Web 2.0: Introduction

At the CSW XML Sum­mer School this year I gave a talk on Web 2.0, in the Trends and Tran­si­ents track. I’ve been pon­der­ing wheth­er to write it up as a series of post­ings or not; there’s so much hype and inform­a­tion around Web 2.0 that many people are bored silly with it now. I decided it’s prob­ably worth­while since I found some ways of organ­iz­ing the fea­tures com­monly asso­ci­ated with Web 2.0 that I haven’t seen elsewhere.

I’ve cre­ated a series of posts, of which this is the first. The links will become act­ive as I pub­lish the posts.

  1. Buzzwords
  2. Social and Collaboration
  3. Tech­nic­al
  4. Pro­cess
  5. Issues

The big thing about Web 2.0 is the concept that lots of people want to have a say, and that many of them have some­thing valu­able to say. The idea is that sys­tems that give people a voice, and that enable them to take part in dis­cus­sions, have value. It’s no longer the case that only spe­cial­ists or celebrit­ies can have their opin­ions pub­lished, ordin­ary people can too. This idea that users can cre­ate the con­tent that oth­er users read or view has its detract­ors of course, but they tend to be out­numbered by the pro­ponents (or is it just that the pro­ponents are louder?).

The mar­ket­ing hype tends to over­shad­ow everything of course, and now we’re get­ting into the silly sea­son where every new idea is labelled with its own Web x.x vari­ant. Pretty soon we’ll be repla­cing the num­ber and append­ing the year, just like happened with oper­at­ing sys­tems, then with names taken from obscure or made-up lan­guages. Web 2.0 as a fea­ture set is, how­ever, worthy of atten­tion, even if the mar­ket­ing hype gets a bit much.

I’m not going to dis­cuss new devel­op­ments such as Google’s OpenSo­cial API in this series; it’s too new for me to be able to say any­thing use­ful on wheth­er it will change the big pic­ture, or just the details.

If you’re look­ing for a pub­lic­a­tion with a lot of detail, try O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Radar Report. It’s expens­ive, but it has a lot of mater­i­al and ref­er­ences in it, as well as recom­mend­a­tions for best prac­tices. Worth read­ing if you have to make bet-the-com­pany busi­ness decisions about this stuff.

Customizing Google

For those, like me, who are some­what pri­vacy-ori­ented, and use Fire­fox as their browser, I recom­mend using the Cus­tom­ize Google exten­sion. I set it up to use https for access­ing Google docs, read­er, and cal­en­dar, and to anonym­ize the Google ID for search­ing. You can also anonym­ize the Google ana­lyt­ics cook­ie, which I’m not doing for the time being. It has a bunch of oth­er fea­tures that might be of interest as well, such as set­ting vari­ous pref­er­ences or tak­ing selec­ted sites out of search res­ults (e.g., adult sites for your kids). I’ve been using it for a month and have had no prob­lems with it.

Ravelry

I finally got my Ravelry invite today. I got on the wait­ing list about a month ago, so it did­n’t take long. I spent a few minutes pok­ing around, though I will have to be care­ful as it could prove to be an immense time-sink for me, with all the dis­cus­sion about knit­ting and crochet. There’s even a group for KnitML there, which I had­n’t heard of before.

It’s inter­est­ing com­par­ing Ravelry to Face­book, as well. Sur­face impres­sions: com­pletely dif­fer­ent crowd, they don’t ask for any inform­a­tion when you sign up except for an email address, user­name, and pass­word. Of course, you can add info such as birth­day or where you live to your pro­file, but it’s not needed. Lots of links to sites out­side of Ravelry, thus the site feels much more open to the rest of the world than Face­book. And maybe because it’s more focussed, it will be more appeal­ing long-term (there already seems to be quite a lot of Face­book ennui out there in the blogosphere). 

If you’re a keen knit­ter or cro­chet­er, don’t be put off by the fact you have to join a wait­ing list; it does­n’t take long to get the invite and it looks like a worth­while resource. One neat item: the yarn list­ing includes people’s destash info.

Market Choice

Here’s a fas­cin­at­ing piece dis­cuss­ing how fixed prices on books in Ger­many was actu­ally push­ing prices down (con­trary to eco­nom­ic the­ory), while sup­port­ing a wide range of booksellers.

When I was last in Ger­many, apart from my usu­al beef about Ger­man book­sellers not tak­ing cred­it cards, I found no reas­on to com­plain about the range of books that was avail­able. Chil­dren’s books are more expens­ive than I’m used to here, but a lot of that is also because most chil­dren’s books are only avail­able in hard­back and thus inher­ently more expens­ive. Paper­backs seemed reas­on­ably priced in gen­er­al, and of good typo­graph­ic­al quality. 

Peter Brant­ley has some ques­tions at the end of his piece, which I think can be applied not only to books, but also tele­vi­sion, news, indeed many aspects of what is com­monly called “cul­ture”. When the mass media and mass enter­tain­ment industry are des­per­ately try­ing to increase rat­ings by cater­ing to the fads and whims of the mass mar­ket, is this a “race to the bot­tom” as has been pos­tu­lated? Is the long tail suf­fi­cient to enable people with diverse interests (and that’s all of us at some stage or anoth­er) to have those needs met, those itches scratched? How do people find those groups, if they don’t know what to look for? 

Choice is import­ant, know­ing that you have choices is even more import­ant. It’s a bit like free speech.

Children’s Privacy

If you have chil­dren, or an interest in pri­vacy, spend the time and watch the video of Pro­fess­or Valer­ie Steeves dis­cuss­ing how chil­dren’s web sites mon­it­or their vis­its. It’s scary. [Link from Michael’s Geist’s blog.]

After see­ing this, I won­der why the schools here don’t teach more about pri­vacy. When we were last in Aus­tralia, vis­it­ing friends, I noticed that one friend, whose chil­dren are roughly the same age as mine, had two pieces of paper with hand­prints on the fridge. It turns out they are told about pri­vacy in school, start­ing at age 5, and these hand­prints are remind­ers of that injunc­tion about pri­vacy. The word­ing on the paper was instructive. 

Respect Pri­vacy

Name ___ is special

Every hand­print is unique. Per­son­al inform­a­tion is worth tak­ing care of. Keep this hand­print in a safe place.

Find out more at www.privacy.vic.gov.au.

Simple, as befits young chil­dren, and the hand­print with its tact­ile mes­sage and remind­er of a child’s unique­ness struck me as a good idea. We need to be more aware of pri­vacy and its import­ance in gen­er­al, and espe­cially for those not yet old enough to make their own informed decisions.