Pioneer has announced a new platform that is immediately available to developers, and hopefully in the near future to users.
The Platform for the Aggregation of Internet Services (PAIS), will enable users to have a single login that can access all of a user’s social networking, music, video, contact, calendar accounts and much more from multiple content/service providers.
The PAIS API allows users’ devices to seamlessly access and share information among a variety of services, allowing for a new level of interactivity among the various users’ accounts. For example, using a PAIS-enabled TV, a user can look up a restaurant on Yelp and send out an invite with directions to their Facebook friend seemlessly. Then when the users get in their car, the PAIS-enabled GPS would automatically input the address. When the user arrives at the destination, their PAIS-enabled mobile device can let the user connect to friends who have already arrived.
Many in the consumer electronics industry feel that the future of applications and services will always be fractured, and by introducing the PAIS layer, Pioneer hopes to enable mashups from multiple information sources. This is one of the first attempts to consolidate and wrangle the myriad of user accounts and put them in a single place. But what’s the most compelling is the attempt by Pioneer to have PAIS manage and marry the various pieces of information and services into a single seamless user experience. As it stands right now, Pioneer has managed to release PAIS ready built with services from VoiceBox, AccuWeather.com, Yelp, Wcities, Facebook, Twitter, Slacker Radio, Google Calendar, and more to come.
Ultimately it will be up to devices and services developers to enable PAIS, before consumers can even imagine a seamlessly integrated world.