Object hyperlinking

Object hyperlinking, or simply 'phylinking', is a neologism that usually refers to extending the Internet to objects and locations in the real world. The current Internet does not extend beyond the electronic realm. Object hyperlinking aims to extend the Internet to the physical world by attaching tags with URLs to tangible objects or locations. These object tags can then be read by a wireless mobile device and information about objects and locations retrieved and displayed. Object hyperlinking, or simply 'phylinking', is a neologism that usually refers to extending the Internet to objects and locations in the real world. The current Internet does not extend beyond the electronic realm. Object hyperlinking aims to extend the Internet to the physical world by attaching tags with URLs to tangible objects or locations. These object tags can then be read by a wireless mobile device and information about objects and locations retrieved and displayed. However, object hyperlinking may also be sensible for contexts other than the Internet (e.g. with data objects in data base administering or with text content management). Object hyperlinking is one of the cornerstone concepts for the Internet of Things, where a physical object is linked to its virtual counterpart by embedding a URL on some kind of tag. The idea and corresponding implementations were described at least as early in 2002, in the presumably first research articles mentioning the Internet of Things. The Electronic Product Code (EPC) allows to do the same but requires an external system that returns the URL that corresponds to the EPC.