SUMMARY
The rapid progress of information techniques enables people to have a relatively convenient environment and life. This study designs and develops the Web2.0‐based Home Appliances controL sErvice platform (WHALE) for users to easily control home appliances. WHALE is a three‐tier architecture, which consists of Device Detection and Registration Service Platform (DDRSP), Web2.0 Service Platform (WSP), and Common Service Platform (CSP). WHALE is based on the standards of Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS), Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi), and Web2.0 techniques. Users can use many kinds of handheld devices to get services from WSP. When DDRSP finds a new home appliance, this home appliance will be registered into CSP. CSP records the related information and services which are provided by this home appliance. WSP not only integrates and shows the related services of all home appliances but also provides controlling interfaces to control the actions of all home appliances. All delivered messages are based on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Furthermore, for the Web QoS (Quality of Service) strategy, this study designs and proposes an Intelligent Web qualIty of Service‐aware maTching (iWIST) model to satisfy different characteristics of the user's requirements. iWIST consists of Components Classifier, Admission Controller, and Dynamic Content Adaptor. Component Classifier can classify users' requesting components with different QoS constraints. Admission Controller determines the maximum available components for the user. Dynamic Content Adaptor dynamically delivers component information to users. Experiment results illustrate that WHALE can provide appropriate contents with low response time to users. Finally, WHALE has integrity, scalability, operability, adaptivity, and extensibility functions. It can be a reference model for developing home appliance controllers in the future. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.