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Web 2.0 As A New Wave of Innovation? 174

Posted by Zonk from the learning-2.0 dept.
Vitaly Friedman writes "In his article in the recent Educause magazine, Bryan Alexander, Director for Research at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE), presents a comprehensive analysis of the rising web 2.0 companies and describes the emerging of web 2.0. From the article: ' ... larger players have entered the field, most notably Yahoo, which has been buying up many projects, including Flickr and del.icio.us. Microsoft is considering a massive extension of RSS. And Google has been producing its own projects, such as the Lens RSS reader and Google Maps. Meanwhile, academic implementations are bubbling up, like the social bookmarking and search projects noted earlier. This Web 2.0 movement (or movements) may not supplant Web 1.0, but it has clearly transformed a significant swath of our networked information ecology.'"
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Web 2.0 As A New Wave of Innovation? More

Web 2.0 As A New Wave of Innovation?

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  • So... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @07:37PM (#15468943)
    'Web 2.0' is just a bunch of wikis and people pretending to be important right?

    • Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by digitallife ( 805599 )
      I was just about to post 'So what IS Web 2.0??'. You put it better.

      Honestly I have read 'Web 2.0' too many tme recently on /., and am starting to get tired of hearing about it. Yay, people figured out how to make websites interactive. Let's move on.

      • Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by colmore ( 56499 )
        I'm going to take the completely opposite opinion of everyone here:

        "web 2.0" is a great buzzword. why? it describes something legitimate -- the confusing rush of new internet ideas from the past few years, and it's ugly as sin.

        good buzzwords should hurt to say. "blog" is a great buzzword. it won't be in the english language in 30 years, except to talk about this time. it's just too hideous of a word. "morph" on the other hand, is going to fucking stick around for ever. it's just passable enough, and

        • Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)

          by Dirtside ( 91468 )

          "morph" on the other hand, is going to fucking stick around for ever. it's just passable enough, and just generic enough to enter into common usage, and it just rots away at the beautiful and giant beast that is english.

          "Morph" is from the Greek meaning "form, shape" and is used in a metric crapload of words that you probably don't object to -- ectomorph, morphology, polymorphic, metamorphosis. "Morph" is merely a short form of "metamorphose," has different connotations, and doesn't "rot away" at Engli

          • "Verbing weirds language" - Calvin & Hobbes

            just because the word is from somewhere doesn't mean it isn't a silly word coined to describe a hollywood (kinda lame) special effect that means "change" or "transform" in any other context.

            Just as meta- is a perfectly legitimate prefix, its new use as a standalone adjective is silly, and dumb.
            • Lucky for us, language is defined by majority usage, and you're vastly outnumbered :)
              • Majority and popular adoption are fine ways of advancing language. My original comment was this: media marketing and the on-the-spot-invention of the technology industy create crappy language. Buzzwords are best, therefor, when they're sufficiently ugly and unwieldy that they'll stick around in popular usage only as long as the term they're describing is popular as well.

                I work in internet design and programming, and I am constantly amazed at the amount of horrible bullshit that has to come out of my mouth
        • As a blogger, I beg to differ - it's built the "industry".

          Blog will probably be a word from 2006 that sticks around in 40 years. A "newspaper" could become a "newsblog" in rather short order.

    • Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NevDull ( 170554 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @07:40PM (#15468956) Homepage Journal
      No, it's about using the masses as a decentralized classification system.

    • Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 )
      Nope. Just a bunch of left over businesses that survived the initial dot com bust trying to look sexy enough to get vulture capitalist throw money at them like it was 1999 all over again. While a lot of neat technologies and applications had popped up over recent years, I think 'Web 2.0' is more of a marketing term than anything else.
      • Just a bunch of left over businesses that survived the initial dot com bust trying to look sexy enough to get vulture capitalist throw money at them like it was 1999 all over again.

        Let's party like it's 1999! :)

    • ...despite their efforts to show everybody how important they are they manage to get a few good things done. Since they're trying to show off, every once in a while a tooper stumbles over a rock and invents a useful new web mechanism.

      Folks who use Google Maps don't know or care what's powering it, so if it takes pretense or puffery to get real work done, that's OK with me.

    • Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The mouthbreathers are just amalgamating a bunch of evident phenomenon with a self-aggrandizing choice of terms, "Web 2.0". Let's take an honest look at what really makes up "Web 2.0" for one moment, if you will. I'll try to resist my scathing sense of humour, but I can't promise anything.

      What is Web 2.0?

      To the businessman, perhaps it is rounded corners effected with CSS or a bunch of grandiose words chosen due to their presence in a thesaurus. To the critical "veteran" developer, it may seem to be a bunch

  • Web 2.0 is DEPRECATED (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Please switch to the new, open Web 2.1 Thank you.

  • Trademark violation (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I thought some company had recently trademarked the term Web 2.0? Isn't our discussion of this a blatant violation of corporate America's intellectual property rights?

  • Nooooo! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @07:41PM (#15468958)
    I'm having nightmares already. Web 2 keeps "rising" like a friggin' zombie every few days.

    It rised when people said Java applets were so Web 2, then it rised again when blogs and RSS was so Web 2, then it rised again when Google made JS interaction popular (again), a bit later it rised again when a marketing company coined the term for what Google does "AJAX", then again with Flickr, YouTube, Digg and so on, and I'm telling you I'm already sick of the damn Web 2.0.

    Do you know what happens with too much buzz and hype? You let people down and make them sick up to their necks. I hate the damn Web 2.0 and have no idea what THE HECK it is anymore.

    And I'm a web developer, let alone businessmen and the casual Internet surfer.
    • Thank you. I work in the industry too and to be honest the last few months I've been sitting here wondering what the hell Web 2.0 was supposed to be. I think I'll just stick to what makes my customers money for now and leave the hype to the marketing drones.

    • Re:Nooooo! (Score:4, Funny)

      by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:11PM (#15469066)
      Web 2 keeps "rising" like a friggin' zombie every few days.

      I love zombies. Just brain them and they fall over. So the next time someone mentions "Web 2.0" and whatever new technology of the day in the same breath, just whack 'em in the head and move along.
    • I agree! Look the CSS'ed slashdot, it's so Web 2.0.....I want a HTML 3.X compatible page back!
      • TBH I think the new site is bloody ugly. I've been looking for a preference to switch it back.

        • Agreed. First time I saw it, I immediately went looking for the last article on the 'new look' in hopes that it might contain instructions on how to keep the old one.

    • Re:Nooooo! (Score:4, Informative)

      by LordLucless ( 582312 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @09:28PM (#15469361)
      Past tense of "rise" is "rose". I usually don't bother correcting grammar on Slashdot, but you used it so many times I figured it was worth it.

      • Re:Nooooo! (Score:4, Funny)

        by cyberon22 ( 456844 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @10:08PM (#15469478)
        You're prescriptivist grammar pedanticism are really making my blood boils. It is rise my hackles to a new levels of!

        Actually, I thought at first you were arguing over whether the past participle is "risen" or "rose". So I went back and read the parent post.... Yup. Pretty amazing display of illiteracy, that....
    • I'm having nightmares already. Web 2 keeps "rising" like a friggin' zombie every few days.

      You need to think outside of the box about the multimedia potential for the new Web 2.0 paradigms. Web 2.0 has already pioneered B2B information management infrastructure, location-based services software, and co-marketed proximity enabled facility authorization. Collaboration with Web 2.0 fuels the innovation that will power the integration of the next generation of worldwide technology with record brand recognition
    • And I'm a web developer, let alone businessmen and the casual Internet surfer.

      You're paying too much attention to the marketing. Businessmen and casual surfers are only just beginning to hear about "Web 2.0" and though you may find it distasteful to hear the term over and over, you should recognize a good thing for your profession when you see it. Sure, it might make your skin crawl to have a client demand "Web 2.0" on everything, but it's money in your pocket!

      Realistically, strip away the hype and don't

  • No (Score:5, Funny)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) * on Sunday June 04, 2006 @07:41PM (#15468963) Journal
    it is a new wave 2.0 of innovation 2.0.

    With twice the self importance of the original!

  • Not this shit all over again... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Web 2.0 As A New Wave of Innovation?

    Dude, it's boom/bomb time again! Everyone get on the meaningless buzzword bandwagon! "Web 2.0" man - the old rules don't apply any more!! Quick, buy everything in sight that claims to use "Web 2.0", whatever the hell THAT means this week! Let's see if we can get the Nasdaq up to 20,000 this time before we raze and burn the entire tech industry back into 1985! AWESOME!

    Someone call the venture capitalists!!
    • Hey it's a second chance to get rich and get out quick so that some investor gets left holding the bag. If you missed out the first time it isn't to late afterall!

      I think like the first wave of web innovation created a lot of good things and I expect this second wave to do likewise. As always we'll hear a lot of bold cliams, buzzwords, etc and new ideas will emerge but in the end the crap sinks and the good stuff hangs around.

      We've always known that eventually rich interactions would be important to the web

  • And so (Score:5, Funny)

    by binkzz ( 779594 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @07:45PM (#15468977) Journal
    "Microsoft is considering a massive extension of RSS"

    Listen to the sound of my voice. Inhale deeply, put your arms in a circle and say "Embraaaace", then exhale slowly pushing your arms out and say "Exteeeend".
    • "Massive extensions" of RSS? Does that mean they're going to change the meaning of the acronym, or redefine "Really Simple"?

  • Watch out though... (Score:5, Funny)

    by LandownEyes ( 838725 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @07:45PM (#15468982)
    It's all goes downhill once we reach Web 98.

  • A hack of a hack of a hack... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AmazingRuss ( 555076 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @07:48PM (#15468984)
    ...how much crap can they pile onto what was designed as document viewer before the whole thing implodes?

    Give the browser a break people! It's seen enough abuse!
    • ...how much crap can they pile...

      "So much crap, they had to start a second pile."
      Mimi Bobeck, "The Drew Carey Show" [go.com]

      As in a "2.0" pile..

    • Yeah, seriously! If we want a form of user-interface that can be transmitted to a client and run the application logic on a server, we really should just create an open-source version of NeWS [wikipedia.org].

      And, for the guy about to tell me to start coding, I have other things to do right now. When my kernel's working and I need a GUI, I'll be on it.
    • About as much as they can pile onto a system for performing rapid repetitive computations.

      Or as much as they can pile onto a program designed to launch, manage, and standardize the interface of other programs.

      What you're seeing is evolution, which takes the status quo as a given, and manipulates it towards whatever is presently more convenient, speciating as necessary. Paraphrasing a quote about Fortran: I don't know what they'll use in 2046, but some small subsystem of it will probably be lineally descende
    • Look at how many of the IE and Firefox security holes are to do with app platform level features vs document viewer level features and you might get an answer to that.
  • I coral cached a wayback page a while ago, does that count as web 2.0ish? ;)

  • Yes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04, 2006 @07:50PM (#15468991)
    Speaking as a 'real software engineer' who writes 'real software', web developers have always been looked down upon has untalented hacks. I think with the Web maturing as an application platform we are seeing quite a bit of indignant snobbery from traditional engineers.

    Although I still use my traditional desktop for heavy duty computational tasks in the graphics/physics area, I have been noticing that I feel the need for a traditional desktop less and less each month as Web applications keep getting better and better. I can certainly see myself relegating my workstation to only my specific work tasks and almost all of the rest of my daily computing tasks being done through cellphones/PDAs/PSPs outside/on the road and at with web browsers in my living room on my PS3.

    Go try out some Web 2.0 tutorials(or whatever you want to call the set of technologies) to see for yourself. Despite the hype there is some serious good stuff going on.

    • once we all start working off the web murphy will make someone forget to replace the battery and the next thing we know it'll be jan 1st,1980

      As a real end user, I can tell the web world of developers that untill you can get programming down as a genuine science rather than this witchcraft spells of coding and hype for sale.... Murphy loves you, yes he does. So don't make those of us who really honestly know better suffer more, buy selling your babeling BS to the stupid masses and that we unfortunately would
      • buy selling your babeling BS
        As a reader, I can tell the world of web writers that until you can get spelling down as a genuine science rather than this witchcraft spells of letters...

    • Assured connectivity. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by khasim ( 1285 )
      I don't see that happening. Particularly in an office environment.

      Slammer already demonstrated how you could not depend upon bandwidth on the Internet to be always available. For a business, it's critical.

      Now, the business might be moving to internal web servers and apps ... using the "Web 2.0" technologies that are being hyped. But that's nothing new. Where I work, we've been moving to web-based apps since 2001. But they're all hosted inside my network. I control the apps, the data, the servers and the net

    • Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bogtha ( 906264 )

      Speaking as a 'real software engineer' who writes 'real software', web developers have always been looked down upon has untalented hacks. I think with the Web maturing as an application platform we are seeing quite a bit of indignant snobbery from traditional engineers.

      Speaking as a web developer who is perfectly capable of writing "real software", I can tell you that this is certainly nothing new. The trouble lies with some ignorant software developers who view all web development as if it were in t

    • Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fermion ( 181285 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @09:35PM (#15469390) Homepage Journal
      I couldn't agree with you more. One of the reasons that IE took control of the browser market was because it was tied to the MS Windows API and therefore could easily act as an application interface, where more standard complient browsers could not. This meant that untrained persons could write usable interfaces using the IE framework.

      With the techniques developed over the past few years, we now have the capability to do what IE could do, but in a standard complient way that is generally more stable. It makes web applications that were nearly unusable, even in IE, become practical. A second innovation is moving beyond the web browser. Application like Google earth and Apple Dashboard applies general standards to specific OS. The front end is specilized, but the back end does not need to be.In fact this takes us back 20 years to the happy time when one could log into any service using any computer, with the modification that we now use a GUI instead of kermit.

      Some naysayers may say this is dangerous because not everyone has an internet connection everywhere. Well, in the early 80's everyone said it was dangerous becuase everyone did not have a modem, but we all got one. Then in the 90's the internet was dangerous because it was sometimes hard to get a dialup line. Now, we are in situation where the telcos are trying to limit this commodity product that is bandwidth, and have even manage to reduce the availability of honest to goodness DSL by denying compition. The best way to break this nonsense to make wireless broadband as neccesary as radio, then have the common person complain continuously until we arrive at a solution. This is basically what broke the long distance nonsense. Kiddos, remember, there was a time when calling your neighbor cost tens of dolalrs an hour.

    • Speaking as a 'real software engineer' who writes 'real software', web developers have always been looked down upon has untalented hacks.
      If you look at the source code for many of those "Web 2.0" sites out there, you'll quickly notice that it is still one large hack more often than not. Such is the nature of technology used to build it, unfortunately.
    • I think with the Web maturing as an application platform we are seeing quite a bit of indignant snobbery from traditional engineers.
      Most web developers think "Web 2.0" is a horseshit term too.

    • Re:Yes (Score:2)

      by Tim C ( 15259 )
      Speaking as a 'real software engineer' who writes 'real software', web developers have always been looked down upon has untalented hacks.

      I encountered pretty much that exact attitude from a group of contractors we hired to work on a web-based application a couple of years ago (it was a directory and mail service for a large governmental organisation in the UK).

      There was a clear attitude that web programming wasn't "real programming", and that it was simple, toy stuff.

      Funny thing was, some of their code was

  • networked information ecology (Score:4, Interesting)

    by linvir ( 970218 ) * on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:00PM (#15469027)
    networked information ecology
    Reminded me of a hilarious advert on UK television a while back. It used to make me laugh so much that I can't remember who it was about or what they were selling, but basically it had loads of mundane stuff like meetings and presentations, only it all took place about 100m in the air above a city, and businesspeople were somersaulting into their chairs, and throwing their notes over their heads to be caught by a guy on a motorbike who sped them away. It was something to do with "the digital network economy", and was basically a perfect visual representation of hype.

    Making the link between this and my views on Web 2.0 As A New Wave of Innovation is a task left to the reader. No points will be awarded for answering this question.

  • LOL Web 2.0 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No Web 2.0 comments section is complete without a link to the classic Web 2.0 beatdown [theregister.co.uk] that El Reg ran last year. Love that tag cloud [theregister.co.uk].

    Whatever it is Web 2.0 is made of, John Battelle [valleywag.com] will have an ad running on it someplace.

  • I hope you... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tfcdesign ( 667499 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:06PM (#15469043) Journal
    paid for the right to use "Web 2.0".

  • It's official (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TrappedByMyself ( 861094 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:09PM (#15469058)
    IT and specifically web development is so big that a big chunk of the "techies" are now idiots. It started when the business guys who could hack HTML started calling themselves geeks, but the journey ends here.

    This Web 2.0 movement (or movements) may not supplant Web 1.0

    I remember PHBs saying equally ridiculous things about XML when it came out, how it would revolutionize the world and everything would magically talk to each other. Now we see people in all groups saying the same thing about 6 year old tech... oh, I mean, Web 2.0

    So, um, can anyone tell me how HTML, JavaScript, and Stylesheets supplants, um...., HTML, JavaScript, and Stylesheets?
    • Yeah. The whole thing is ridiculous. I'm just an extremist nutjob, but the whole Hype, Ululation, and Propoganda (HUP) concerning XML / Web 2.0 / "Object Oriented Databases" / etc / etc / and of course etc, just drives me nuts. Are my fellow geeks, who are otherwise rational and intelligent, so blind to the stupid slogans of the marketing machine?

      XML isn't a bad idea, for instance-- it gives a standard method of defining data transport, for instance. But it doesn't relieve each application of the responsibi

      • XML isn't a bad idea, for instance-- it gives a standard method of defining data transport, for instance.

        I've been wondering whether XML is really all that great of an idea. It makes sense to use it when, as you say, you need a standard way of representing data across multiple dissimilar systems. But a key notion behind XML is that unless an XML dataset is well-formed, attempts to parse that XML should fail.

        This means XML makes sense to use when you need to represent data across multiple dissimilar

        • I've always believed XML to be more hype than substance. Thanks for stating so well why that is.
        • Sure, one of the benefits of classic HTML is that it's more forgiving than well-formed XML.

          Having said that, well-formed XML is a very, very low bar of standard one can set for a data representation. I think you're stretching to suggest that one requires "bug free software" to generate well formed XML. One certainly can have buggy software and generate well-formed XML! But it's not much to ask for well-formedness, especially if you're dealing with machine-targeted document exchange! That's the bigge

          • Perhaps you're right -- I have to admit that the only experiences I have had with XML have been with C and perl DOM parsers, and PHP5 (which handles XML as first-class data entities, and for all I know may be using the C DOM XML library underneath). I have not worked with a streaming XML parser -- though, are you sure these parsers are as flexible as you've made them out? The XML specification, section 5.1 [w3.org] seems to imply that a parser that parses a later section of an XML document without parsing some ear

            • Streaming XML parsers definitely would raise an error on the lack of well-formedness if you requested that portion of the document... The trick is whether only a subset of the document needs to be read or not. A SAX-based parser is the classic example, with a parser [sourceforge.net] available for JavaScript.

              All I can do is wish that there was a sane, well-crafted, easily-parsed, fault-tolerant binary specification which enjoyed the same ubiquity.

              Well, it doesn't solve all of the above, but YAML [yaml.org] is a great alternative, I th

    • Re:It's official (Score:5, Funny)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @09:59PM (#15469445)
      So, um, can anyone tell me how HTML, JavaScript, and Stylesheets supplants, um...., HTML, JavaScript, and Stylesheets?

      Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is being replaced by AJAX. It's totally new.

    • Back in the days of DOS applications, everyone had to roll their own UI because DOS wasn't going to do it for them. MS-DOS Editor used a completely different UI style to WordPerfect, which was completely different again to Neopaint. Every developer had to re-invent the UI wheel because the underlying API was so primitive.

      We've come on in leaps and bounds since then. Operating systems provide complicated widgets like tree views as standard, and applications generally have lots of things in common with one a

  • What is this bizarre compulsion? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by starfishsystems ( 834319 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:09PM (#15469060) Homepage
    What is this bizarre compulsion to brand a random selection of software development activities as if they were all key elements of some elaborate Master Plan? Isn't the work interesting enough in itself without the hyperbole of trying to turn it into some new kind of Klondike?

    It's as stupid in its way as people "discovering" the Internet a few years ago. In their haste to stake claims all over it, they neglected to notice that it was actually a set of artifacts created, with considerable effort, by people who came before them.

    And didn't we hear this once already with something called Web Services? Let's transport everything over Port 80, that's really innovative. If we must call it anything, let's call it Hubris 2.0. Maybe, like Madonna, it will eventually go away if we just ignore it.

  • MS(TM) RSS(TM) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <jim@mmdCOWc.net minus herbivore> on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:21PM (#15469097) Homepage
    "Microsoft is considering a massive extension of RSS. "

    Let me guess, this will be a new Windows-only binary format that will have the ability to execute code.

    Dear Microsoft,

    Please keep in mind that that middle "S" stands for "simple".

  • "Web 2.0" (Score:4, Funny)

    by chrisbeach ( 887853 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:21PM (#15469098) Homepage
    "Bubble 2.0," anyone?

  • Maybe O'Reilly was trying to save us? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zaiff Urgulbunger ( 591514 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:32PM (#15469126)
    You know the other week when we were all down with O'Reilly trying to patent/copyright/whatever "Web 2.0", well, perhaps they were just trying to save us from all this hype over nothing. I mean, if we had just accepted that "Web 2.0" was now owned by O'Reilly and we couldn't even mention it's name, we'd be free of TFA. All of them. Whilst, in every other sense, the web would develop as it is now. We just wouldn't be subjected to all this articles _about_ Web 2.0!!

    All hail O'Reilly -- they tried to save us but we wouldn't listen! :D

  • slogan (Score:3, Funny)

    by MrSquirrel ( 976630 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:34PM (#15469132)
    Web 2.0: even more porn!

  • Ajax isn't always better (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Twillerror ( 536681 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @08:54PM (#15469230) Homepage Journal
    Funny that Web 2.0 is taking off so much. The problem with it is that everyone I interview is now "learning" Ajax. I feel like if I go to an interview I'll be asked a million Ajax questions, that I really don't want to answer.

    Using hidden Iframes and JScript was one way to do what Ajax does years ago. There are definately a few cases where it is really useful. A little div popup, pre-populating city state after a postal code was entered, testing a value etc. Debugging is much harder, and the Javascript/DOM model is hard to code bug free. Javascript errors don't get reported to the server admin, and they are often hard to replicate. This is partly a lack of good tools, but view source on HTML is almost always easier then trying to step thru some buggy jscript.

    It can be very easy to abuse Ajax. I recently had someone show me a search example that "pre-populated" as you typed. It was super clunky and really didn't work. Ajax's biggest problem at this point is that everyone thinksd everything has to be instant now. You can make a user go to another page to edit something that is not edited every other minute.

    As much as I love Google maps, Yahoo Flash maps kick their ass. Adobe's new Flex tech is really going to give Ajax a run for the money. Java is just to sluggish, but Flash is pretty quick. Yes you'll have to turn off your flash ad blockers.

    The thing that has to happen is that SVG or a new standard needs to be born to handle GUI apps. People don't like flash because there is a name behind it, HTML is a standard, Javascript is a standard, etc. Java is Sun/IBM, Flash is Adobe ( formally Macromedia ).

    Personally I would love to see an HTML 5.0....A pure XML based HTML is great, but pretty impractical given the huge amount of content that doesn't have the
      tag, and just have
      tags, etc. WTH did no one think to have a tag? Now I'm stuck with a million different Javascript/UL combos out there. Even adding a target to div would be great. Imagine a that would turn on a div and tell the browser to turn it on. With some style sheet properties you could make some powerful divs without code. [slashdot.org]

    I guess my biggest gripe with Web 2.0 is that almost everything that we spend hours figuring out in JScript could be done if people would create more and better HTML tags. Then the browser developers take care of all the testing, and we will have more stable apps.

    Personally I'm going down the Flash path. If you haven't tried Flex yet, labs.adobe.com, do yourself a favor and see what you've been missing....no I don't work for Adboe or even really like them :)
    You can do more in less time, and you can create content that really looks good. I'd love to see a Flex slashdot version.

  • RSS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Adrian Lopez ( 2615 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @09:00PM (#15469253) Homepage
    Microsoft is considering a massive extension of RSS.

    For some strange reason, that statement sends shivers down my spine.
  • I wonder why all this new hype is not called BBS 2.0 ?
    I mean it's the same idea -- microcontent posted by participants of particular service (be it pictures, stories, daily updates), just done through the browser. Yes, it's easier to ask for money for snazzy new abbreviation, and it improves feeling of self-worthieness.
    "We need to improve our Wiki presence in Web 2.0 and expand RSS feeds to all departments" sounds so much better than "Our documentation should be easy to use and all departments have to post
  • So... does this explain why Slashdot's Light Mode now looks even shittier?

  • No, it's not a 'new wave' of anything (Score:3, Interesting)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @11:14PM (#15469804) Homepage
    It's a horrible, overcomplicated kludge that creates more problems than it solves. The sole reason why it exists, is because there's no single, widely adopted standard that would enable rich, extensible UI on the client and seamless interop with the server. There are two reasons why there's no such standard:

    1. Microsoft doesn't want the web to enable something that will threaten its monopoly in OS and Office software.
    2. Existing (and upcoming) standards are broken for two reasons: a). Microsoft XAML (which could solve the problem beautifully) is not cross-platform, and XUL doesn't truly solve the problems - it still needs binary extensions to do anything meaningful and they aren't cross platform either.

    Quite frankly, for something like Flickr, I wouldn't mind running a client app as long as there's an easy, reliable way of updating it (like what's implemented in Firefox - binary diffs). That app, however, must run on three platforms in order to work for me, because I use Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.
    • "1. Microsoft doesn't want the web to enable something that will threaten its monopoly in OS and Office software"

      What does MS have to do with it? Nobody got the OK from MS to create HTTP, HTML or web browsers.

      Of course, if what you mean is that you want a common standard based on the above legacy technologies than it's not going to improve things much anyway. The solution isn't to make a universal JavaScript, it's to eliminate the need for JavaScript in most scenarios.

      • It controls 90% of the client OS market and 85% of the browser market, that's what. Any initiative is not going anywhere if it's not supported by Microsoft. OTOH, the remaining 15% of the browser market guarantee that any non-cross platform initiative is not going anywhere either. It's a tough balance of powers and it's unfortunate that Microsoft has a monopoly. There won't be any common standard until the ridiculousness of all this XML/AJAX/HTML/CSS2 crap becomes blindingly obvious to everybody. And that a
        • We agree on your last sentence, but not on the rest.

          A truly new approach isn't going to be based on any current browser, which means that IE's 85% of the browser market would be irrelevent. Many popular applications that run on the PC were not developed by MS. Historically MS's support and cooperation are not necessary for a successful product (obviously, it doesn't hurt).
          • Even Microsoft cringes at the possibility of shutting off 10-15% of the users from using their services (they do it anyway, for cost reasons, in some cases). What I'm saying is that if something doesn't come "in the box" with Windows, online services are not going to be enthusiastic about it because chances are this stuff is not on the client's computer. Look at .NET Framework, for example. Did you know it's possible to write great, secure applets in it with practically unlimited functionality? Microsoft ev
            • There are plenty of successful applications that don't come "in the box" with Windows. Remember AOL made the bulk of its money as a proprietary portal using software that didn't come with the PC. If a real "Web 2.0" were compelling enough to be favored over what we have today, installing a new application to enable it would not be a big deal.
    • 1. Microsoft doesn't want the web to enable something that will threaten its monopoly in OS and Office software.

      It's kind of funny they're behind this whole asynchronous XML technology then. It's the closest to at least a widely adopted de facto standard doing what you describe that I've seen at least.
  • Whenever I read the phrase "Web 2.0," I wonder what ever happened to Jon Katz.
  • Looks like slashdot just went web 2.0. what fun!

  • Web 2.0 is about experience not implementation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gigahawk ( 745812 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @11:54PM (#15470000)

    It would be typical with a forum full of engineers to simply pass up web 2.0 as some marketing buzzword for a new implementation of something old. In many ways the attributes associated with what is being collectively called 'web 2.0' are simply old ideas implemented in a medium where they can succeed in a big way.

    It's important to understand that the difference in the web is not in the implementation but in the experience of the end user and how content is created, managed, and distributed. Adaptive path has a writeup about this at http://adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archiv es/000547.php [adaptivepath.com]

    The difference is important because it changes how developers and designers percieve the web when they are creating new things. There are many features of newer web software that contribute to the ways in which people use and experience the web.

    My favorite is the preference in designing software for the long tail. Which is mentioned in Wired http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html [wired.com] This is the practice of serving many niche markets with targeted software instead of building software to service all of the market and doing it badly. This causes less confusion, less clutter, better software and faster turnaround.

    Some of the other features of the newer web software you might have already noticed are decentralization, remixability, co-creation, and their side-effect of emergent systems. Web services, niche software and the network effect all make these things much more feasible than they have been in the past since there are well defined frameworks for distributing services that are easy to work with and adding more niche services increases the value of all web software by a large amount.

    Notice I didn't say AJAX or Ruby on Rails or Django or [insert your new framework or technology here]. These are merely details of implementation. If a framework makes your company faster then that's good. If a technology lets your user's client fetch web service data for them, that can also be good. These things are only technologies used to reach an end product. Web 2.0 could have been done in many languages and frameworks and on many platforms. That's not to say that certain languages, frameworks, etc. didn't have an effect on the design of the software, as any language or framework has a certain effect on the overall style of the developers using it.

    This was about a need for developers and designers to move beyond what was status quo for interaction between websites and their users. They are taking full advantage of the tools they have created and the network that was built up over the past few decades. To belittle their efforts into something meaningless is to surely miss the entire point.

    • Some of the other features of the newer web software you might have already noticed are decentralization, remixability, co-creation, and their side-effect of emergent systems. Web services, niche software and the network effect all make these things much more feasible than they have been in the past since there are well defined frameworks for distributing services that are easy to work with and adding more niche services increases the value of all web software by a large amount.

      Did you use that random b

    • Now, on this ocean of buzzwords, what is different from the old web?

  • I agree with most of the people on here saying the whole Web 2.0 is just more buzz, hype, fizz. It's like somebody is trying to add some mentos to the Diet Web 1.0 :)

    However, and there's the 'but', Let's not forget how 'the web' (to me at least) was always kind of 'Internet 2.0'. There was archie, Veronica, USEnet, ftp, IRC, etc. etc. Who needed something that did all that sort of functionality but then in one big, fat, resource hog 'browser'. At some point there was so much 'web' or HTTP traffic that my in
  • There are way too many "Web 2.0 sucks and I hate it, but I don't know what it is and I don't care" posts... Ignore it all you want, it isn't going anywhere and it will only make you more replaceable. People dismissed the web in the early 90s, it didn't go anywhere it only made all those novell certified engineers obsolete...

  • So so, someone tagged the whole web as "2.0" in the worldwide global CVS-REPO! I guess that repo is not the Wayback Machine (that's too spotty and doesn't maintain the whole revision history of the Web since gopher/veronica)...

  • I find it a little disturbing that this mess of Javascript and HTML is referred to as "innovation". Web 2.0 really is little more than what RPC, DisplayPostscript, NeWS, X11, or Java promised to deliver in the past. There are some good things about it: Web 2.0 is text-based protocols (UNIX influence), it's more open, and it's easier to throw together something in it than in previous standards. On the other hand, Web 2.0 is also a big mess: HTML, DOM, and JavaScript have bloated out of any proportion to t
  • Web 2.0 is hype created by people who don't program and don't build web applications. For those of us who do actually build things, nothing in 'Web 2.0' is all that amazing. I recall in the early 90's what many of us thought the internet would become: a virtual world, where people could take classes in virt reality (not just online, but sitting in a virtual classroom), take a walk in Paris in virt reality to plan a trip or study France, attend a meeting in Sri Lanka via some form of 'Star Wars Jedi Council'
  • There gonna be no web 2.0 if the telcos, RIAA, MPAA, patent trolls mess up net neutrality, freedom of speech, innovation, easy accessibility first.
  • I thought it was all rounded corners, pastel colors, and Arial font... there's more?

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