A Platform for Proving Family Oriented RESTful Services Hosted at Home

Online Internet sites offer services and rich data mash-tips that attract many users to upload their content, social connections and personal information to the "cloud". With privacy considerations in mind and the need for set-vices that are targeted for family usage, we present an architecture that allows users to host not only their content but also the actual set-vices at their home infrastructure. The system, which is based on open and standardized web technologies, allows the home set-vices to be selectively opened to remote users and semi-trusted external services, for exporting part of their functionality. Fine-grained access rights are built into the system, which also leverages external social networking sites for making access control and invitation interface easier for the end users. A prototype implementation of the full system, where family services are actually running on a smart phone located at home, is presented. The work proves the feasibility and easiness of using RESTful services in the home environment, due to the clarity of their interfaces(1).