Title: Exploiting Links between the Physical and Virtual World

Abstract:

The link between corresponding physical and virtual worlds has been the subject of research for many years now. The instantiation of this link was often a complex task that involved special purpose techniques to identify and search for the virtual information that belongs to a selected physical object. It is since the conception of physical tagging technologies that physical objects can carry their own virtual information. We study a simple yet effective approach to extract the virtual information of physical objects and aggregate it in a sensible way for the user. The study relys on Web 2.0 techniques to accomplish this. A useful side-effect of our approach is the fact that a set or mashup of physical objects leads to a mashup of their related information in the virtual world.