What is in the mix of Web 2.0 ?

"the philosophy of mutually maximizing collective intelligence and added value for each participant by formalized and dynamic information sharing and creation."






























Before dissecting What is in Web 2.0, let us understand what exactly is Web 2.0 ?

From the software perspective, It simply mean next version or next generation of Web, that includes advances over its previous generation.

As we all know, web is constantly evolving; web is a shortened version for World Wide Web or WWW; that is served using files and contains hypertext. The world's first web server and browser was developed in the late 80s, ran on NextCube, followed by Mosaic.

CERN was instrumental in developing the browser/Web concept and released the sources to the public domain. Some of the versions are still available at http://www.evolt.org.

In 1994 http://www.w3c.org was formed at MIT in collaboration with CERN.

Major W3C Achievements


October 1996
First W3C Recommendation published is Portable Network Graphics (PNG) 1.0. In the mid-'90s, more industrial and academic users were discovering the Web and its graphics capabilities. W3C developed Portable Network Graphics (PNG) to provide a cross-platform alternative to the graphics formats most prevalent at that time, some of which had raised some patent licensing concerns.

December 1996
Separating content from structure, CSS Level 1 is published. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents. CSS Level 2 (1998) included further and more sophisticated features.

February 1997
Web Accessibility Initiative launched. W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines for Web content, user agents, and authoring tools would become very popular among the Web community. WAI, in coordination with organizations around the world, pursues accessibility of the Web through four primary areas of work: technology, tools, education and outreach, and research and development.

December 1997
HTML 4.0 adds tables, scripting, style sheets, internationalization, and accessibility features to Web publishing. Whereas HTML 3.2 had been published to capture the then current state of support for HTML on the Web, HTML 4.0 added new features to enable authors to create significantly richer Web content. These features included the ability to specify style sheets, create tables, and make pages more dynamic through scripting (see also W3C's work on the Document Object Model, or DOM). HTML 4.0 also included important features to promote more internationalized content and content more accessible to some users with disabilities.

February 1998
XML 1.0 promotes interoperability and domain-specific markup. Soon to become the lingua franca of the Web, XML would serve as the basis for dozens of standards ranging from digital signatures (XML-Sig) and Web forms (XForms), to privacy technologies (P3P).

August 2000
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 enriches Web graphics. A language to describe two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML, SVG will serve as the foundation for new-generation mobile applications (SVG Mobile Profiles).

May 2001
XML Schema provides an essential piece for XML to reach its full potential. This important specification delivers on the true promise of XML by providing a standard way to create XML vocabularies that permit mixing and a way to build more versatile and powerful commercial applications.


January 2002W3C launches Web Services Activity. Subsuming the XML Protocol Activity and extending its scope, Web services provide a standard means of interoperating between different software applications, running on a variety of platforms and/or frameworks.

May 2003
W3C adopts royalty-free Patent Policy. The W3C Patent Policy governs the handling of patents in the process of producing Web standards, and explicitly encourages the development of open standards.

February 2004RDF and OWL make a strong foundation for Semantic Web applications. RDF and OWL are Semantic Web standards that provide a framework for asset management, enterprise integration and the sharing and reuse of data on the Web. Respectively, they deliver structured descriptions and Web-based ontologies.

March 2004W3C gives voice to the Web with VoiceXML 2.0. Voice interaction can escape the physical limitations of keypads and displays as mobile devices become even smaller. The goal of VoiceXML 2.0 is to bring the advantages of Web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response applications.

December 2004
W3C describes principles of Web architecture. W3C's Technical Architecture Group (TAG) publishes "Architecture of the World Wide Web," a description of the principles that make the Web we know work, and work well. This condensed assessment of fifteen years of observations about the Web authored by many of those who designed the core Web standards is a valuable foundation on which to design future Web standards.


February 2005
Character Model brings unified approach to using characters on the Web. W3C's Internationalization Core Working Group publishes "Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Fundamentals" with a goal of making it easier for all people to use the World Wide Web, regardless of their language, script, writing system, and cultural conventions, in accordance with the W3C mission of universal access. Building on the Universal Character Set (defined jointly by the Unicode Standard and ISO/IEC 10646), the Character Model provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for interoperable text manipulation on the World Wide Web.

May 2005
Mobile Web Initiative launched to facilitate mobile Web access. W3C launched the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) with the mission of making Web access from a mobile device as simple as Web access from a desktop device. MWI sponsors and participants develop authoring guidelines, checklists and best practices, as well as a database of descriptions that can be used by content authors to adapt their content to the strengths and capabilities of a particular device.


November 2005
W3C Launches Group Linking Medical Industry with Semantic Web. W3C launched an Interest Group to connect medical industry verticals with Semantic Web experts in an effort to improve collaboration, research and development, and innovation adoption in the health care and life science industries. The first of its kind for W3C, the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG) deploys standardized Semantic Web specifications into specific services defined by a user community.

There were several other big waves, some of them as I recall are MathML, SGML, all derivatives of XML.

Please see the time line in the image

Future of Web

W3C continues to expand the reach of the Web to:

• Everyone (regardless of culture, abilities, etc.),
• Everything (applications and data stores, and on devices ranging from power computers with high-definition displays to mobile devices to appliances),
• Everywhere (from high to low bandwidth environments),
• Diverse mode of interaction (touch, pen, mouse, voice, assisting technologies, computer to computer),
• Enable computers to do more useful work (through advanced data searching and sharing).

Which defines what Web 2.0 is going to be, more user friendly, more collaborative, approaching close to two decades since the first ever web server/web browser and web content was written.

Web 2.0 is a trend in World Wide Web technology, and web design, a next generation of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, podcasts, social bookmarking sites and folksonomies, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users. Even companies are creating their new corporate identity including logos to be Web 2.0 friendly.

Web 2.0 Designs are usually attention grabbing, easy to read, bright colors. I found a good look with the collection of some good Web 2.o logos.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/sets/72057594060779001/

If you are even more interested in learning about how to do the logos, here is another link; http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/revealing-methods-of-drawing-web-20-logos/

Web 2.0 unlike a traditional upgrade in the software, is more in the content, and creation of the content than the actual application or browsers.

Web 2.0 sites are not just an online business card or e-Brochure, it helps in doing business, connecting and communicating with your customers, vendors, employees in a very collaborative way. The information flows both ways, to and from the web server. Buzz words viz., Flex, AJAX, and most recently Silver Light provide a very rich, enhanced and smooth user experience.

So what exactly is social networking; check this video out and it explains very well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc







Here is a great video about blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI&NR=1





Another video about social bookmarking site

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU







Here is a video that explains what online photo sharing can do.





Here is another great video about Wikis





I would sign off by saying Web 2.o is a paradigm shift in how we are utilizing the web now in more ways than ever before, applying our social skills to web and way we search, meet, and connect .