After the age of the mainframe ("many humans per computer") and the period of the PC ("one computer per human"), we are currently experiencing the dawn of the era of ubiquitous computing ("many computers per human"), a time that is expected to lead to the integration of microprocessing and networking capabilities into all kinds of everyday objects. The idea at the very core of a Web of Things is to integrate such smart devices as first-class citizens into the World Wide Web (WWW) and thus allow

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... users to access physical objects via URLs, to browse them and to compose the data they provide and their functionalities into physical mashups. This thesis explores approaches to incorporating new devices into the Web of Things as well as to combining their services through the use of a distributed management infrastructure. Within the context of extending the Web of Things, we propose a novel architecture for the web-enabling of smart devices and discuss results from a comparison of that alternative with an existing design. Furthermore, we present a meta-program that enables developers to rapidly integrate devices into the Web of Things by automating the implementation of the web server component responsible for exposing these things on the Web. Regarding the facilitated creation of physical mashups that incorporate the data and/or functionality of multiple resources on the Web of Things, we introduce the notion of Smart Hubs and present InfraWOT, a concrete implementation of this concept. As a modular, distributed management infrastructure for the Web of Things that focuses on infrastructure-assisted searching and includes a versatile semantic discovery mechanism, InfraWOT fosters the rapid composition of services provided by devices connected to the Web. Additionally, the nodes of this infrastructure feature a maintenance module that provides structure-level self-stabilization and a messaging component that establishes the link between attached devices and different Web 2.0 applications. To illustrate the benefits of such an infrastructure with respect to the combination of functionalities of different devices, we present multiple prototype applications. Zusammenfassung Wir erleben gegenwärtig den Anbruch des Zeitalters des ubiquitous computing, einer Entwicklung, die den Ausklang der Epoche des PCs als Einzelplatzrechner einläutet und, im Vergleich mit dem Zeitalter des Grossrechners, gleichzeitig ein grundlegend gegensätzliches und vollkommen neues Paradigma verkörpert: An die Stelle der Vielzahl an notwendigen Operatoren um einen einzelnen Computer zu bedienen tritt nun eine Schar an vernetzten smart things, die als allgegenwärtige, unsichtbare Hintergrundassistenten für einzelne Menschen agieren. Die Vision eines Web of Things zielt darauf ab, solche Objekte als gleichwertige Mitglieder in das World Wide Web (WWW) zu integrieren, um die von ihnen angebotenen Daten und Funktionen mittels seiner Mechanismen (URLs, HTTP, etc.) in physischen Mashups zu verknüpfen und es Benutzern zu ermöglichen, die physische Welt mit den Mitteln des Web zu begreifen.