A platform for proving family oriented RESTful services hosted at home

Online Internet sites offer services and rich data mash-ups 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 services that are targeted for family usage, we present an architecture that allows users to host not only their content but also the actual services at their home infrastructure. The system, which is based on open and standardized Web technologies, allows the home services 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.