World Wide Web technology was contrived in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee
for information interchange among researchers in CERN (Conseil
Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire = European Organization
for Nuclear Research). Soon after "MOSAIC," a GUI based easy-to-use
web browser, was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois in the U.S. in
1993, Web technology then rapidly evolved and spread, becoming
an indispensable infrastructure not only in business but also
in our daily lives.
Ricoh was among the first to see and heed the importance
of Web technology; young in-house researchers, on their own,
voluntarily set up and linked multiple Web servers to provide
a core from the very inception of MOSAIC. The Software R&D
web site was started in 1994, and Ricoh's official site was
opened in 1995.
Since then, Ricoh has promoted research and development using
Web technology, and developed a Web technology based architecture
platform called the "Document Highway" in 1999, which was
presented at Comdex Fall in 2000. The Document Highway concept
advocates realization of "a communication style where required
information can be exchanged in the optimal form at any time,
from anywhere and from various devices connected to the network"
using Web technology. The first multifunction printer based
on the Document Highway concept was released at the beginning
of 2001; thereafter, we have continually released devices,
software, and solutions that keep step with the Web age.
The concept of "software surpassing the framework of a single
device," referred to by Web 2.0 concepts, came to be advocated
from around the year 2004. It agrees with the aims of the
Document Highway concept. In the days to come, various devices,
applications and systems will increasingly be linked seamlessly
by Web technology, and the importance of Web technology will
increase.
Ricoh will continue research and development activities,
paying close attention to the newest technology trends. We
held a connection test (Interop in Tokyo) of Atom Publishing
Protocol (AtomPub) in July 2007 in collaboration with NTT
Communications. We promptly released the Japanese translation
of Atom Publishing Protocol in October 2007, just after it
was published as an RFC.
