Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's CTO, told a conference of top Web developers that they want to license a simple technology for sharing data between Web and computer programs.
Internet users would be able to "cut and paste" live Web data across different sites just as they can between computer programs.
"Live Clipboard," as the concept technology is known, would take the widely used clipboard feature common to many computer programs and extend it to the Web, allowing users to share organized data between Web sites or move it into PC programs.
A slide show demonstration showed how users could simply cut and paste complex structured information from one Web site to another, or move the same data, preserving its formatting, to programs running on Windows desktop computers.
It allows the user to copy structured information from one place to another in a non-geeky fashion. For example, personal contact information can be copied out of computer address book into an online shopping checkout page, filling out the order processing pages in a quick gesture.
Ozzie copied a calendar entry from the independent event listings Web site Eventful and pasted it into that his Outlook calendar, moving not just text, but all of the appropriate elements that made up the full appointment entry.
Web-sharing prototype can work on a variety of non-Microsoft Web sites. To emphasize, Ozzie used the open source Firefox browser rather than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer browser.
Live Clipboard is based on JavaScript and standard data formats widely used by Web developers. "This is not platform specific," Ozzie said.
Microsoft plans to freely license the software under the Creative Commons license, requiring only that Microsoft receive attribution for its work and that any improvements to the code are shared with other developers.
Internet users would be able to "cut and paste" live Web data across different sites just as they can between computer programs.
"Live Clipboard," as the concept technology is known, would take the widely used clipboard feature common to many computer programs and extend it to the Web, allowing users to share organized data between Web sites or move it into PC programs.
A slide show demonstration showed how users could simply cut and paste complex structured information from one Web site to another, or move the same data, preserving its formatting, to programs running on Windows desktop computers.
It allows the user to copy structured information from one place to another in a non-geeky fashion. For example, personal contact information can be copied out of computer address book into an online shopping checkout page, filling out the order processing pages in a quick gesture.
Ozzie copied a calendar entry from the independent event listings Web site Eventful and pasted it into that his Outlook calendar, moving not just text, but all of the appropriate elements that made up the full appointment entry.
Web-sharing prototype can work on a variety of non-Microsoft Web sites. To emphasize, Ozzie used the open source Firefox browser rather than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer browser.
Live Clipboard is based on JavaScript and standard data formats widely used by Web developers. "This is not platform specific," Ozzie said.
Microsoft plans to freely license the software under the Creative Commons license, requiring only that Microsoft receive attribution for its work and that any improvements to the code are shared with other developers.