REST

REpresentational State Transfer or REST is the simplest way to extend web services to mobile devices, scanners, remote controls on TVs, telephones, radios and such.

It refers to a list of axioms defined at W3 and later refined by Rob Fielding. These were originally defined to describe HTTP, the basis of the web itself.

It does not make the bad assumptions of RDF/OWL or SOAP, which are under the control of large bureaucratic organizations. To catch up on this see the excellent MoinMoinWiki on it at RESTwiki and especially the REST FAQ and a project to decentralize control of the GFDL text corpus and dissolve Wikipedia into a protocol, that could prototype the Consumerium protocol itself...!

Also note, please, that most contributors are anonymous trolls, as always for the best wikis, and that they leave the troll logo of MoinMoin proudly visible.

Hurray for trolls!