Today, Ray Ozzie gave a speech where he revealed his latest idea: the clipboard of the web. He revisited computer history, discovering that the clipboard built into Windows was the first step toward software integration.

He goes on to say that since the inception of the web, we've been missing that easy integration. So, he set out to fix that, and today, announced a new initiative: Live Clipboard. It's idea is simple: allow the same integration that we've enjoyed in Windows using the simple cut and paste methods, but extend it to the web. A standard format for moving data between websites and from PCs to websites. He calls it wiring the web, and it doesn't sound like he came up with it on his own. Dave Winer seems to have quite a bit of details about the inner workings of what's going on, and since Dave is a techie, he's got some good insights into what's going on behind the scenes.

This sounds like a very promising idea. I'd be interested to see what the format of the data looks like, and how difficult it is to implement. It's always difficult to envision what this will really be - how do you know what can be copied and pasted into another application and what can't be, but it's been figured out before, so there's no reason why you can't do the same thing on the web, right?

Imagine, copying and pasting between a Windows app and a website, only later to retrieve that data from a Linux or Mac machine.

Technorati Tags: Live+Clipboard