The Physical Web

I don't see how this is relevant. The proposal is for ble to broadcast a URL. Native apps can open URLs too.

I guess one of the biggest questions here would be authentication and reputation. You want to make sure the device is what you think it is. So they will need to have cryptographically signed messages, ie MAC, and you need to obtain a certificate as well from their server on the web in order to interact with them.

But once you have those, you WON'T need the internet in order to communicate. The vending machine could be in a basement and bluetooth would be enough.

I'm a big proponent of re-decentralizing the internet again, and the web (and physical web) is a big part of that. There's no reason why people in an african village MUST have all their cell signals travel up to a balloon and to Facebook's servers just to communicate with each other. Mesh networking and distributed power generation will bring about a revolution.

People use the browser very regularly and don't realize it because it's an embedded webkit. A classic example is people sharing articles on social networks.

Native apps are a bad experience for this kind of application because they are not ephemeral. If everything in your environment has an app associated with it, then your phone will be clogged with hundreds or thousands of apps, 99% of which you never open. You want a transaction-cost free model for envirnonmental interaction, the same as 'surfing' the web. No persistent cost for experimenting or trying something out.

The whole idea of "installing" stuff has really regressed computing back to the 90s. The web introduced the idea of emphemeral applications which are cached, so that you never need to manage the memory of your device.

I'd like to see mobile native apps adopt Web-style model. You can pin the cache and permanently install apps that are important to you or have giant resources (like huge games), but most of your apps should backup-and-delete themselves on the fly when coming into disuse and space is needed.

I'm sick of being asked to rate apps, and sick of having to delete apps to make space.

Steve Jobs once said "if you see a task manager, they blew it" Because people shouldn't have to manage the kernel resources of their phone. To that I would add, "if you see an install button, they blew it", because people should not have to manage their flash memory.

I thought the nightmare of cleaning up your computing devices went out with utilities to clean Windows drives and registry in the 90s.

> but I can't have access to that information before I enter the store?

Because why would they want you to have that information? They are making money on you not knowing where stuff is - they're hoping that you'll pick up additional items you didn't plan to buy as you wander around the shop looking for the things you need.

Ditto for "worse than useless" apps - they are not meant to help you, they are meant to take money from you.

So pg recently wrote again, that the best way to get money is to make something people want. But it's not true. Time and again, businesses from Comcast to Target, to Uber, to browser toolbar makers, to the guys that give away pendrives that secretly install as keyboard and open their website, to your random SaaS "we'll kill e-mail and your puppy" toilet-paper startup - all of them keep proving that the best practical way to make money is to lie, cheat and bully people into paying.

We need a really strong, aggressive pushback against dishonest business practices, and that includes pretty much the entire advertising industry. We're already drowning in manure, having to use stuff built for the reverse of stated purpose.

Because time and again history proves a point that a surprising amount of smart people keep missing - that technology works on Blub paradox. People will use everything you throw at them, so you can't assume that "no one wants to use feature X". If you build it and ship it and make people buy it (hello advertising), they will use it, for things you haven't even thought of.

> I believe you want that, I believe that maybe people in your circles do, too. Still, that is no evidence at all to extrapolate that "we want".

There are three kinds of people. A small group that wants to automate stuff, a smaller group that doesn't want to automate stuff, and the majority who just mindlessly buys whatever is in stores today. You think people wanted smartphones? The tech crowd, maybe. But the rest? They just started buying them as mobile networks rolled them in to their offers.