Lately, we’ve been working on a data aggregating services that allows our wireless sensors to communicate easily with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter ( similar to a service like Ping.fm, but for sensors)
This prototyping has led to a modular design to support future social networks as well as other output streams ( messaging, RSS, … )
For that matter, the plugin architecture with a RESTFul API  has been deemed to be the most relevant. Please refer below for a high-level design:

socialEnergy: a service design

By relying on this architecture, we could tie each sensor to a list of social networks with which to interact.
The unique identifier to differentiate each sensor is the MAC address.
The web services client should be running either on the sensor or ported out on the smart home gateway ( refer to previous post ).
The plugin interface translates the data coming from the sensor into 3rd party API calls.
The work queue can be simply a Java messaging system.

Overall, this design enables social capabilities to sensor network. More importantly, the system can roll out new plugins without impacting the software running on the sensor side.

NOTE: You can see how the admin page of our server looks like here: socialgrid.senseplanet.com

• rely on the computer connectivity to convey data( PC, Mac,…that is ).
• rely on the router ( by the way, check out MyOpenRouter)
  

In either case, a piece of software and a connectivity add-on will have to be installed on the gateway.

Please refer below to the diagrams below explaining the two designs.

I think that the web of things will very likely bypass the personal computer and will leverage routers for connectivity and mobile handsets for user interface.
This design should dominate the market for two reasons:

• energy consumption: routers are much less energy-consuming than a PC. If one appliance needs to remain on
• browser is the new desktop: energy management softwares are always implemented as software-as-a-service. Therefore the computing power of the personal computer will not be utilized.
• mobile application: It’s never been so easy to provide application to monitor the home. I think that every environment monitoring products will come along with a mobile application to download.
• reliability: a router is always on, always connected and more importantly dedicated to one task
• router usb connectivity: the router provides a way to get enhanced in functionality thanks to usb dongle. The usb dongle can be the piece of software and the connectivity add-on to communicate with things around us.

In conclusion, the web of things will definitely foster the home router breakthrough as the centerpiece in smart home.
Most importantly, check out MyOpenRouter to understand the future of routers and how they can be tailored for the smart home.