in developing markets, mobile health monitoring is still at an early stage of maturity and implementation says Gartner. Project rollouts have been limited to pilot projects for now, but in the coming years the industry will begin to monetize these efforts by offering mobile healthcare monitoring products, services, and solutions to various care delivery organizations. Mobile Payments: Like mobile transfers, mobile payments are more common in developing markets at the moment, but that is quickly changing. Yet even as this type of service grows, Gartner admits there will be challenges. Mobile payments will be a "highly fragmented market" where there will not be "standard practices of deployment," notes the report. That makes it sound like this is one technology that will still need some work, even when 2012 rolls around. Near Field Communications (NFC): More popular in some European and Asian markets than in the U.S., NFC still isn't a standard feature on many of today's phones. That may be about to change, too. In late 2010, Gartner says that NFC-enabled phones will begin to ship in volume, with Asia leading deployments, followed by Europe and North America. Mobile Advertising: Also not new but growing fast, mobile advertising is one of the most important ways to monetize mobile content. Total spending on mobile advertising in 2008 was $530.2 million and it will grow to $7.5 billion in 2012. And mobile advertising will also be used by companies alongside their other campaigns including TV, radio, print, and outdoors. Mobile Instant Messaging: Gartner says that latent user demand and market conditions are conductive to mobile IM's future adoption. It will appeal to developing markets where mobile phones are often the only connectivity device a user owns. But will it be a major app by 2012? It seems that SMS is still the service to beat, especially in the developing world. We'll have to wait and see on this one. Mobile Music: Sure, you have the iPhone, but what about your other options? What about mobile music services - especially those for non-iPhone devices? We're still waiting on Spotify in the U.S., for example, and their competition too. Gartner says that we're beginning to see new innovative models in this area that will include both device (think "Comes with Music") and service bundles. What's Missing? A glaring omission from this report is that of Augmented Reality. Gartner had even placed this technology on their " Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2009 " report earlier this year . Do they not think that AR will have a major impact by 2012? Considering that's only a little over a year away, it could just be too soon for AR to see the widespread adoption that we hoped it would have by then. Or it's possible that - as some have suspected - AR is simply a "cool" way to see and interact with the world around you, but hasn't produced any "must-have," highly useful applications just yet. For example, seeing AR views of local businesses and user recommendations is fun, but is it a markedly better experience than using a service like Yelp ? For many, that answer today is "no." AR needs to grow out of being an technology you use "because you can" to one you use "because you have to." Until it's the best option to perform a particular task, it may not make Gartner's next list, either.