Web 2. Wow!

Reputation needing a Defender?

2008-05-26T18:22:00.000-07:00

The Internet, or as some of us like to call it, the Intertron, is an interesting environment chock full of nuts. Not just macadamia and almond, but all varieties. You know what I mean.

I was browsing a lot of very highly regarded SEO sites the other day. They were sites that are respected and well-known in the search engine community. Most of these sites are featuring leaders in the field. That sort of thing. You have to know that they are good.

You see, search engine optimization and realistic performance are something that have always been of interest to me. But now, I have had recent experiences that have made me interested in the wider subject of identity protection.

I recently lost my wallet while i was down enjoying Galaga t the mall in the arcade. I guess I got a little too animated in either that game of Pac-man, and I was gyrating around wildly. It happens to me sometimes, I get out there. I was imagining I was riding a horse in the woods, by a beach. Man, it was sweet.

Anyway, I found out my wallet was gone when the police called me. They were down at Pac-Sun with it; apparently a kid had been confronted with passing it off as his own and had run out when they didn't print a receipt out right away.

Well, after I got my license back I went and looked at identity theft firms on the ol' Intertron. The first one I found was this company, ReputationDefender (I think they're the same firm as "Reputation Defender" -- there appears to be a European arm?), and they seem pretty legit. I notice a lot of good press about them, and the usual group of detractors, as well. From what I can gather, ReputationDefender (or Reputation Defender, if you prefer) is a pretty good service. For a pretty nominal fee they go on the 'net and root out all your information from the dark little corners. Seems worthwhile to me.

Of course, I could do a lot of this myself, or at least the non-technical portions, but I could also slaughter my own cows for beef steak. But that's not gonna happen!

BIkes With One Gear? No Gears?

2008-05-19T12:02:00.001-07:00

So I was in the city this weekend and as I was crossing the street I was almost run over by this messenger guy who was traveling WAY to fast against traffic. Anyway, after cursing him under my breath and making sure I wasn't missing any appendages, I noticed something about the bike he was on: it had no gears!

What's up with this? Has the recession gotten so bad that we no longer can afford gears for our bicycles? I went home and did some research on the matter, and as it turns out these types of bikes are very popular (especially in my area). Who knew?

To break it down for you:

1. Bike
2. Cog (this is the "gear")
2. Chain

That's about it.

Thoughts on poverty

2008-05-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

The above image is of the Irish potato famine. While I am NOT that poor, it is worth noting that I am pretty impoverished.

Which is weird, because I have a decent job. I mean, I have insurance, I get paid a reasonable sum (I suppose), and I live frugally, yet I am constantly scraping and surviving. What gives?

I noticed that I got a HUGE chunk of my check eaten up by taxes recently. Damn you, Iraq war. Damn you all to hell! Actually, damn you income taxes. Well, I'm not completely against income taxes. I like roads and infrastructure. I like public safety measures. I just wish I could eat something other than ramen for once! (My stomach hurts as I write that)

How does the internet deal wiht poverty? Not very well, I would venture to guess. For one, poor people don't generally have access to the Internet to begin with. They most likely don't have computers, so the idea of the Internet is kind of moot to them, I imagine. And as bad as it might sound, I DO have a laptop at home, and an internet connection (thank you upstairs neighbors with the unlocked WiFi signal!), so I'm not doing all that bad. It's these little comparisons that make me feel better about my situation.

You know what I wish? I wish we still had a prairie, a frontier. I wish we had free land open to any individuals that were willing and able to work their asses off to cultivate it. In that way, the Internet is kind of frontier-y. Except that you can't make a house on the Internet (yet).

Of Legos and genius

2008-05-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

Did you play with Legos as a kid? I know I did. While much of my youth may have been unique (to the point of weirdness) I don't think I was alone in this endeavor. Furthermore, I am buoyed by the fact that there are SO many videos on the 'net in which LEGOs take a starring role. Enjoy:

Michael McDonald for President!

2008-04-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

Michael McDonald is terminally cool. I mean, look at that beard ... look at that penetrating gaze, My gawd, jsut looking at this pciture now I am entranced. Can't ... keep ... typing ... must ... fight ... on ...

OK, the spell was broken. Yikes. Got a little intense there for a moment.

Anyway, I would like to see Michael McDonald run for president. Seriously. Why not? If the White House gets a phone call at 3am in the morning, I want the person who picks up the line to have a sultry voice that's smoother than butter on a greased door knob. I also want them to have facial hair that's the envy of men the world over, Sikhs, Amish and Orthodox Jews excluded.

I think that his extensive touring schedule has more than adequately prepared him for the busy Presidential travel schedule, and that performing in front of thousands of fans has made him great under pressure. A real clutch performer and cool head (literally, I'm sure).

Join me in supporting Michael McDonald for President in 2008!

Disappearing

2008-04-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

I was listening to NPS today and they had a piece on a girl whose parents were "disappeared" (read: dropped out of helicopter into the Atlantic Ocean) by a South American military regime when she was just a little baby. As fate would have it, she was then adopted by a family that had close ties to the ruling military class. They held onto her and raised her as their own, never telling her who she really was.

Flash forward 22 years, and here come the girl's real life grandparents. They find her, they tell her who they are, and thus, who she is. Chaos ensues. Now the girl is suing and it's opening a whole can of worms, because the problem is now being recognized an unintended consequence of mass scale political whitewashing. Who could have foreseen?

Baseball Season

2008-03-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

Baseball season is upon us. I can't wait. As much as I am a true geek and love the internet, I love baseball almost just as much. You see, I love math at the heart of things. Baseball, not many people know this, truly runs on math. Chaos theory and statistics, specifically.

What is chaos theory? In a nutshell, chaos theory is the art of taking disordered information (chaos) and finding the underlying order in that data. As anyone who has ever watched a baseball game with a die-hard fan will tell you, baseball is the perfect game for this discipline. Some teams, in fact, have utilized chaos theory to refine their approaches to play beyond the traditional athletic sectors. Oh, by the way, the Goldblum pic is from Jurassic Park, where he talk at length about Chaos Theory while trying not become raptor food. I hate having to explain that, but I realize that I'm a little esoteric sometimes.

For a more cogent look at this topic of statistics, I point you back to another fave program of mine, NPR. Stats are probably the most visible side of baseball. You hear them every time someone brings up the game. ERAs, IPs, Avgs., OB percents. All these things and many more are the metrics that people use to determine if a team/player is good in comparison to others in the league. It's a little cold and calculating, but it works.

A Lobotomy Is Not For Me

2008-03-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

I have always heard about the gruesome act known as a lobotomy. I've also seen the depictions in various films, notably the Nicholson film One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. Just the thought of it now makes me shiver. Something about the word "ice pick" and the brain doesn't jive with me (but, did you know that there are other methods of lobotomy? Still makes me shake ...). And then, the actual procedure wherein they shove the "ice pick" into your brain on top of your eye. Eeek.

From Wikipedia:

Freeman decided to access the frontal lobes through the eye sockets, instead of through drilled holes in the scalp. In 1945, he took an icepick from his own kitchen and began to test the new surgical technique on cadavers. The technique was called "transorbital lobotomy," and it involved lifting the upper eyelid and placing the point of a thin surgical instrument (often called a leucotome or orbitoclast) under the eyelid and against the top of the eyesocket. A hammer or mallet was then used to drive the leucotome through the thin layer of bone and into the brain. The leucotome was then moved from side to side, to sever the nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobes to the thalamus. In selected patients, the butt of the leucotome was pulled upward, sending the tip farther back into the brain and producing a "deep frontal cut," a more radical form of lobotomy. The leucotome was then withdrawn, and the procedure was repeated on the other side. Walter Freeman first performed a transorbital lobotomy on a live patient in 1946. This new form of psychosurgery was intended for use in State mental hospitals that often did not have the facilities for anesthesia, so Freeman suggested using electroconvulsive therapy to render the patient unconscious.

Well, NPR has recently put together a story they call "My lobotomy". This is the account of one man who underwent such a procedure in the 1960s. The story is fascinating, and it really makes you think about medical science and doctors in general.

Shocking Death

2008-03-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

I know that everyone will die, me among them. I don't mean that I will die when everyone else does, but rather that we all die. That I'm not immortal, and I know this. Jeez, what do you take me for? Some sort of weirdo?

Anyway, when I die I can only hope that I don't end up like this poor guy. You see, dying is one thing. Again, we all have to do it. One way or the other. Problem is, the only pic (apparently) they saw fit to print of him post mortem was him throwin' up the shocker.

Not a very distinguished way to be remembered.

Raising Chickens Online?

2008-03-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

I was browsing around the 'net looking for an intersection of two things I love: poultry and technology. While there are all sorts of chicken breeding items out there taking advantage of all the newest technology you can think of, there is only one IP Chicken.

Astute internet surfers will also recall the Subservient chicken. While I enjoy this site and its use of Web 2.0 principles, I don't like Burger King that much.

Don't Clown With Me!

2008-03-10T13:18:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of America. I love this country and the fact that it gave birth to the Internet is just proof that we're teh best country on the planet. Although February and President's Day is long gone now, I found this interesting pic of Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President of The United STates.

I don't know who got it in their head to photoshop a clown and our former Commander In Chief, but they did a good job. The real question is: what are they trying to say, if anything at all? Are they mocking the position he held? Are they lampooning the man himself? Is this a criticism of the American system of government in general? I'll leave you to your own decisions in this matter.

My Take On The Candidates

2008-03-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of options out there for the American voter in 2008. I don't know who I'll vote for, I don't know who you'll vote for, but one candidate that is a true dark horse in this campaign is Cthulhu. You might nit recognize Cthulhu at first. He's been sleeping for quite some time. Which is a good thing, because if he had been alive he would have been eating men's (and women's) souls, and generally causing a bad time for everyone.

But now he's back, and he wants your vote. While other candidates will simply get on a stump and tell you what you want to hear, leaving you guessing as to their real intentions, Cthulhu is up front and candid. He is an elder god, from the lovely city of R'lyeh, located in the South Pacific ocean, and he wants to wreak utter evil havoc on man (and woman) kind. Can you handle the honesty?

Thomas Jefferson Was A Super Computer

2008-03-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States was a super computer? Don't believe me? Well, apparently you didn't know that Mr. Jefferson was known as a "polymath" , AKA super genius. A quick run down of his write up on the ever-so-knowing Wikipedia reveals:

As a political philosopher, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment and knew many intellectual leaders in Britain and France. He idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a strictly limited federal government. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786). He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the co-founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated American politics for a quarter-century. Jefferson served as the wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781), first United States Secretary of State (1789–1793) and second Vice President (1797–1801).

A polymath, Jefferson achieved distinction as, among other things, a horticulturist, statesman, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, author, inventor and founder of the University of Virginia. When President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Did you catch that? The dude did just about everything you can imagine, a few times over ... just before breakfast. Oh, and he loved to have sex with his slave, Sally Hemings. That's what America is, bad ass contradictions left and right. I love liberty! I hate slavery (but, you know, I have a few slaves that I plan on freeing just as soon as I get out of debt ...)

Prison in the Fils

2008-03-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

Has anyone else seen this?

Is it jsut me or does the Filipino prison system seem like a cake walk (literally)?

Long Time, No Post

2008-03-03T12:02:00.000-08:00

So it has been ahwile since i posted on this blog. I know, I know, bad blogger! But I'm back now, and that's all taht counts. Shut up, yes it is.

Anyway, I would like to lead the charge, as it were, with this:

RESPECT TEH INTERNETZ!

Wait a second, Web 3.0??!!

2007-11-30T14:30:00.000-08:00

Web 1.0 was the good old web of the 1990s. In those times, all client-side changes were the result of a server round-trip. The Internet was ramping up in popularity

Web 2.0 has been a little more than just a technological evolution. The staple of Web 2.0 has been the emergence of social media (Internet users creating most of the content), powered by mature technologies (DHTML, Ajax) on somewhat stable web browsers.

According to a recent article:

Web 3.0 is not a revolution either. It is yet another technological evolution destined to provide users with an even better experience, both online and offline. Web 3.0 will lead to the blurring of that artificial wall between the web browser and the desktop, providing a full — but secure — integration with devices and services exposed by the operating system.

Web 3.0 is just starting. Look around you and you’ll see that Web 3.0 technologies are slowly cropping up everywhere on the web. Google Gears, one of the first Web 3.0 technologies, allows you to build web applications that can work offline. Thanks to Google Gears, applications such as Remember The Milk, an online to-do list and task management system, can now work offline. The Adobe Flash player already allows application developers limited access to the webcam and the microphone. Soon, we’ll also be able to drag and drop files from the desktop to a web browser (see this Java Upload Applet for an example using the Java technology)

Another aspect of Web 3.0 is the use of stunning graphics, smooth animations, high definition audio and video, 3D, etc. and all of this inside a web browser!

If so, I am looking forward to it!

Very Usseful Post

2007-11-08T22:42:00.000-08:00

OMG! This is an amazing article on the Google No-Follow tag. It's amazing if you're into geeky things like internet based marketing science, I suppose.

It remains to be seen how significant an effect Google’s “nofollow” rule will have on reciprocal linking and link sales, with the level of understanding and acceptance of the rule among website owners playing a significant role in the outcome. One thought to keep in mind is the that the use of “nofollow” might actually leave an SEO footprint for Google to detect that a site has been “SEO’d”.

Beautiful Code

2007-11-08T22:40:00.001-08:00

Saw this and thought it was wonderful! HTML is way overlooked!

Have you used Alexa?

2007-11-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

Alexa is an awesome service to keep track of web traffic. It has a very comprehensive cache of data. Check it out!

25 Secret Perks of Working At Google

2007-11-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

Picked this up from Cracked.com, and I thought it was funny. You should, too! >:(

1. Google provides free custom detailing on all employee-owned Segways, motorized scooters, recumbent bicycles, and other widely-derided modes of transportation.

2. For recent computer science grads accepting an engineering position with Google, a popular social event is Google's "New Employee Orientation and Arranged Virginity-Loss Night."

3. Google employees who are about to become mothers receive 12 weeks of maternity leave; aging female engineers now coming to terms with the fact they will likely never be mothers receive two weeks of "Crushing Sense of Incompleteness Leave." (It is 50% paid.)

4. Googlers enjoy an Employee Referral Program, meaning, they receive a cash bonus if they refer management to any employee even thinking about leaving Google.

5. For all Google employees who've just committed a crime of passion, Google provides a two-bedroom safehouse just outside the city where said employee can lay low until "the heat" dies down.

6. Google affords all employees a $1500 monthly stipend for mandatory lava lamp purchases.

7. Google employees can commute to work via free company shuttle; it is piloted by retired colonel Buzz Aldrin.

8. To encourage collaboration, the hallways at Google are lined with whiteboards where employees can jot down ideas. To encourage active collaboration, these whiteboards are dusted with cocaine.

9. Google engineers make use of free on-site hair salons, specializing in both men's and women's unsavory bowl cuts.

10. To help relieve the stress of being tied to their computers for such long hours, Google provides employees with free online-based massage therapy.

11. Each new grain of sand in Google's beach volleyball pit is imported via extraction from the bikini of Rachel Wacholder.

12. Google offers a unique "literal 401k" retirement plan; for every dollar an employee invests, Google matches it with $401,000.

13. Following its acquisition of YouTube, Google began arranging employee tours of YouTube headquarters where in a windowless room they can rub awkwardly against lonelygirl15.

14. Googlers can enjoy fruit smoothies via osmosis in one of several on-campus Jamba Baths.

15. New Google employees each receive a keepsake Google hacky-sack filled with pulverized sapphires.

16. At Google's summer picnic the employees don't play softball or soccer‚ they hunt homeless men for sport.

17. Google's college intern recruitment video was written by J.D. Salinger and directed by Sidney Lumet.

18. At Halloween, Google sponsors a costume contest for engineers who dress up as their favorite line of code.

19. Google employees receive personal mentoring sessions with co-founder Sergey Brin, or at least one of the eight Brin replicants built in late 2005.

20. Employees are given beta test runs of exciting new Google software, such as the satellite imaging program Google Maps-of-Gisele's Bedroom and the adult singles-finding service Gspots.

21. The barista at Google's on-campus café is Juan Valdez. (Not the coffee brand icon, just a Latin dude named Juan who happens to make a really great latte.)

22. Google offers training and assistance to all employees planning to journey behind enemy lines in an attempt to rescue their POW fathers.

23. Google arranged that their regular opponent in corporate league basketball is always the team from Washington Generals, Inc. (To date, Google is a combined 238-0.)

24. Google engineers are given "20 percent time" in which they are free to pursue their own personal projects. This incentive has produced such efforts as Gmail, Google News, and 20% more employee masturbation.

25. Google provides free financial planning classes to all its employees. The session consists of just one tip: "Remember. Google. Fucking. OWNS You."

Some really useful websites!

2007-11-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

As I use the web on a daily basis, for long bouts of time often, I like to maximize the utility of the sites I need. I mean, the 'net is filled with all sorts of garbage, and you need to know which sites are better than others.

I've compiled below a list of some of the most useful websites I use. Enjoy:

Guerrilla Mail
Get a temporary email address that expires after 15 minutes. During those 15 minutes you can read and reply to any messages. Use it and feel like a fighter deep in the Cambodian jungle, staring out at the stars in between setting up punji sticks to stop the imperial dogs.
Ted
Some really interesting videos about varying topics.
Wiki Travel
A Wikipedia inspired website relating to travel. Written and edited by users. This site is one of the most useful of all travel sites due to its constantly being updated. Inherent biases in some areas, but this is the norm for Wiki environments.
Full Books
An index of thousands of books, free for you to read. Great resource to help you feed your mind!
Meta Religion
This site contains a huge number of articles about religion, science, and philosophy and is published in Spanish and English. Provides a context for some belief systems from which you may better understand their arguments and ideas.
Bibliomania
2,000+ free online classic texts plus a myriad of other articles/features. And who doesn't love classical text? Ubi est mens mea?
World Freedom Atlas
The, “World Freedom Atlas,” provides a visual method of understanding the issues of freedom, human rights, democracy, etc in the world.
How to Clean Anything
Literally…this site provides tips about how to clean just about anything.
Speed Test
A news site for broadband issues. This link is for a feature they provide that allows you to determine your IP address and test how well your broadband is operating.
Google Translate
This is another of the many cool Google applications out there. You can translate an entire web page or any other amount of text you need. There are a number of languages available. Especially useful if you have pages of text you need to translate.
Big Oven
This recipe-sharing site allows users to upload their favorite recipes or search for new ones. You can search by entering up to three ingredients, by keyword, or by rating. Explore new foods!

The Internet Is a Series of Tubes ...

2007-11-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

There are a myriad of ways to describe the wondrousness that is the internet. Senator Biden's analogy of "a series of tubes" is certainly a creative one. It's also one that inspired this lovely mash-up:

What Doesn't Work in Web 2.0

2007-10-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

I love Web 2.0. Could you guess by the blog title? :P As I've talked about before, I love the democratic aspect of Web2.0, I love the social aspect of Web2.0, I love the technological innovation aspect of it. All around, the concept is an excellent one, in my opinion.

But what I DON’T love about Web 2.0 is that, with the crush of minds yearning to capitalize on the movement, there is a rash of new sites coming out that are utterly sub-par. The websites themselves don’t bother me, that is, I have nothing against the aims of the websites or their creators; I think they are integral to getting new ideas out there, and advancing useful technology. What bugs me about the websites are, well, the bugs.

I won't get into the design aspect. I am not going to be the arbiter of good design taste in this article. If you wanna be cheesy and look like every other website out there that is, coincidentally, doing the exact same thing, then so be it. That's your business, and if that's what your marketing guy settles on, if you can live with it, so can I.

No, I won't comment on design, because there's a much larger epidemic at work that far supersedes pastels and stupid tech-speak. Namely, it's the code. Many times a user (like yours truly) will try to sign up for one of these sites, or once successful in signing up/registering, you try to submit something and the whole operation behind the glossy facade is revealed to be very shoddy coding.

That should be inexcusable. If a company is going to get the money together to make a website, they make sure that they pay the proper amount of money to get a decent coder that writes a decent app that won’t break when it is told to do something that the website explicitly allows you to do (i.e., SUBMIT CONTENT!). I won't, for the time being, get into specific sites and how much they suck because of their severe flaws, but we've all used them, and we know them. Readers are more than welcome to comment with their fave suck sites, if they wish. (Wait – what readers?! LOL)

I suppose, in the end, that this little quirk in website design and production will eventually work itself out in the form of those sites attracting little useful traffic and thus being forced out of the community. No users = no money, no money = no flashy website, no flashy website = no company. And so it's goodbye cheesy coded website. We can consider it Web Darwinism.

More On The Definition of Web 2.0 ...

2007-10-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

I've talked previously on this blog about Web 2.0 being like evolution, and I demonstrated some examples that I had come across. I think that particular view is a little more oriented toward the history of computers and therein data writ large, but that doesn't mean that it is necessarily incorrect or obsolete. It follows that as computers have evolved, so have the ways that we use them. Web 2.0 is an extension of how we use the computers and how computers, in turn, interact with us.

Today as I was browsing through the net, making my usual rounds, I came across an article written some months back on another blog. I figure the article contents are relevant here, given that this blog ( is concerned with, well, WEB 2.0!

From the article, I thought this was pretty funny:

The term itself is now trademarked and spawned a flurry of useless conferences where everyone gets together to talk about the conversations they have already had online.

Anyone interested should check out the comments section of that page, and add your own 2 cents if it's that important to you.

One thing I really appreciate and enjoy about Web 2.0 is the use of the internet as a platform, and making the web a tool that (any)one can use. That's genius! Web apps! What a concept! Taking our applications from local drives and personal computers and freeing up that limited space by running things from servers just makes me all giddy inside. I love that I can start a document, upload it to a server, allow my colleagues to access the file, modify it, and then upload a new version. For me this system is so helpful. It is efficient, and I like that.

I have to also be impressed by how well Web 2.0 lends itself to marketing and flat-out money making. To that end, for some, Web 2.0 is just a new marketing gimmick. It's a new forum to be exploited in new, profit making ways. I don't think there's anything wrong with that; profit and capitalism do bring about a lot of innovation, and innovation (i.e, new ideas) brings about change and improvement. Improvement is good, if we learn anything from the new internet economy and the dot-com crash of 2000, it is that if you stay still too long in this new economy you will very quickly become outdated and will be left behind.

Another aspect of Web 2.0 that gets talked about a lot is how it is a socially supported web culture. Which is to say, that since a lot of Web 2.0 is dependent upon user interaction with not only the site itself, but other visitors and users of the site, it very naturally breeds an organic network. Sites like MySapce and FaceBook have seized upon this idea, and it has spilled over into the news media with the social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg.

Of course, if you really want to know, you can always just check here.

Technology and Business Intersect in places you might not expect ...

2007-09-19T15:13:00.000-07:00

Most people, when they hear the phrase "Web 2.0" instantly think of Silicon Valley in California. This is likely followed by another image of geeky high school/college kids sitting in a dorm room/mom's basement banging out code while being surrounded by empty pizza boxes and action figurines. (Wait a second, I just described myself ... !) Either that or they envision some Matrix-esque command center with people sitting surrounded by code spewing machines that can only be deciphered by a select cabal of noteworthy, geeky minds. While some of this imagery may be partially correct, there is more to it than that (isn't there always?)

For starters, there are more than just high school and college kids leading the way with Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was really coined by folks that had been in the industry for a long time, who had grown up with computers when they were young, but were far beyond high school/college years themselves. It was these folks, seasoned, older veterans of both business AND computers that captured the idea of the web, what it could be, and what it was/is becoming and managed to put all that not only into words but also into (potential) money making business plans.

As it is, Web 2.0 harnesses the power of the crowd, the social collective as it exists throughout the internet, today. It is democratic, and that is good (but sometimes very scary, too). In keeping with Democracy, I recently read an article that analyzed investments into Web 2.0 by different regions of the United States and was pleasantly surprised at the conclusion. Who invested the most money in Web 2.0 this year so far? Most people would think that it has to be California/Silicon Valley. I would have thought that, too. However, it turns out that New England led the way for investment in Web 2.0 this year, by a whopping 65 percent over what they had invested in the same sector during all of 2006. Wow, the money current got a little quicker, eh?

Of course, this should really come as no surprise, as the old Yankee noggins are pretty good at making money for themselves. If there's an industry to be exploited, a commodity to be purchased and sold, then they'll find it. That is the United States' mantra as a whole, but I think that whole East Coast mentality in terms of business, not to mention the proximity to Wall Street, certainly adds to things. It is literally their job to find ways to make money, to fund markets and make profit, so it was only a matter of time before they took a good look at Web 2.0, what it is and what it does, and decided to throw some money into the pot.

I see all of this as very positive for the development of Web 2.0 and the Internet writ large. Money helps get ideas off the ground, and it helps improve existing ideas. It inspires competition, which is beneficial for the overall health of any market or industry. Of course, money comes with drawbacks as well. Sometimes it inspires a "feeding frenzy" which is reminiscent of a "race to the bottom" where people invest large sums of money unwisely in companies or an industry as a whole with the belief that there's another sucker behind them in line that will end up paying the tab at the close of the party (anyone remember Pets.com?), so long as they get out first.

I sincerely hope that this influx of funds from heretofore unconventional sources is not a dooming note or death knell for Web 2.0. Personally, I think that with the underpinning philosophies inherent in Web 2.0 (social networking, democracy) this risk is greatly diminished. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best. What's great is that WE as USERS of the internet are part of Web 2.0, so any money that goes into it goes to you in some for or another. Pretty cool, eh?

Worst comes to worst, my knowledge of Matrix-esque streaming code is pretty decent, my parents have a nice basement and I DO love pizza ...

Cool Video About Web 2.0

2007-09-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is Evolution

2007-09-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is really amazing. It is changing a lot of things, all based upon how we interact with our computers. In a way, Web 2.0 is making the computer a more fluid extension of the human mind. Now, I know that scares some people, and for good reason. No one wants to be The Borg (well, some people do, but they are usually at conferences with lots of laytex on), but the amount of information and the ways in which we can harness it are necessarily limited by our innate humanity. This is not in and of itself a bad thing. We all need to unplug awhile. Remember, human beings evolved BEFORE the advent of computers. We invented them, and thus we are not necessarily adapted to the needs of a machine. Go figure.

But data is power, right? With this in mind it only makes sense that we should, as a species, manage it the best that we can. I know my tone sounds a little high here, and perhaps a little much, but humanity has struggled with knowledge and how to control and manage it since the first people began to write. As the methods of information and retention evolve (say, from papyrus reeds to paper and then to data on chips) so do the methods for managing it. It has to. In a way -- and again, I apologize for the tone – because writing and human knowledge are born of human minds, it only makes sense that the way they are managed should, too.

Tim O'Reilly, one of the guys heavily responsible for coining the term Web 2.0, wrote up a little “chart” of some things that were representative of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. On the left you'll find the original/Web 1.0 sites/ideas, and their respective evolution after the dot-com crash of the early 2000s. I think it's useful, and I'm going to reproduce it below:

Web 1.0 <---------------------> Web 2.0

DoubleClick ----> Google AdSense

Ofoto ----> Flickr

Akamai ----> BitTorrent

mp3.com ----> Napster

Britannica Online ----> Wikipedia

personal websites ----> blogging

evite ----> upcoming.org and EVDB

domain name speculation ----> search engine optimization

page views ----> cost per click

screen scraping ----> web services

publishing ----> participation

content management systems ----> wikis

directories (taxonomy) ----> tagging ("folksonomy")

stickiness ----> syndication

Much of Web 2.0 doesn't revolve around the old paradigm of something having a hard boundary. Instead, much of Web 2.0 can be thought of a using something akin to a gravitational core. Many times this core can be thought of as a set of principles and/or practices that tie together a number of similar sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles. In other words the Web 2.0 concept is intended to function as a core “set of principles and practices” that apply to common threads and tendencies observed across many different technologies. Some sites will be more adherent to those ideals, and thus you will have varying degrees of distance from the ideological core. Despite this rough guideline, there has been little consensus about where 1.0 ends and 2.0 begins.

(on a side note, I tried to format the list in a really neat table format, but Blogger apparently *doesn't* support tables. What's up with that?!)

Welcome to Web 2.Wow!

2007-08-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is my first post to this new blog, and I want to welcome you, and thanks for reading. I aim to explore the world of web 2.0 here, a new phenomenon in the evolution of the Internet. If you are not familiar with Web 2.0, Wikipedia describes it as:

The phrase Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.

I agree with much of this definition, which would make sense, since Wikipedia itself could be described as a result/example of Web 2.0! It's sites like Wikipedia that really inspired me to start this blog -- the usability and incredible functionality have been impressive and I feel like writing about it. I cannot tell you how many times I've needed a quick reference point on some arcane point and Wikipedia was there to shed some light on the subject.

Through this blog I will not only cover new events in the Web 2.0 world, but I will also explore new things for you, the reader. This will include covering new sites, and even demonstrating/experimenting with their functions. All my results will be documented here, with comments turned on, so that I can take feedback about the sites I am visiting, the functions I play with, and listen to anything else you've got to say.

On that note, I'll let you know some of my fave Web 2.0 sites right off the bat, as these will likely be covered first, and if I am accused of having a bias, I want to own up to it right away!

Digg: Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control.}

Reddit: reddit is a social news website where users can post links to content on the web. Other users may then vote the posted links up or down, causing them to appear more or less prominently on the reddit home page.}

Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization.

Delicious: The website del.icio.us (pronounced as "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.

Yelp: Yelp is a company that operates a social networking and user review website by the same name.

Thanks again for reading, and check back later for more good stuff!