Feline Musings

Working in the IT industry is always fraught with the danger that there may be some new technology, new tool, and new terminology just around the corner, and you are the only one who is living in the “Dark Ages” and not aware of the latest hum-word!  Well, I was struck with this “I-am-outdated” phobia when a new word Web 2.0 started glaring at me from websites, technical papers, newspapers ….

I had to get rid of the phobia and enhance my knowledge base and http://en.wikipedia.org/ provided instant redemption. I was brandished with “my” new found knowledge of Web 2.0. Apparently, I was more than three years late in discovering the “phenomenon” called Web 2.0. 

Here’s snippets from Wikipedia: “Web 2.0 is a trend in World Wide Web technology, and web design, a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users. The term became notable after the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use webs.”

“According to Tim O’Reilly: “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.” “Blogs, wikis and media uploading websites are three examples of newer technologies that support broader participation in the process of content creation for the internet.” 

And then I googled right into Tom O’Reilly’s article on Web 2.0 http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228 and read a lot about Google, RSS, Ajax etc as the harbingers of Web 2.0. To quote from O’Rielly’s article:

Let’s close, therefore, by summarizing what we believe to be the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:

• - Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability

• - Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
• - Trusting users as co-developers
• - Harnessing collective intelligence
• - Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
• - Software above the level of a single device
• - Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

The next time a company claims that it’s “Web 2.0,” test their features against the list above. The more points they score, the more they are worthy of the name.”

….. And just to ensure that I remain “up-to-date” I also read about Web 3.0 on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3.0 

“Web 3.0 is a term used to describe the future of the World Wide Web. Following the introduction of the phrase “Web 2.0″ as a description of the recent evolution of the Web, many technologists, journalists, and industry leaders have used the term “Web 3.0″ to hypothesize about a future wave of Internet innovation.Views on the next stage of the World Wide Web’s evolution vary greatly. Some believe that emerging technologies such as the Semantic Web will transform the way the Web is used, and lead to new possibilities in artificial intelligence. Other visionaries suggest that increases in Internet connection speeds, modular web applications, or advances in computer graphics will play the key role in the evolution of the World Wide Web.” 

The tech-savvy world sure has a “long-web-to go!”

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