World Wide Web is 20 years

Posted on 2009-03-12 by Jon Leirdal

I’ve got a lot of nerdy friends. One of them is on chatting terms with Sir Tim. Who is Tim you might ask? Well if you have to ask, then you probably aren’t that interested in technology. We are talking TBL here… Tim Berners-Lee. The man behind the World Wide Web.

Now, that is an idea that most have heard of. If not, how are you reading this? The World Wide Web is an invention that has permeated our entire society. We are producing, consuming and sharing content on an enormous scale. All due to his proposal from March 1989, according to several sources (2 pages on wikipedia: Tim Berners-Lee and WWW). The name could have been Information Mesh, The Information Mine (TIM – a reference to his Name?), Mine of Information (MOI – moi is me in French!), but they settled on World Wide Web. A name that most people only pronounce as the web, WWW or W3.

So let us skip back to my friend again. He just happened to chat with Tim this weekend, and suddenly he remembered to ask. ”Hey, if we would like to celebrate the WWW, what date should we do that on?”

His reply?

”March 13!” (The exact language was a bit more engineer like)

So this Friday the Web as we know it will be 20 years old.

Let’s all write together now… CONGRATULATIONS,

and thank you Sir Tim.

My employer Computas also wanted to talk about this event so they created this little newsitem (in Norwegian) World Wide Web fyller 20 år fredag den 13.!

Update:
A lot of other sites also mentions this little item:
Dagbladet.no – Gratulerer med dagen, WWW! (in Norwegian)
Computerworld.no – Gratulerer, world wide web!(in Norwegian)
digi.no – Weben fyller 20 år i dag

The future, 2.0

Posted on 2008-11-01 by Jon Leirdal

As a follow up to my earlier fantasy of new possibilities regarding a documented generation I would like to blow out some steam regarding social software as well.

One of the problems we see today is that there are only a few people producing the information that is consumed by all the rest. Those reading are participating with tagging, bookmarking and rating of the content, but even this should be easier. The production of the content could also be easier.

So let us play with the idea of a documented world. On our way forward we have a few stops on the way. Some of them we are experiencing right now, among else by using Facebook, Linked-In, Plaxo or other social networking applications. By blogging and micro-blogging what we do and what interests us we are giving the world knowledge and information that can be used by other applications as what we often call value-added content.

Consider this, you are watching a video or listening to a podcast on the net regarding some information. The video or audio is tagged in such a way that as you play the content, different meta-information rolls by in tandem with the content, and the media player might then display related information based on automated searches as you watch. We are talking hypermedia that intelligently can give you information that you need or want. You will be able to decide where the information is gathered from.

In the next generation of social software I expect us to be able to increase the value for each other in even better and easier ways than today. And as always, the enabler of these features will always be technology.

So in the future, expect great things. Probably not some of the small ideas I present to you here. What we will see will probably be better.

And you will be a part of it. By easily producing content, and adding meta-information and grading what you see. The world will give you more of what you want and of what interests you.

Whether it is semantic technology or intelligent search engines, I bid welcome to interesting and feature rich social networks, in a documented world where you can have an even more enhanced life experience.

Soon, in a life near you!

Google Chrome

Posted on 2008-09-03 by Jon Leirdal

Yesterday Google launched their new Google Chrome web browser. The follow-up in miscellaneous media has been enormous. I’ve tested it myself and I do find it a very interesting application. There are a few features I miss, but I guess Opera has made me a demanding web user. All in all I expect Google to release a solid and innovating new browser when the final version is finished. As usual regarding Google, a few questions concerning the content and other privacy issues do surface. The new secure surfing feature is great, but a few people have issues with the licensing terms:

"By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services."

That is a direct quote from this article at Slashdot. I am not sure this is an issue to fear. It seems that they need that in order to display content on your screen, but we will see I guess.

Finally, if you have not seen the comic from Google explaining the new browser, please read it.

The Web Time Forgot

Posted on 2008-06-20 by Jon Leirdal

The New York Times has this very good article on early ideas of the world wide web. "The Web Time Forgot" describes the how a Belgian called Paul Otlet tried to index all known knowledge, and realised that this was too hard to do by paper alone. So in 1934 he dreamt up this concept of doing this with "electric telescopes". That is an electric device that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. According to NYT he described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even collaborate or congregate in online social networks.

This proto-Web relied on a patchwork of analog index-card and telegraph machines, but it included an idea of a hyperlinked structure of information.

“This was a Steampunk version of hypertext,” said Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired, who is writing a book about the future of technology.

I personally liked this little nugget.

…Otlet’s version of hypertext held a few important advantages over today’s Web. For one thing, he saw a smarter kind of hyperlink. Whereas links on the Web today serve as a kind of mute bond between documents, Otlet envisioned links that carried meaning by, for example, annotating if particular documents agreed or disagreed with each other.

The article goes one to discuss Semantic Web in a not so nice way. I admit that I don’t agree with the author on that account, but all in all an interesting read.

Please read the original article in The New York Times.