Week One: February 2-6
Class Session 1: February 3, 3-4pm - Room 774
Class Session 2: February 5, 3-4pm - Room 774
What is Web 2.0?
When the Internet started to gain momentum as a way to communicate and share ideas, most information was presented on static web pages. Many people who led the curve of these early web sites created “home pages”. New sites appeared daily and the information age took off.
As people started to see the Internet as a way to communicate more than a fad or a hobby the demand for information increased. Internet users wanted more content and with the increase in connection speeds available to most users, the content started to include motion video and high-resolution images.
However, it is very difficult to manually update a web page whenever there is new content to publish on a web page. Instead, a framework was developed that allowed real-time customization so that the content could be built into dynamic web pages. Parts on a web page could be built so that large systems could be built out of smaller ones. This focus on reuse and dynamic content opened the door to concepts like large-scale customization, ‘mash-ups’ and Rich Internet Applications (RIA).
These ideas, and others that we are exploring with this program, are all part of “Web 2.0”.
Main aspects of Web 2.0:
- Social Networking:
Reduced costs of computers and increased Internet speed have put desktop and held-held computing systems (iPhones and other web-enabled phones) into the reaches of almost everyone. Creating web logs, or “blogs”, have become the latest way for people to create web sites about topics they are interested in.Some examples of these are “FaceBook” and “Blogger”. These sites allow their users to create posts and then create friend-lists to share their posts with. The sites are searchable and indexed in search engines like Google which helps increase exposure, creating followers and expanding friends networks.
Another popular example of social networking is “YouTube”. This site allows users to upload video commentary that can be searched and viewed by anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Similar to blogs, YouTube allows users to create friend networks and to have text or video based dialogue between users. - Collaboration and Information Sharing:
The concept of the wiki is to create a user-maintained database of information and to store and index that information in a way that is similar to an encyclopedia. The most popular wiki is “Wikipedia”, also known as “The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”. Obviously, this system is sometimes a target for information vandals, but generally, most information on Wikipedia is fairly accurate.
Another type of user-maintained content that most Web 2.0 sites and blogs have incorporated is "tagging". This is a system where an article or post can be “tagged” with words that describe the information. Tagging is a way to label information so that people with similar interests can quickly locate the information. These user-created “tag clouds”, the collection of tags that describe the information, give users a snapshot of the information to determine if they are interested in reading the complete article.
- Web Based Applications (Cloud Computing):
A web based application, like GoogleDocs, allows users to access powerful applications similar to desktop applications (like Microsoft Office) without the need to install (or pay for) a desktop application. Some advantages to this technology are: no installation required, no extra costs, low system overhead (works well on most systems without needing the latest-and-greatest computer) and these documents can be shared by invited collaborators.Some problems with web based applications are: requires a connection to the Internet, missing features (some web based application lack all the features of their desktop based counterparts) and security (you are editing a document over an Internet connection, with the potential exposure to data-eavesdropping).Despite the negative aspects of web based applications, cloud computing is the trend for the future. Even Microsoft, a historically slow-adopter of new technologies, has recognized the power of cloud computing.
- Conversational Marketing:
In the past, advertisers would only be able to use print, radio or television to reach out to their customers. With the Internet, they have tools ranging from basic web sites to podcasts and wikis that talk about their product. Web 2.0 technologies give advertisers the ability to present their product and then hold discussions with potential clients and satisfied customers to help generate interest. - Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Feeds:
RSS feeds provide a way for users to ‘subscribe’ to various information sources so that they can have content delivered to their system where they can read it at their leisure.
