Netgear offers an open source router that is an applications platform

The company is supporting the downloading of firmware and community development around the router at a site called MyOpenRouter.com.

This is precisely what I wanted to see when I started writing my blog posts about "Always On" at Corante in 2003.

The idea is that with storage and processing at the router, applications can live in the air independent of the PC. Clients on such a network might include security systems, RFID chips so you could find your stuff, and medical applications living on your body.

I was allowed to speak about this vision at the 2004 Accelerating Change conference at Stanford, and it is gratifying to see it finally being supported.

Unfortunately, router vendors resisted this concept for a long time. Early Linux routers seemed to emerge by accident, after programmers found they were using open source code without releasing it, and they were not supported by marketing.

Now things are changing. It will be fun to see where it goes from here:

• Security systems that can let police watch your break-in in progress, even from their police cars.
• Home automation systems that know when to water the plants and turn the lights on-and-off while you're gone.
• Music systems that find you and deliver your tunes to the nearest speakers.
• A way to find your keys, your wallet, and your hat if you're senile or just have ADHD.
• Systems that monitor the aged so they can age at home, not a nursing home.
• Medical systems that monitor your heart and blood sugar while you sleep, so ER techs are there as you have your heart attack instead of your getting the victory hug from the fellow in the brite nitegown.

All this, and more, can be developed on a platform where routers act as servers, wireless does the work of wires, and clients can be as small as a single RFID chip.

Now get to work and make yourself some money.