Eolas Technologies may be the biggest patent troll the Internet has ever seen. The company, alongside the University of California, claimed patents that pertained to the “interactive web.” This includes moving images, music clips, maps, search features, etc. Essentially, they claimed to have a patent for the modern Internet according to Wired.

Eolas took over a dozen companies to court in 2009 over these ridiculous patent claims. Some of those companies included Google, Amazon.com, Adobe and others.

Some companies just settled after the initial lawsuit to avoid further court costs. Those companies included Apple, Playboy and EBay. Google and others kept on fighting the claims that Eolas had a patent on the “interactive web.”

Well, good news comes to those who wait as a federal jury in Tyler, Texas yesterday said that the two patents owned by Eolas were invalid. Those who settled back in 2009 must be feeling pretty silly right now.

If the jury found their patents valid, the case would have gone forward with each company being tried for infringement. The jury invalidated the need for those trials and Eolas will never get their dirty money.

What may have tipped the odds in the general Internet’s favor was that Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Internet, and Pei-Yuan Wei, developer of a Web browser before Eolas, testified on behalf of the companies still fighting.

If Eolas wants to keep fighting, they could appeal the decision. They probably won’t, however, as it would be too costly. They also would not be able to target any more companies during the appeal proceedings.

It just once again goes to show you that companies shouldn’t settle with patent trolls. Fighting them will usually expose just how fraudulent their patent claims are.

Speaking at the IBM Lotusphere conference in Florida the day after the SOPA Blackout, Berners-Lee said that SOPA and PIPA “have not been put together to respect human rights as is appropriate to a democractic country.”

In 1989 Berners-Lee, who was knighted in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II, wrote a proposal that suggested the interlinking of various fledgling technologies – including hypertext, the domain name system, and the internet – to create the World Wide Web. The project was accepted by CERN in 1990 and in 1991 the first website, info.cern.ch, was put online. Berners-Lee went on to found the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which manages the continued development of the Web.

Speaking at Bristol University in the UK, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, had some less than positive things to say this week about the direction the web is taking – the app direction. As quoted by computing.co.uk:

"The debate is a highly overblown issue," said Wales in a response to question about his personal view of net neutrality. "A lot of the things that people are afraid of are in reality a long way from happening. The real threat comes from the apps model."

On the open internet anyone can develop software and give it away or sell it. "But in the apps model, you have to get Apple’s permission," said Wales. "That choke point is very dangerous. It’s not theoretical like a network operator potentially shutting out Skype, it’s real and it’s happening now."

The words somewhat echo a recent report from the inventor of the web himself – Tim Berners-Lee. Here’s a sample from that:

In contrast, not using open standards creates closed worlds. Apple’s iTunes system, for example, identifies songs and videos using URIs that are open. But instead of "http:" the addresses begin with "itunes:," which is proprietary. You can access an "itunes:" link only using Apple’s proprietary iTunes program. You can’t make a link to any information in the iTunes world—a song or information about a band. You can’t send that link to someone else to see. You are no longer on the Web. The iTunes world is centralized and walled off. You are trapped in a single store, rather than being on the open marketplace. For all the store’s wonderful features, its evolution is limited to what one company thinks up.

Other companies are also creating closed worlds. The tendency for magazines, for example, to produce smartphone "apps" rather than Web apps is disturbing, because that material is off the Web. You can’t bookmark it or e-mail a link to a page within it. You can’t tweet it. It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers, and the techniques for doing so are getting better all the time.

Smartphone usage continues to skyrocket. Usage of the iPhone in particular is about to as it comes to Verizon. And of course 2011 is the year of the tablet as iPads continue to sell well and all of its competitors come to the market – many powered by App market places. 

In other words, don’t expect the app model being criticized by these guys to go away anytime soon. Berners-Lee’s report also criticized social networks like Facebook for walling off data, which is part of the same issue – a fragmented web, which could hardly be considered a web at all in the traditional sense of the word. 

The first definition of "web" listed in Google’s definition results is "an intricate network suggesting something that was formed by weaving or interweaving". While there is certainly plenty of room for interweaving within the app model, there is also plenty of room for disconnecting. Of course, when you take the second definition Google provides for "web" perhaps the web is in no danger at all: "an intricate trap that entangles or ensnare its victim."

There are a lot of great apps. There’s a reason the web is going in this direction, but will we reach a point where the apps that are supposed to bring more convenience to our lives end up creating an incredible inconvenience? Many of us are bound to reach that point repeatedly. 

Luckily, the web as we know it is still here too. It’s not really going anywhere, and is readily available from all of our smartphones, tablets, and connected device. It’s just that more of the innovation and development may go to serve these fragmented ecosystems rather than focus on the web itself. 

News Corp. is getting ready to release its latest publication called The Daily. Want to read subscribe? I hope you have an iPad.

More discussion on our Facebook page.

His sentiments are reflected by open standards advocates everywhere, and those that appear to be diminishing the principles Berners-Lee and the like stand for are among some of the biggest players on the web. 

Berners-Lee calls out social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster for closing off data, as well as wireless providers and governments for hindering progress. "Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web," he says. "Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights."

"If we, the Web’s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want," he adds. "The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides."

"Several threats to the Web’s universality have arisen recently," he later adds. "Cable television companies that sell Internet connectivity are considering whether to limit their Internet users to downloading only the company’s mix of entertainment. Social-networking sites present a different kind of problem. Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster and others typically provide value by capturing information as you enter it: your birthday, your e-mail address, your likes, and links indicating who is friends with whom and who is in which photograph. The sites assemble these bits of data into brilliant databases and reuse the information to provide value-added service—but only within their sites. Once you enter your data into one of these services, you cannot easily use them on another site. Each site is a silo, walled off from the others. Yes, your site’s pages are on the Web, but your data are not. You can access a Web page about a list of people you have created in one site, but you cannot send that list, or items from it, to another site."

Google and Apple are a couple more major companies that fail to escape Berners-Lee’s criticism. He calls out Apple for making iTunes a walled garden and Google’s joint proposal with Verizion, suggesting that wireless should be treated differently than wired, when it comes to net neutrality. 

He also says it’s "disturbing" that magazine publishers are turning to smartphone apps rather than web apps, because these too are closed off from the web itself. 

Interestingly, Berners-Lee cites web giant Amazon as more of an example of what can be accomplished because of open standards, noting that they were able to grow into the powerhouse they’ve become as a result of access to free, basic web technologies and standards. He also mentions Craigslist and Wikipedia as positive examples. 

Berners-Lee’s six-page report is an interesting look at the direction the web has taken after 20 years, from the guy that’s been there every step of the way. While much of his assessment is indeed a bit dark, there is some optimism sprinkled throughout. He admits that it is an "exciting time", and calls upon developers, businesses, governments, and citizens to work together to shape where the web goes from here. 

With some of the "closed" entities taking up such an exceedingly substantial amount of web user attention, however (not to mention the other powerful elements in play like the wireless/cable companies’ practices) it’s hard to imagine the direction changing drastically anytime soon. 

Facebook is reportedly accounting for about a quarter of all page views in the U.S. and it’s starting to push itself as users’ entry point to the web at large, while simultaneously moving to become users’ main entry point of communication (and likely payments in the not-too-distant future). 

Is Berners-Lee’s web doomed to become just an important part of history? An important step in the evolution of technology and communication? Can it survive on any mainstream level with all of these forces seemingly working against it while using it at the same time? 

Let us know what you think.

This Reuters report on Berners-Lee’s big plans isn’t notable for how it defines the Semantic Web. In fact it is exceedingly vague to the point it seems rather obvious the writers wrote down, as best they could, the simplest version of what Berners-Lee told them. There’s no shame in that. Berners-Lee called me to the carpet a couple of years ago because I didn’t quite get it, either. That’s why he’s at MIT and I’m not.

Tim Berners-Lee

The Reuters writers focused instead on things more tangible to their readers, such as his warnings about government and corporate snooping on Web users by creating individual profiles based on the data users supply. But this was my favorite part:

When Berners-Lee wrote his proposal in March 1989, his boss at CERN, the world’s biggest particle physics laboratory, scrawled "vague, but exciting" on the memo.

I found that interesting in light of a couple of things. Recently, futurist and cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling gave a controversial speech in New Zealand about the future of the Web. In it, he gave what appeared to be a blistering criticism of Web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly’s term, which gave rise to many of the applications we see today—user generated content, AJAX, social media, on and on.

At Web 2.0’s inception, critics jumped on it as an ill-defined marketing buzzword and claimed it wasn’t really different from Berners-Lee’s Web 1.0; it just looked different. Sterling summed it up a few weeks ago by saying Web 2.0 was made of “useful, sound ideas that were creatively vague.” He followed that up with much vaguer tales of the “Transition Web” and turtles upon turtles upon turtles.

Vagueness, it seems, is incredibly useful. One needs specifics when trying to sell something, especially in a corporate environment. Try selling an idea to your boss without data to back it up. But the beauty of the Web is that it is created by a kind of collective intelligence that can run merely on a concept, with definitions to come later, or perhaps never. In the meantime, look at all the cool, useful stuff that got made.

An example of another creatively vague concept: Twitter. At this very moment the general public is asking the same questions we on the cutting edge were asking when it debuted two years ago: What’s the point? Why would anybody use this? Why does anybody care? On the surface it sounds stupid. People send 140-character updates about what they’re having for breakfast to a bunch of other people who apparently give a crap.

 But then it became a useful tool for journalism, for Congress, for celebrities, for marketers, and very recently and very suddenly, for realtime search, and Google shows a twinge of concern.

It turns out that creatively vague is very powerful, even world changing. I think that’s because concepts can’t be weighted down by justification. Instead the collective interprets what it could mean, and radical innovation ensues.

So what did Sterling mean by a “transition web?” Hard to say exactly, but on the surface a culture-based, unmonetizable Web free of business models (as he calls Web 2.0, a business model) seems much more utopian than Berners-Lee’s cat-herding Semantic Web.

Thomas D. Wason

Defining the Semantic Web is difficult. You can run the define: function in Google and it will bring back several definitions sounding vaguely similar but offering no simple explanation—except for one, another favorite: The gleam in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye for a unified Web without metadata. Thanks for that, Thomas D. Wason, PhD.

Berners-Lee told me I had it backwards in 2007, basing my understanding on a common misconception that led a Semantic Web developer from Berkeley to declare it dead on arrival. The Semantic Web, said Berners-Lee, wasn’t so much about getting humans to adhere to a common language (fat chance!) when identifying data so that machines could better understand it, but more about getting machines to understand data in more human ways (um, I think), and then integrating that data in a way that is intuitively accessible and contextual.

Here’s how he defined it himself:

"The semantic web is about data integration. Most of the data is in existing databases. Much of it is currently exported in HTML and can be easily exported also in RDF using a tool like D2R Server. Data comes from many sources. Calendars. Scientific measurements. Applications such as calendars, financial programs, and so on.

"Yes, it is possible to write data into online media, but that (a) is very effort-intensive and (b) only covers a fraction of all the things data is about. I’m not holding my breath for that."

And that means? I don’t know, but my guess is we’ll know it when we see it, and so long as enough vagueness remains innovation could be limitless. All I really know is that if something the creator of the World Wide Web is doing sounds “vague, but exciting,” we should pay attention. 

How is the Web completed? Well, it’s hard to complete infinity, but the inventor of the World Wide Web has his ideas about making it more complete, anyway, and those ideas border on the nether regions of unreachable ideals—I’m still hopeful, though, because not a shred of progress was ever made in this world with stubborn devotion to pessimism or, arguably, even realism. It takes optimists to change the world. It always has. 

“I have read that 80% of the world do not have access to the Web,” said Berners-Lee, before noting that the Web has been developed by the developed world for the developed world. In other words, it seems we’ve left some people out, and the Web as we know it serves the lifestyles of the world’s technologically privileged minorities.

The Knight Foundation seems to have agreed with Berners-Lee’s rousing speech laying out the philosophy and goals of the World Wide Web Foundation, and have supplied him with $5 million in seed money to launch it in 2009.

Well, if the creator of hypertext asked you for money for a new project, wouldn’t you give it to him? It wasn’t without good reason. Or without three of them:

• to advance One Web that is free and open,
• to expand the Web’s capability and robustness,
• and to extend the Web’s benefits to all people on the planet

This is usually the kind of stuff Google trips over itself throwing money toward. Nothing out of Mountain View just yet, though.

Berners-Lee thinks the mobile Web will be the version reaching that last 80 percent, and he’s surely right about that I think. He and his colleagues at the World Wide Web Foundation will be setting off the next phase of the Web, then, with the lofty, ultimate goal of a “humanity connected by technology,” success likely measured by the singing voices of all the children of the world.

“Our success will be measured by how well we foster the creativity of our children,” he said.

Well, I wasn’t too far off, was I? He goes on, detailing success measured by “whether future scientists have the tools to cure diseases. Whether people, in developed and developing economies alike, can distinguish reliable healthcare information from commercial chaff. Whether the next generation will build systems that support democracy, inform the electorate, and promote accountable debate.”

That last part, the “accountable debate” part, Berners-Lee seems to elaborate on for the BBC, exposing optimism both audacious and admirable. He fears the Web in its current form is too easily abused as a channel for the spread of misinformation.

"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he said. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging."

A mind virus. A meme. More likely, infinite networks of memes, and anonymous beasts to bear them out. Yes, we’ve seen it time and time again; the extent of their damage, however, is always debateable. 

The solution isn’t easy, but Sir Tim and friends are leaning toward some kind of system that would label websites as trustworthy once they’ve been vetted as reliable sources of information, a highway among a system of half-truth and untruth access roads.But who will vet them?

Imagine, then, a kind of accreditation system forming in the future, likely staffed by a committee sharing some modicum of agreement on truth, tagging and scoring certain websites as havens for truth and at best ignoring the rest.

It’s an idea that has a date with destiny. Unfortunately, the potential for a happy destiny in that respect is slim (but I’m optimistic still, I swear), because not only does the mere suggestion evoke images of abusive, ideological stamps of approval from shadowy, somehow populous-minded Aristotelians, but also perpetual controversies and complaints from those who don’t make the elusive list of approved sources.

Is Berners-Lee such an optimist that that he believes in true objectivity and benevolent virtual society judges? Is the crowd the source of this objectivity and benevolence or the enemy of it? Is it really possible to have six billion people of one accord?

These will be hard questions to answer, and hard bumps to beat smooth. I’m hopeful for, I dive into and swim in this benevolent future while the tenacious piranhas of human observation nip at the bleeding gladness of my heart. Can a man change the world twice? God, I hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
 

 Tim Berners-Lee

"What’s exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance," he told the BBC.  Those first two things sound familiar, at least.  Then Berners-Lee painted a quick sketch of where the passage of time might lead.
 
"My hope is that those will produce… new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet," he stated.

Coming from anyone other than one of the founding fathers of the World Wide Web, this vision would sound entirely too starry-eyed; it’s a long way from (Facebook) poking and porn to the betterment of mankind.

Still, that’s where the infancy comment comes in, and Berners-Lee emphasized, "The web has been a tremendous tool for people to do a lot of good even though you can find bad stuff out there."

Mind you, the list covers the last 150 years, and that’s where we see some objections coming in; Google’s only about ten years old, and has yet to help defeat Nazis, for example.

Still, a panel put together by Intel came up with the list, and in a statement, Cass Business School’s Professor Clive Holtham admitted, "It was a very difficult task to rate so many excellent candidates and there was a very lively debate amongst the panel.  I think all the judges had a personal favourite who they wanted to see higher up the list."

The rest of the list – 45 people are on it, in all – is available in an article by Claudine Beaumont.  But Guglielmo Marconi, Jack Kilby, Gordon Moore, Alan Turing, Robert Noyce, William Shockley, and Don Estridge rounded out the top ten, and Beaumont saw at least one thing in which we take some comfort: "Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg . . . was notable by his absence . . ."

Naaman relegated Berners-Lee’s vision of a cooperative Web where people and machines get along in digitized, organized artificial intelligence harmony via tags (told ya, this is some heady, quantum stuff) to a pipe dream. Naaman reminds Berners-Lee that people, in general, especially collectively, just ain’t that bright.

The Semantic Web, you see, relies in large part on people tagging their online media in a rather standardized, academic, high-minded, meaningful, and structured way. And Naaman thinks that’s too much to ask:

There is no way that we can engage the masses in annotating media with “semantic” labels. At best, we can get the people to annotate content (such as Flickr images or YouTube videos) with short text descriptions or tags.  

Hmmm, yes, very Aristotelian. I like it. Sounds like Naaman’s actually observed the primates in question. (Down the block from me, one of these primates spray-painted his name on the road with stencil. It’s not a complicated name, a four-letter smacker, spelled J-A-K-C, apparently.)

Naaman modified his original use of the word "dead," as it was intended more as a conversation-starter, opting for something closer to unachievable.

Certainly, Berners-Lee has wowed the world in the past. It wouldn’t be surprising if he heard rhetoric like this before his historic launch of an HTML page. So what does ol’ TBL have to say about it? Let’s check his blog.

He says "blogging is great" … um, at least he thought so last November.