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The world wide web is “still in its infancy”, the web’s inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has told BBC News.

He was speaking ahead of the 15th anniversary of the day the web’s code was put into the public domain by Cern, the lab where the web was developed.

The future web will put “all the data in the world” at the fingertips of every user, Sir Tim said.

“The web has been a tremendous tool for people to do a lot of good even though you can find bad stuff out there.”

Making the web free to use had a vital role in spreading its use worldwide.

There are now 165 million different websites around the world, according to internet research firm Netcraft.

Sir Tim said he was optimistic about the future of the web.

‘Fantastic experience’

“The experience of the development of the web by so many people collaborating across the globe has just been a fantastic experience,” he said.

“The experience of international collaboration continues. Also the spirit that really we have only started to explore the possibilities of [the web], that continues.”

Sir Tim predicted that the web’s ability to engender collaboration could one day see the web being used to help manage the planet.

“What’s exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance.

“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.”

The ubiquity of the web gives the impression that its success was inevitable but that was not always the case, said Robert Cailliau, who worked alongside Sir Tim.

The decision by physics laboratory Cern to release the web code into the public domain was not a straightforward one, he told BBC News.

Technical proposals

Mr Cailliau helped draw up one of the early technical proposals for the web and later helped convince the directors at Cern to “give the web away”.

“The difficult part was explaining to them the true nature of what the web was going to be,” he said.

“We had to convince them that this was going to take off and it was a really big thing. And therefore Cern couldn’t hold on to it and the best thing to do was to give it away.”

He said competing technologies, such as Gopher, which was developed at the University of Minnesota, were also offering a method of using hyperlinks to connect documents across computers on the internet.

“If we had put a price on it like the University of Minnesota had done with Gopher then it would not have expanded into what it is now.

“We would have had some sort of market share alongside services like AOL and Compuserve, but we would not have flattened the world.”

The growing use of encryption software– like Microsoft's own BitLocker– by cyber criminals has led Microsoft to develop a set of tools that law enforcement agents can use to get around the software, executives at the company said.

Microsoft first released the toolset, called the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), to law enforcement last June and it's now being used by about 2,000 agents around the world, said Anthony Fung, senior regional manager for Asia Pacific in Microsoft's Internet Safety and Anti-Counterfeiting group. Microsoft gives the software to agents for free.

While Microsoft can point to wide usage of COFEE, some experts are skeptical about using that type of tool to recover data, and even the developer of the product at Microsoft acknowledges that it's not accepted by some users.

Fung, who initiated the creation of COFEE, spent 12 years as a police officer in Hong Kong, with the final seven dedicated to fighting cybercrime. When he joined Microsoft, he sought to devise a way that agents could do better at finding valuable information on computers used by cyber criminals.

When he was an officer, the protocol for handling computer crime was to remove a computer from the scene of the crime, taking it back to the lab where computer scientists would search it for information. In many regions of the world this is still the standard procedure. “At that time everybody followed that principle, but they knew that once they unplugged the computer, which was the guideline, a lot of potential information was lost,” Fung said.

That's because data on an encrypted system is accessible to police so long as the criminal has logged on and the PC remains on. But if police shut the system down, they need to have the criminal's password to get past the encryption software when the computer boots back up. The release of Vista has accelerated the problem because BitLocker, a data encryption feature, comes with Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate versions, Fung said.

“Criminals are taking advantage of these technologies like BitLocker,” Fung said. “BitLocker was the real driving force because it's becoming ubiquitous.” In addition to BitLocker, other hard disk encryption methods, like one from PGP, also frustrate agents, he said.

While COFEE doesn't break BitLocker or open a back door, it captures live data on the computer, which is why it's important for agents not to shut down the computer first, he said.

COFEE is a set of software tools that can be loaded onto a USB drive. Brad Smith, general counsel at Microsoft, called it a “Swiss Army knife for law enforcement officers,” because it includes 150 tools. A law enforcement agent connects the USB drive to a computer at the scene of a crime and it takes a snapshot of important information on the computer. It can save information such as what user was logged on and for how long and what files were running at that time, Fung said. It can be used on a computer using any type of encryption software, not just BitLocker.

Previously, an officer might spend three or four hours digging up the information manually, but COFEE lets them do it in about 20 minutes, he said.

Still, COFEE has its foes. Some experts say that running any program causes memory contamination that affects the data agents are looking for on the computers. “Any time you're touching a live computer you're changing it in some way,” said Chris Ridder, a residential fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

One reason some agents prefer to take the computer back to the lab and create an exact image of it is because they can later compare that image to the actual computer. “You've got the original computer locked away in an evidence safe somewhere, so if someone questions the integrity of the image you can verify it against the original,” he said.

Agents can't compare data that they collect on a live machine at a crime scene with the computer later because the act of powering down the machine changes it, he said.

Ridder, who was not familiar with COFEE specifically, also worries that any forensic software is vulnerable to hacking. “A forensic software maker needs to be very careful to make their software as resistant to tampering as possible,” he said. He wrote a paper last year about vulnerabilities in forensic software.

Rather than take the risk of tainting evidence by using products like COFEE, authorities have alternatives. They can get court orders permitting them to hack into a password-protected file or they may be able to convince a defendant to disclose the password, Ridder said.

Microsoft's Fung said the use of software like COFEE depends on the laws and regulations of countries that may forbid its use. “It's based on their principles and what is required from the court,” he said.

Ridder finds it ironic that Microsoft built BitLocker and is now providing law enforcement agents with ways to get around it. “Maybe Microsoft should spend its efforts making BitLocker more secure,” he said. For example, maybe users should have the option of requiring a password that allows access to a USB drive. While some users might find that onerous, others might like to have the option, he said.

He also suggested that BitLocker and other encryption products probably aren't as widely used as Fung suggests– by cyber criminals or honest computer users. Many people are reluctant to use them because they can slow down a computer or because they worry they might forget their passwords. “My sense is it's not nearly as big a threat as they would suggest,” he said.

Agents in 15 countries including Poland, the Philippines, New Zealand and the U.S. are using COFEE, Microsoft said. In New Zealand, a forensics examiner recently used COFEE to find evidence that led to the arrest of an individual involved in trading child pornography, said Smith.

Smith and others spoke on Monday at the start of a three-day conference Microsoft is hosting for law enforcement officials at its Redmond, Washington headquarters, inviting U.S. and international police, prosecutors and representatives from agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Microsoft has been hosting the conferences, which invite feedback from the law enforcement agents, since 2006, Smith said.

(Robert McMillan in San Francisco contributed to this report.)

3Com, the U.S. networking vendor now looking to operations in China for a competitive edge, has named a new CEO who will be based in that country.

The new CEO, Robert Mao, will replace Edgar Masri, who is leaving the company after less than two years. But in what may be a promising sign for 3Com, former longtime executive Ron Sege is returning as president and chief operating officer.

3Com struggled for years against larger rival Cisco Systems, but in 2003 it formed H-3C, a joint venture with Chinese networking giant Huawei to develop and build products in China for both that market and the rest of the world. In late 2006, under Masri's leadership, it bought out Huawei's share in the venture. H-3C didn't go far toward re-establishing 3Com's market share in the U.S., but the company says it now has a dominant market share in China. Last year, Masri said the difference in salaries between China and other countries created an “arbitrage opportunity” for 3Com.

More recently, Bain Capital and Huawei proposed acquiring 3Com, but the deal fell apart. Concerns over 3Com security technology getting into the hands of Huawei, which is linked to the Chinese government, raised a hurdle to the deal.

Mao's appointment will help support 3Com's growing and profitable China operations, 3Com said Tuesday. Now 64, Mao led Nortel Networks' business in greater China from 1997 to 2006 and most recently was 3Com's executive vice president of corporate development. He is fluent in both Mandarin and English, 3Com said. Mao earned a master's degree in material science and metallurgical engineering from Cornell University and a master's degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sege, 51, will be based in the U.S. and will focus on 3Com's operations outside China, reporting to Mao. He worked at 3Com from 1989 to 1998, including as executive vice president of its Global Systems Business Unit. Most recently, Sege was president and CEO of Tropos Networks, a wireless mesh equipment vendor. Sege will re-join 3Com on April 30.

Sege will also join 3Com's board of directors. Mao will remain on the board, which is led by former 3Com and Palm chief executive Eric Benhamou.

Public safety agencies should use existing mobile infrastructure for their communications instead of waiting for the U.S. to re-auction an unsold spectrum band, a mobile networking vendor's CEO said Tuesday.

Public safety agencies such as police and fire departments would have access to a rapidly improving network by using existing commercial spectrum instead of the nationwide public safety network envisioned by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, said Declan Ganley, chairman and CEO of Rivada Networks. In contrast, a stand-alone public safety network would likely not have enough money to make frequent improvements, he said.

“It is absolutely basic common sense to leverage off the infrastructure that is already there,” Ganley said at an event hosted by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank. “When you want to get a fire truck from A to B, you don't build a new road to get it there.”

The FCC had designed a 10MHz band of spectrum called the D Block for a combined public-safety and commercial network during the 700MHz auctions, which completed in mid-March. That D block was to be paired with another 10MHz controlled by public safety agencies, with the winning bidder required to build a nationwide network shared by public-safety users and commercial customers.

But the FCC received one bid for the D block in the seven-week auctions, with the lone bid less than half of the FCC's minimum price of US$1.33 billion.

Rivada, which helps public safety use existing commercial spectrum, looked into bidding on the D block, but the company couldn't see a profitable business model, Ganley said. The nationwide network required by the FCC would have taken at least seven years to build and cost tens of billions of dollars, he said.

“We looked at it, and we couldn't make the numbers work,” he said.

The D block auction was watched closely because many lawmakers and public-safety officials pushed for a nationwide network to be created after emergency responders couldn't communicate with each other during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and more recent disasters. Police and fire departments in neighboring cities often use different communication devices on different blocks of spectrum.

Instead of re-auctioning the spectrum with the same goal, the FCC should instead take the conditions off the D block and auction it for the winner to use as it wants, Ganley said. The money from the auction could then be given to public safety agencies for buying equipment and mobile service, he said. And public safety agencies would still have 10MHz of spectrum if they found a company willing to build a new mobile network, he added.

But building a new network from scratch makes little sense when mobile carriers such as Verizon, AT&T and Sprint Nextel are spending billions of dollars a year upgrading and expanding their networks, Ganley said. The stand-alone network wouldn't have the resources of those large carriers, he said.

“In five years' time, what [devices] you're going to have on your hip… is going to be better than what that public safety network is,” he said. “Going down that path is a way to lock yourself into spending huge amounts of taxpayers' money on something that's always going to be second best.”

Rivada Networks, with offices in the U.S. and Ireland, has worked with U.S. federal and state agencies to set up mobile networks through negotiated agreements with existing carriers. Rivada also provides networking equipment that can be hauled into an area hit by a disaster and used to restore communications when other networks are down.

That model could be one used by state and local public-safety agencies, although other models using currently available spectrum exist, Ganley said.

Ganley's comments drew some skepticism. Some audience members suggested commercial spectrum can get overloaded, especially in times of emergencies, and that many commercial services still have dead spots. While working with state and federal agencies, Rivada has set up mobile towers to eliminate dead spots and improve coverage, Ganley said.

Public safety agencies still need a nationwide network, added Charles Werner, chief of the fire department for Charlottesville, Virginia.

Ganley's suggestion of auctioning the D block and giving the money to public safety agencies wouldn't raise the money needed, Werner said in an e-mail.

“This one-time handout to public safety would not be enough to fund a nationwide network, nor would it cover the yearly operating costs of a public safety network– public safety needs a reliable, steady stream of revenue to fund a public safety network,” Werner said. “Those who advocate this solution are merely creating delay tactics in keeping public safety from getting the mobile broadband network we so desperately need.”

A patchwork of public safety networks across the U.S. will not work, Werner added. “The current realities of emergency response demand a national approach. Terrorism, wildfires, weather disasters and crime know no jurisdictional borders, so neither can first responders' communications networks,” he said.

But Hiram Contreras, an adviser to Mobile Future, a wireless trade group, and former assistant chief of police in Houston, said Ganley's idea was attractive because it could happen now instead of years in the future. Ganley's idea is “an immediate fix,” Contreras said. “They need it yesterday.”

Last month I discussed some hardware upgrades that have helped me get more work done. This time, let's look at software.

Supercharge Excel: As I've come to appreciate just how well Microsoft Excel can work, I've also gained a better understanding of its shortcomings, which is where a little $59-per-year gem called DigDB for Excel comes in. This program from Data Instruments Group adds handy features to Excel, improves existing ones, and makes the application easier to use. For everything from tracking down broken links to generating median values to trimming errant spaces, this software is certainly worth the price of admission–plus you can try it free for 15 days.

Ditch the fax machine: When I need to send a fax to my home office or receive one from there, I use TrustFax from Comodo. The service is less well known than eFax or MyFax, but what I like about it–besides its clean, easy-to-use Web interface–is its pricing options for light fax users like me. I pay TrustFax $30 a year for a fax number, 50 outbound and 150 inbound fax pages, and online storage. To use the service I scan my document in my multifunction printer, upload the file to the TrustFax Web site, and send it off. It doesn't get much easier than that.

Make pretty pictures:Sometimes I need more than a well-crafted sentence to get my point across–I need things like boxes, circles, and arrows. That's when I turn to SmartDraw, a business-graphics app from the company of the same name. After a free trial, it costs $297 (list). It's pricey, but you can often find it deeply discounted at SmartDraw's site, and if you've ever struggled to make flowcharts, time lines, mind maps, or even floor plans, you'll love it.

Try everyman's database: Though the term database strikes fear into many nontechie hearts, not all database apps require a knack for constructing clever queries. The venerable AskSam from AskSam Systems, now on version 6.1 (with 7 in beta), lets you store all sorts of data, from Word documents to e-mail to Web pages, that you can retrieve with simple, free-form word searches. I keep a close eye on several tech markets, and I use AskSam as my personal data clearinghouse. It isn't perfect–you'll spend a little time getting up to speed, and the 'Add Webpage to AskSam' feature works only with Internet Explorer (come on!)–but it's an immensely useful tool. After a free trial, the standard version is $150; the faster Pro version is $395.

Share and share alike: Besides making it dead simple to keep documents synced among my multiple PCs, Microsoft's newly revamped FolderShare service saved my butt when my beloved home-built PC failed to boot one recent morning. Since the files that I had been working on were synced to my work notebook before I shut down, I didn't have to scramble to retrieve them from my PC's hard drive (or even from my online backup service of choice, Carbonite; I reviewed this service in an earlier column). Best of all, the beta FolderShare service remains free.

MARLBOROUGH, Mass. - Edgar Masri is leaving as chief executive of 3Com Corp. and being replaced by Robert Mao in the wake of a failed buyout of the network equipment maker.

The shuffling in 3Com’s executive ranks, announced after markets closed Tuesday, leaves Ronald Sege as president and chief operating officer, effective when he arrives at 3Com on Wednesday.

A news release from 3Com did not offer a reason for Masri’s departure as CEO.

To support 3Com’s emphasis on technology sales in China, Mao will be based in China, rather than at the company’s Massachusetts headquarters. Sege will be located in the U.S. and focus on 3Com operations outside China.

Mao, 64, served as 3Com’s executive vice president for corporate development from August 2006 to March 2007.

Last fall, 3Com announced plans to be acquired and taken private in a $2.2 billion buyout led by Bain Capital Partners and a Chinese partner.

The deal eventually collapsed amid the U.S. government’s national security concerns about a possible transfer to China of sensitive technology.

IBM has scooped up Infodyne, a privately held maker of software that quickly crunches hundreds of market data sources together into a standardized form for the trading industry, it said Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The purchase marks the 69th acquisition by IBM since 2003.

“This is really a big play for us in the low-latency space,” said Tom Rosamilia, general manager of IBM WebSphere during a conference call Tuesday, referring to the technologies that enable algorithmic trading, where computers make buying and selling decisions by analyzing vast amounts of real-time market data. “InfoDyne has been in a leader in this space, both with its platform and connections to data feeds out there.”

InfoDyne's technology will be moved under IBM's WebSphere brand. WebSphere already includes products like Front Office for Financial Markets, which serves a similar purpose to InfoDyne's technology.

“We were in this space,” Rosamilia acknowledged, but added, “this gives us a real acceleration on what we were doing.”

The companies have worked together in the past, but “this gives us really a chance to take it to the next level,” Rosamilia said at another point. “What we have not done, but are very quickly doing is combining the technologies so we can get the best of both worlds…. We've got plans before the end of the year for different levels of integration that would give us the ability to exploit other parts of the WebSphere portfolio.”

But IBM is not out to get existing customers to migrate to WebSphere, he asserted. “We integrate with what people have today. There are no forced migrations. WebSphere by nature is about integration. No intention to force people on the WebSphere platform.”

“The industry is keen on plug-and-play capabilities. It's important to retain that,” added Guy Tagliavia, CEO of InfoDyne.

Moving forward, IBM will compete with the likes of TIBCO as well as technologies companies have developed in-house, Rosamilia said: “The value proposition to customers is that we can do this for less.”

He declined to say whether IBM had been in negotiations to buy other companies in InfoDyne's space, such as Wombat Financial Software, which NYSE Euronext recently bought for US$200 million.

Rosamilia also declined to comment on the size of the InfoDyne deal or its potential impact on IBM's bottom line.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Several electronics manufacturers said Tuesday they are working to create a worldwide standard for how their devices will talk with each other in people’s homes.

The effort, launched by Infineon Technologies AG, Intel Corp., Panasonic and Texas Instruments Inc., is aimed at making sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to home wiring for digital entertainment such as movies, music and pictures.

The HomeGrid Forum would create standards for coaxial cable, power lines and phone lines, and certify products that meet those standards.

As more people connect computers, gaming consoles, and TVs in their homes to enjoy digital entertainment, the industry hopes to create a seamless standard so that content can be more easily used.

Enterprises that want to create applications for Apple's iPhone will be able to build and try out prototypes using a special programming template unveiled on Tuesday.

It's the latest template from iRise, which has been selling a prototyping platform for other types of applications for six years. The El Segundo, California, company introduced it at the Software 2008 trade show, being held in conjunction with Interop in Las Vegas.

The iPhone is a coveted gadget, selling 1.7 million units in the year's first quarter, with Apple forecasting 10 million iPhones in the market by the end of 2008. So far, application builders who want to reach iPhone users have had to get their code to run on the phone's Safari browser, but Apple's recently released SDK (software development kit) lets them write applications to run directly on the phone.

The iRise software suite is used to create prototypes that look and behave like an application but don't have the underlying code. This lets in-house or outside programmers, and even nonprogrammers, design an application quickly and easily just for demonstration. Then decision makers, such as business executives, can see how it would work and sign off on the project, according to Mitch Bishop, chief marketing officer at iRise. Using a mock-up of the user interface tells executives more than pages of description, he said.

“Their attitude is, 'I'll know it when I see it,'” Bishop said. Traditionally, the business side of an enterprise doesn't get to see a new application in action until it's largely complete. “By then, it's really expensive to make changes,” he said.

About 180 customers, mostly Fortune 500 companies, already use iRise for projects, including Web-based applications, portals and SAP implementations, according to Bishop. The company already has a few customers using the iPhone template, he said.

“The promise of the iPhone is that people see it as a vast leap ahead in customer experience, and it's a consistent platform,” Bishop said. By contrast, most mobile-software platforms vary by both carrier and device.

The template can simulate all of the iPhone's standard menu icons and user actions, such as using sliders and zooming in and out of screens by “pinching” and “unpinching.” Application designers can use it to create custom buttons, manipulate the menu icons and define the effects of actions such as double-tapping a button, Bishop said.

The iPhone simulations will run on a desktop rather than an actual iPhone, with users interacting with the virtual phone using a mouse. There is a downloadable tool for using simulations based on iRise, so companies developing iPhone applications will be able to send simulations to average consumers and get feedback.

OneSpring, a business-analysis and user-experience design company in Atlanta, uses the iRise iPhone template in an application simulation toolkit it calls the SimDK. OneSpring has helped enterprises define applications based on some other mobile platforms, said Chuck Converse, a senior user experience architect at OneSpring.

“Most applications, if you design them for mobile devices, are very text-heavy,” Converse said. The iPhone's display capabilities give designers more freedom and a whole new set of choices, he said. OneSpring offers a video to demonstrate.

The iRise template for the iPhone is free to users of iRise, which costs about US$5,000 per seat, according to Bishop. The OneSpring iPhone SimDK for iRise will be available from OneSpring starting May 1 for $495.

Microsoft has delayed the release of a third service pack for Windows XP, blaming a “compatibility issue” between the software and a retail-chain-management application.

Microsoft had said last week that it completed development on Windows XP, Service Pack 3 (SP3), and that it would be available via its software-update services on Tuesday. However, incompatibilities discovered in the past several days between an application called Microsoft Dynamics RMS and both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will force the company to hold off on releasing the software. Dynamics RMS is a retail-chain-management software for small and mid-sized businesses.

Microsoft said it is putting filtering in place to prevent its Windows Update service from offering both service packs to systems running Microsoft Dynamics RMS. Once that filtering is in place, Microsoft will release Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update and Download Center for users not running the application causing the problem. The company on Tuesday did not say how long putting in filters would take.

Microsoft is recommending that Microsoft Dynamics RMS customers not install Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1. For more information, those customers should contact Microsoft Customer Support Services, the company said.

A fix to the Dynamics RMS problem is being tested and “will be available as soon as that process is complete,” Microsoft said. The company did not provide a time frame for completion of the testing and recommends customers visit its TechNet Forums for more information regarding Windows XP SP3.