Upon doing some research today, I found a new element that’s worked its way into the HTML5 spec: the <device> tag. What this will allow web developers to do is have a standard way of using a device on the user’s computer (like a webcam or microphone).

What could this mean? The obvious one is video-chat capabilities without Flash, but I’m seeing this as a huge bridge between the desktop world and the web world. Just imagine: Flickr could upload pictures directly from your camera without any extra software, or browser games could use your joysticks natively. If this specification goes through, we could be looking at a dramatically different web.