Webby

Overview

Webby is a personal assistant that help you complete personal tasks and control connected devices simply by typing commands in a conversational(chatroom-like) interface. You can access Webby through different channels such as instant message apps or browsers (new tab) to get instant help. You can even customize your commands to teach Webby to complete a series of tasks. For example, “Good night” or “Time for bed" could mean turn off all the lights and devices. As an open platform, we want to facilitate users and makers to build their personal Webby orders / recipes, and share how they utilize Webby to have a better digital life.

Why we initiate this project

From a broader perspective, People came to internet because internet solves their problem and fulfil their need. User not only interest in connected devices, but also interested in **anything** that can help them get more control of their life, such as notebook, smart phone, social network, browser, instant messengers, other apps and web services.

Users got new devices and services and expect those stuff can improve their life, but the truth is those stuff need to be access through different ways (app, web, desktop, mobile), which make more and more usage overhead.

What if we can deal with them in a similar way (to reduce the burden of context switching), and access them through multiple ways (to access devices and web services anytime anywhere)?

How we illustrate the vision

Website and services do have api (plenty of them are called REST api) that allow user to access and monitor their services through Internet. As you may know, some devices can be accessed through web service api(the web api through the internet, not web api that expose device's capability) as well. So, why don't we access connected devices through web service api directly, just like access other web services?

The high concept of Webby project is “the personal assistant and the command line for internet (web service api”'. Imagine once we have enough web service api wrapped as Webby commands. User not only can **make Webby command** to control devices or services alone, but also can assemble commands as IFTTT to **pipe** web services and device channels, or even run **batch** of commands with a customizable simple word (**alias**). Devices and web services have blur boundaries. Extend, share, and mash up are possible through developer and user communities. The adoption of Webby would encourage device maker provide web services for their devices and make device more accessible through the internet. People don’t need to count for certain company or AI to decide what user can use or what user should receive. Webby command could make user have internet power on their hands and do things in their preferred way.

What we are doing now and after

Webby demo prototype

As one of assumption, Mozilla can provide certain tool/service that users want and attract device makers and web service providers to provide web service api as default for their devices, which ultimately met our mission. Since wrapping web services as Webby command without having connected devices also bring value to the users, we can validate it without having certain devices.

One of nature fit for the command line of internet is the Browser's searchbar. During experiment, we also found the browser's new tab page could be a natural interface to control IoT devices around the user. Inspired by the tag and multiple search provider suggestions from Firefox for Android/Activity Stream from Firefox desktop, the early stage prototype is made as a new tab page addon to validate if we can integrate Webby commands with existing search functions, make command options visible and extensible. You can experiment it directly by open the web page or install the addon to set it as your browser’s new tab page.

The next thing to experiment is to validate if we are able to wrap web services api and webhooks as commands.

Since command line are nature for text interface. Besides the browsers, we are exciting to imaging the possibility of control everything through Social network or Instant Messengers. Just add `Webby` as your friend in FaceBook or whatsapp, then you can text to Webby to access and monitor all your web services and connected devices!

For Unix user, command line is a more familiar concept. Any kind of graphical interface could be fallback to the command line, so this project is not just restricted to text base interface. Nature language command or Voice recognition are possible inputs. integrate with AI or IFTTT might be helpful, the push notification or GoogleNow-like interface are possible candidates. We also open to exploration those area.

Milestones

1. Unveil webby initiative

Introduce the project to CD_allstaff and create project wiki page.

2. Participate in Gate 0

Get resource, set architecture plan and work on demo for MozLondon.

Team Members

Fred Lin - Gaia eng
Shing Lyu - QA eng
Mark Liang - UX
Aaron Wu - EPM
Ray Lin - Gaia eng
Scott Wu - Gaia eng
Carol Huang - Visual

Welcome to talk with any of us to know more about this initiative, given some feedbacks are appreciate, or you can check the demo, report issues or provide patches to make it appealing for powerful users.