Extensible User-friendly Rule System for connecting Internet Services

The number of services available in the Internet increases daily. This number is due to increase even more when the Internet of Things arrives and more services are needed to monitor and control everyday objects that will be connected to the network. Services provide information about their environment and functionality that can be modeled as events and as actions, respectively. These events and actions can be used in rules to automate specific tasks: when the events occur, the actions are executed. Most existing applications need developers (or, at least, power users) to create the rules. There are applications that allow end-users to create rules, but only simple ones. This work presents a solution that allows end-users to create rules that connect Internet services that are more expressive, yet still simple enough. Developers are still necessary to add support for new services. The solution was evaluated with end-users and developers, showing that it is possible to create an extensible rule platform that allows Internet services to work for common users, improving some of their daily tasks.