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An internet appliance is a consumer product which accesses services on the internet, such as the World Wide Web or internet telephony, but which is not a general-purpose computer and does not have a hard drive in general. The idea behind Internet appliances is that they can be made cheaper than general-purpose computers and by being dedicated to a single function they can be simpler to use. They constitute a specialized form of information appliance.
The first such appliances to be marketed successfully gave constant information on the weather or on the state of the stock market, by means of changes in colors or by using analog gauges.
Another type of Internet appliance is the Internet Tablet. The most famous (or infamous) examples of the Internet Tablet are the Sony Airboard and the recently unveiled Nokia 770.
Internet appliances were promoted by a variety of technology companies during the 1990s but, as the price of full-featured computers dropped, never met the market expectations. Jim Louderback would later describe the concept as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".
However, a resurgence in Internet appliances may be underway in 2005-06. With the rise in home networking, a new breed of devices, such as Vonage Internet Phones, PenguinRadio's Internet Radio, and IPTV boxes are starting to use the broadband connections of users in non-PC dependent ways.
Walled gardens versus open standards
In an ideal world, any true information appliance would be able to communicate with any other information appliance using open standard protocols and technologies, regardless of the maker of the software or the hardware. The communications aspects and all user interface elements would be designed together so that a user could switch seamlessly from one information appliance to another.
Some vendors are attempting to create "walled gardens" of closed proprietary content for information appliances, leveraging existing proprietary technologies. However, with the exception of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode, these efforts have been less successful than predicted, due to the willingness of most vendors to work together within open standards frameworks, and the pre-existing widespread adoption of open standards such as GSM, IP, SMS and SMTP.
Related concepts
The idea of ubiquitous computing is related to the notion of information appliance because both take into account the need to design dedicated, interconnected devices from the ground up, by taking human factors as well as software and hardware issues into account. They differ on other matters such as the importance accorded to social aspects of computing.
Notable internet appliances
"Internet appliance"