Untapped Web 2.0 Market

I'm surprised I haven't heard more about this, but in my illustrious opinion there's an untapped Ajax / Web 2.0 market out there, the embedded space.

A fair number of microcontrollers with network interfaces rely on embedded Java applets for their UIs. Check out Zilog's eZ80 Development Kit Application Notes for an example. Applets have been popular because most of the user interface heavy lifting is done by the client device. Which makes sense, particularly if you're using an 8-bit MCU like the eZ80. No sense taxing it when you don't have to.

So a Java applet can help with offloading processing to the end user, but there's still the potential storage issue-your microcontroller has to keep a copy of that applet to serve in the first place. That's where a nice light Ajax UI might come in handy. Not only that, but it'd really help in the design and testing phase-it's just text after all, not a binary blob like an applet.

Right now in my own embedded applications I usually favour the CGI approach. I've been fortunate because my embedded devices usually have a bit of horsepower to them, and so it isn't a big deal to have them do some/all of the UI work. But as Ajax libraries mature, I find myself thinking a lot more about moving everything to the client. That is, once there's some support on handhelds, anyway. :)

So what's the marketable product here? To be honest I'm not quite sure. At first blush I would think that a ISO C library that could auto-generate a GUI would be a viable product, similar in nature to ncurses or perhaps even dialog. As far as customers go you'd probably be looking to sell to MCU consumers rather than the MCU producers, but I could see licensing it to some producers for them to include in their C compiler kits.