Web 1, 2, 3............

Ok where to start..........well some of you  will remember the World Wide Web when it first started.  Wasn’t it boring?  It’s hard to think back to then and compare it to now.  The Web has changed from simply reading off the screen to actually adding to the page through words, videos or photos.  Who can conceive of living without a computer?

 

Making an website used to be really technical but now it’s really easy thanks to the likes of Dreamweaver and Moonfruit.  Web 2.0 technology means you don’t actually have to set up web pages anymore.  You can simply add to others.  You don't need technical ability to create a wiki or a blog.  The technology is there for you to use.  It’s an active web!  It’s collaborative, interactive and now there are lots of documents linked to other documents.   

The dynamics of the Web has changed dramatically in a short space of time.  The World Wide Web was created in 1969 as a military project and they created its backbone as an information sharing architecture.   Although I don’t honestly think anyone now thinks of it as the World Wide Web.  Everyone says the Internet or online.   

Strange that we seem to have forgotten that the internet is actually a network of computers all around the world not the content we see on web pages. 

Anyway, the lecture this week was about Web 2.0 technologies so if you get bamboozled easily I’ll try and dumb it down for you.

Ok so the World Wide Web uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol which sets the rules for formatting how you see the information on the page.  For example when you type this blog address into your browser the HTTP command is sent to the server and brings the requested page to your PC.  The Web has its own language called Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) which allows browsers to recognise what to do with text, graphics or audio visuals.  This can also be enhanced with the use of Cascading Style Sheets which describes the presentation to be used.  

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is used to define web page content and specific tags.  It is a way of storing, structuring and transporting information.  It’s not a replacement for HTML as it focuses on the data not the format.  XML is used to transport data between applications.  An example of XML is a RSS feed.  

Many Application Programme Interfaces (API) use XML as it’s simpler to use than HTML.  Ok now you’re wondering what an API is......well in simple terms it’s a set of rules for a software programme accessing services provided by another software program.  Ok an example.............uploading pictures to Picasa that are shared on Facebook is an example of an API.  The picture stays on Picasa but can be shared to other web pages in the same format without having to upload again.  

API’s are not something new in this blog as we spoke about Mashups before.  Remember?  So if you were paying attention you know that Mashups are lots of applications combined into one.  Pay attention!!!!

Right so we’ve looked at some Web 2.0 technology but why is it so much faster to view pages on the Web than it used to be?  You might think it’s because PCs are much faster but it’s actually more to do with how the information stored on the page is retrieved.  In the past the whole page was retrieved and now it’s sections which makes it much quicker.  Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is a web development that lets the page content download and upload to and from the server without re-loading the whole page.  Very clever as it means that the user thinks the page is much faster than it is.  Watch out for it when you’re surfing.  If you press the back button and the page won’t reload, they’re using AJAX.  There’ll be no fooling you now!

Modern businesses use Web 2.0 technologies and Enterprise 2.0 is all the applications and tools geared towards business.  Business needs technology to operate as social media in particular has become part of everyday life for their customers.   Enterprise 2.0 is changing business in the way employees work, how they communicate and how they exchange information.  Businesses now share information with suppliers/partners as well as their customers and this is done with technology.  It’s all about collaboration.

So look into my crystal ball...................

Web 3.0 is coming.   

Web 3.0 is large scale user generated content due to the tools and technology available.  It’s expected that the internet will become intelligent and understand what you want without you having to tell it.  We can see signs of that now with things like sites suggesting things you might like based on your choices previously but a computer being able to understand what you want seems far away.  How many times have you been on a site and it suggests something that it thinks is related to your search and really isn’t?  I’m thinking at this point, will computers in the future have voices?  Will they try and sell us things that we really don’t want or need?  It could happen.  

There is also the suggestion that all the social networking sites that we use individually would be grouped together as one.  We would be interconnected people who could see everything each other had been up to.  Hey, I’m not happy about this!  I have different friends on different sites.  I don’t want them all merged into one.  As mentioned previously I don’t want Sir Alan Sugar seeing my Facebook!  He can look at me on LinkedIn to his heart’s content but some things are sacred!  

I don’t know about you but it seems to me that there is just too much sharing of information and very little is private anymore.  Intellectual property doesn’t exist on the Web so any great ideas keep them to yourself or drop me an email.  I’ll check my crystal ball.