There are a few people in the Web whose work I can't help but watch with significant interest, as I know they are among the more visible people, working in teams with lesser-known colleagues, focusing their effort on moving the Web forward. From DeWitt Clinton, Brett Slatkin, Brad Fitzpatrick, Chris Saad, Dave Winer and David Recordon, to people like Jason Shellen, Chris Wetherell, Kevin Marks, Leah Culver, Paul Buchheit, Bret Taylor and Chris Messina, to name two handfuls, I can believe that these folks are working on those projects that are shaping the way we communicate and take in information. Messina, in particular, has penned a few blog posts over the last month that have had us thinking quite a bit - and it is safe to say he is on a roll.

Chris, in November alone, has proposed a new microsyntax for Twitter, forecast the death of the URL, and talked about how "designing for the gut" takes advantage of how the new social Web pushes people to overcome phobias and connect with people.

A well known advocate for open source, and one of the voices behind OAuth, which we discussed on Thursday, Messina has a history of thinking beyond where we are today and proposing concrete ideas that can be acted upon immediately. Those hashtags you see everywhere on Twitter these days, in practically every tech event and many trending topics? Chris proposed the idea in August of 2007. So it makes sense that he might have given a ton of thought to more uses for microsyntax, as he describes in his proposals for Twitter, as he suggests new items, including "/by", "/via" and "/cc". These suggestions are very clear and concise, the work of someone who has done his homework.

Chris' thoughts on the reduced focus on the URL too are salient, as we become more used to navigating in our browsers with pre-determined buttons and workflows. For me, URLs are often simply one-time visits before they are thrown into my RSS reader for safe-keeping, or they become bookmarks for later clicking. But the act of typing in a URL character by character seems antiquated. As he says, that's a gut feeling, and not one backed by much science on my part.

As I see it, the social Web changes the entire process of content discovery. Instead of portals, we are relying on mortals. Our trusted friends and experts bring us the best content from around the Web to us directly, via Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, and even that old tool... e-mail. We are trusting human filters to select the best from our RSS repositories and hand it off downstream. We pick a handful of trusted favorites, and make them the equivalent of our Yahoo!, or even Google.

Chris' post on the death of URLs paints a not so pretty picture of how, if left uncontrolled, a few powerful companies could help funnel the majority of users to predetermined sites, hand selected by them - much like the fears we once had about dominant portals. This could be done as we graduate from the traditional browser and link model to something else, where Web-connected applications pass us the requested data. He says, "We all know that the internet has won as the transport medium for all data — but the universal interface for interacting with the web? — well, that battle is just now getting underway."

One thing about the Web is that it is ever evolving. The places we choose to communicate are changing. The information we think provides value is changing. Our requirements for how quickly we need the data are changing. Chris and the many folks I mentioned in the first paragraph are among the first line of defense we have, trying to set standards and promote change for a world that feels right from both the gut and from the mind. You can find Chris' writing over at http://factoryjoe.com/blog/ or on Twitter at @chrismessina. While I assume many of you read him religiously, it's time the rest of you did as well.

The OAuth protocol, used on many popular Web sites and applications to pass your credentials between sites without requiring the entry of your user name and password, including Twitter, is potentially under pressure from a team of techies representing Microsoft, Google and Yahoo!, who have introduced a competing specification interpreted as being aimed to succeed OAuth, called Web Resource Authorization Protocol, or WRAP. Eran Hammer-Lahav, the Director of Standards Development at Yahoo!, who helped coordinate many OAuth contributions, and created a formal specification for the initial OAuth standard, recently panned the move, saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," adding his own proposal for OAuth 2.0, which he hopes will better separate between authentication and authorization.

Today's OAuth standard is known to have its imperfections. Hammer-Lahav notes in his 2.0 proposal that OAuth is essentially "unusable" for mobile devices or installed apps, and also suggests that OAuth "does not adequately support large providers". But he says the move to create WRAP has confused developers' focus, and diverted resources, calling it "just one illustration of the demise of the OAuth community".

But his opinion, unsurprisingly, is not universally accepted. David Recordon of Facebook, also on the boards of the OpenID and Open Web Foundations, states in the comments of the post that Facebook is not supporting OAuth 1.0 as it is simply too heavy - requiring a massive increase in HTTP requests, also adding that other developers find OAuth "too difficult to correctly implement".

David followed on to his initial comments with a post to the IETF mailing list, which you can see here: Facebook, OAuth, and WRAP. In the note, he highlights the belief that the proposed WRAP alternative maps well to the company's current authentication process, adding WRAP simplifies the development community's learning curve.

The discussion, which is ongoing, may end up splintering development communities between sticking with the current version of OAuth 1.0, looking at WRAP as an alternative, or trying to support a new OAuth 2.0, as specified by Hammer-Lahav. But if you have wondered why Facebook Connect acts one way and Twitter OAuth acts another way, it's because they are different approaches entirely. If this discussion is any indication, one can expect there to be continued divergence, rather than a single way to deliver user authentication and authority between sites and applications in the future on the Web.

For another viewpoint on this broad topic, see Jesse Stay's post: The Future Has No Log In Button. Also, DeWitt Clinton of Google, on FriendFeed, says the open discussion "is good".

BackType, the most robust and feature-rich comments tracker on the Web, has expanded its services over the last few months to include a number of new items, including the launch of BackTweets, to find shared links on the microblogging service, a TweetCount plugin to highlight the number of times items have been retweeted, and a BackType Connect plugin for WordPress to show related conversations around the Web attached to your blog. The company's API is also used by popular services including Bit.ly and Disqus, who leverage the service to find external links and related tweets. Today, these downstream partners can expect updates to happen in near real-time, thanks to BackType's jumping on the PubSubHubbub bandwagon, in a partnership with Superfeedr, providing practically instantaneous updates downstream.

Superfeedr, one of the more aggressive services promoting PubSubHubbub, is providing the legwork for BackType, acting as a hub, pushing updates automatically as they are discovered. In today's post, BackType says the move reduces load on publishers by sending feed updates to all potential subscribers, without requiring multiple polls, and avoiding the arbitrary nature of clients' periodic requests.

If you subscribe to BackType to follow individuals' comments, or if you simply use Disqus or BackType connect on your blog, the move will ensure updates reach your content faster than they ever have before. In a Web world that is getting increasingly real-time, the name PubSubHubbub keeps popping up, and BackType is staying on the leading edge of innovation.

2008 and 2009 haven't been particularly kind for many companies. Amidst a cacophony of bailouts, bankruptcies, lowered valuations and layoffs, Data Robotics, a direct attached storage manufacturer based in Santa Clara, has delivered growth exceeding 100 percent in each of the last two years - and hopes to be on track for going public via an IPO some time in the next two years. Combined with a popular product line, which was enhanced with a pair of new models today, you can see they have bucked the trend, surprising many people, including me, with their success.

Initially known as Trusted Data, before changing the company's name in 2007 to better reflect the company's automation capabilities without confusing customers into thinking they were a security company, I have known the company and its founder, CEO Geoff Barrall, for several years, having once worked with him as a colleague, and even working for him directly from 2004-05. (Consider that my disclosure)

When he started Data Robotics in 2005, I wasn't all that keen on yet another small storage array entering the market, even if it was aimed at consumers, and came with nifty features, like a meter that showed disk utilization on its facade.

My skepticism, and that of others, didn't deter Barrall, as he and the company found niches for its Drobo desktop storage arrays, including the creative professional community, and most recently, the federal market, which has become the company's primary vertical, I was told. The company has made a name for itself over the last few years with a distinctive product appearance, a proprietary non-RAID architecture that aims to protect data in the event of disk failures, and the potential ability to upgrade forever, simply through swapping out disks for those in a larger size, thanks to evolutions in disk density, that have seen capacities grow from the hundreds of gigabytes not too long ago to multiple terabytes today.

In the most recent year, Data Robotics accrued approximately $30 million in revenue, double that of the previous year, and quadruple the one prior. With the current quarter looking well, Barrall told a group of storage geeks, as part of Gestalt IT's Tech Field Day, a few weeks ago that doubling revenue again was not out of the question. Having seen profitable months already, the company intends to blast through break-even, and test the public markets when both they and Drobo are ready.


Drobo Teased Us With A Preview Earlier This Month
Today, the company added on to their product line with the new Drobo S and a new iSCSI SAN, the Drobo Elite. While some vendors, such as EMC or NetApp, started at the top of the market and are working their way down, Data Robotics started with the consumer and is working its way up into bigger devices, up to a significant 32 terabytes in its latest gear.

In contrast to my "set it and hope to forget it" Apple Time Capsule, which stays a single configuration for ever and ever, until I get rid of it, the Drobo can be upgraded over time, and doesn't blink at seeing disks of different sizes in the same array. Though it requires a second device, called DroboShare, to provide Network Attached Storage (NAS) functionality, it is quite compelling, especially as I start to increase my creation and archival of rich media storage, as most fathers of twins no doubt do.

The new entrants to the product family aren't necessarily for the low-end consumers like me, who might do just fine with a 4-bay desktop storage device, and don't need iSCSI functionality, but they show that the company is filling any gaps in the market that may prevent it from continuing its doubling of growth. At a time when many companies are shuffling the deck and trying to mute bad news, Data Robotics has been quietly growing.

See additional coverage from this morning around the Web:

• Engadget: Data Robotics introduces 5-bay Drobo S, enterprise-ready DroboElite
  
• Pack Rat: Drobo Goes Sideways and Slantways With the Drobo S and Drobo Elite