Are there any initiatives to implement/agree upon a standard API for connectivity between web browsers and client hardware.
Example: The iPhone has a GPS/Camera/Accellerometer in it. It'd be very cool if my web app could communicate with them (rather than me having to write a thick ObjectiveC application).
The closest thing I've seen to that is the Android phone API, which lets your programs access its hardware (relatively) painlessly. Google's pushing for it to become the new standard, but its hardly the same thing as a web-app (which, by most definitions, runs entirely in your browser?).
To add to my own question; Yahoo provides a geolocation service called FireEagle that could act as a mediator and provide similar functionality.
In essence the phone communicates with a central Yahoo server updating its location. Your web app can then determine your approx location from that central server.