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podcast with Sir Tim discusses the "linked Data Project" and the Semantic Web contrast to Web 2.0 Social Stovepipe Systems

Perpetuating current data silos by continuing to "give your data to a site" was, Berners-Lee asserted, "not ideal." He argued instead for wider adoption of new or existing Web specifications such as OAuth and RDFAuth, enabling the individual to store data relevant to themselves wherever they felt fit, and assemble it at will within one or more Web and local applications of their choosing at the point of need. "Acquaintance-based social networks," Berners-Lee suggested, were "the tip of the iceberg," with his notion of the emerging Giant Global Graph "exist[ing] above the Web" and creating opportunities for far richer functional and role-based interconnections. Turning to consideration of the Web itself, Berners-Lee remarked that "Openness tends to be an inexorable movement through time" He juxtaposed the 'Web Application Platform' with proprietary solutions to parts of the problem such as Flash, AIR and Silverlight. This Web Application Platform, he argued, relies upon W3C specifications and other open standards, and it is increasingly moving toward specifications that are small, modular, and interoperable. Moving toward his conclusion, Berners-Lee reiterated the importance of Linked Data again saying "Linked Open Data is the Web done as it should be." Returning to his earlier discussion of modularity, he suggested that existing specifications such as those for JavaScript be reworked, carving JavaScript's functionality up into a series of modular packages. Each of those packages should then be assigned a URI, and the Semantic Web should be used to describe the packages, their dependencies, and their interrelationships. Used in conjunction with the resulting applications, Linked Data would provide, "elements of an ability to do things [with data] that cross application boundaries." Turning to Q&A, Berners-Lee was first asked to comment on the concept of 'Web 2.0′, which he did; "Web 2.0 sites a

And of course it is the incredible variety in data formats used by Web 2.0 apps that forces the creation of new data silos on the Web. Web 2.0 is bringing us the same kinds of incompatible data format issues forced on software users since the beginning of the proprietary software industry.

"A new microformat for online news has been developed by the Media standards Trust and the Web Science Reaseach Initiative: it's called hNews. The goal is to make relevant elements of news articles machine-readable, and at the same time, to disply these metadata in a user-friendly format. ....."

The IOWA Comes vs. Microsoft antitrust suit evidence is now publicly available. This ZDNet Talkback posts an extraordinary eMail from Bill Gates concerning the need to control MSOffice formats and protocols as Microsoft pushes onto the Web. The key point is that Chairman Bill understands that the real threat to Microsoft is that of Open Web formats and protocols outside of Microsoft's control. It's 1998, and the effort to "embrace and eXtend" W3C HTML, XHTML, SVG and CSS isn't working well. The good Chairman notifies the troops that MSOffice must come up with another plan. Interestingly, it's not until 2001, when OpenOffice releases an XML encoding of the OpenOffice/StarOffice imbr that Microsoft finally sees a solution! (imbr = in-memory-binary-representation) The MSOffice crew immediately sets to work creating a similar XML encoding of the MSOffice binary (imbr) dump. The first result is released in the MSOffice 2003 beta as "WordprocessingML and SpreadsheetML". XML was designed as a structured language for creating specific structured languages. OpenOffice saw the potential of using XML to create an OpenOffice specific XML language. MSOffice seized the innovation and the rest is history. Problem solved! So what was the "problem" the good Chairman identified in this secret eMail? It's that the Web is the future, and Microsoft needed to find a way of leveraging their existing desktop document "editor" monopoly share into owning and controlling the Web formats produced by Microsoft applications. MSOffice OOXML is the result. ISO approval of MSOffice OOXML is beyond important to Microsoft. It establishes MSOffice "editors" as standards compliant. It also establishes the application, platform and vendor specific MSOffice OOXML as an international "open" standard. Many will ask why this isn't a case of Microsoft actually opening up the MSOffice formats in compliance with government antitrust demands. It is "compliance", but not in the sense of what

great article walking through the history of HTML, XHTML, and browsers. Summary is that HTML5 is the future. Good thinking, great arguments.