What’s all this about Web 2.0, and do I need it?
A lot of people are wondering this and we get lots of calls asking us if we can get it yet.
Bottom line is that the web is an ever-evolving place. Lately there’s been a design trend towards less text, more white space and easy to use navigation. Some call it the Web 2.0 look. But that’s not all there is to Web 2.0. It’s about using the web in a more organized way. Some call it the “Semantic Web” (something that in itself needs a definition.) An essential part of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence using things like rss feeds and other ways of aggregating information to deliver you what you want to know without the other 12.5 billion websites that can clog up your search for information. A classic example of this are feed aggregators that pull information from search engines, news articles and blogs and categorize it just for you. Technologies like Actionscript and Ajax can help make this data easily digestible.
Another example is services that allow you to use the web as your “virtual computer” making where and how you access it much less important. Your data and tools live on-line and you can use them with any computer you happen to have on hand. These services can change the way we use the web and the flexibility with which we work.
Want to know more? Here are some good resources:
Tim O’Reilly’s take on Web 2.0 (after all, it’s his idea…)
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1
Semantic Web.org
http://www.semanticweb.org/
Scientific American on the Semantic Web of the future
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00048144-10D2-1C70-84A9809EC588EF21
Find out if your site is web 2.0 (tongue in cheek)
http://web2.0validator.com/
Web 2.0 Security Issues
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132153-page,5-c,onlinesecurity/article.html