Archive for the “Web 2.0” Category
Suprglu: One place to blog all your blogs… and more.
Suprglu is YAWS(Yet Another Web2.0 Start-up), (so to speak) but scores high on innovation, I feel. Well, most of the innovation today is simply mash-ups. Yet, SuprGlu manages to stand out.Integration of the many services on offer is a prime thing that we speak about today. SuprGlu does just that. Although the name SuprGlu sounds corny (why drop the vwls, guys??), the site does more than make up for that.SuprGlu allows you to see your Del.icio.us links, your Blogger blogs, your Flickr fotos, and a host of other feeds on one page. So, the next time you tag a link and write a blog entry about it, while uploading a foto at the same time, you know where you can find it all aggregated!!
Check it out at shrikant.suprglu.com/
 No Comments »
The answer is simple. Web 2.0.
So what is Web 2.0? Think of it this way: You create a software that caters to a section of the market which nobody has tapped until now. You release the first version of your software. People like it and start using it. It becomes so popular nobody even dares to touch it. You are the sole leader. Over the time, better machines come out but your software is still the same. Your consumers slowly begin to dissent. You realize that it is time to act now.
So you gather your team of developers. They have been waiting to do it. In fact, most of them have been working away on small projects. You build new features and new additions to go along with the latest in the market. And you release a new version.
The Internet until now was the Web version 1.0. It is now time for a newer, more stable, more power-packed version to take over. Why? Simply because we as consumers want more. We are not satisfied with innovation. We want innovation tailored to the latest trends on the Internet. A couple of years ago it was the eMail and web-based eMail clients. Now it is Collaboration and Web-based Collaborative Clients. And that is why, it is time for a new version of the World Wide Web.
Google, Yahoo and MSN complied with the AJAX trend and the results were Reader, MyWeb2.0 and Start (Live, to some extent, too…) respectively. With Web 2.0 being the hot topic currently, who knows what can come out of their kitties.
I, for one, am waiting to see what happens.
No Comments »
There has been a lot of hype and hoopla over the term Web 2.0. I don’t know how many understand it. I, for one, am not a geek. So I won’t claim to understand it. But I am in the Web business. Therefore, I must try and understand it. When did things start moving? When did this trend get defined? Who are the players? What were they doing? What ARE they doing?First, the larger players:
Yahoo started of with Flickr, a community portal, which was built to share images. Flickr was probably Yahoo!’s first foray into Social Software. Seems to me as if they were testing the waters. The real product had been hidden from the public. The came Yahoo 360, a social networking feature from Yahoo!, combined with other Yahoo features. A one-page dash that made accessing any Yahoo service from the page easy. Groups? Click here. Mail? Click here. Private Message? Click here. Make friends? Click here.
If you thought that was Yahoo!’s secret weapon, sorry, you are mistaken. The real weapon was held back until the trends could be clearly seen. And that happened with Tim O’Reilly’s conference titled Web 2.0. Mean while, Yahoo! decided to take a bold step and released the beta (?) version of MyWeb 2.0, whether knowingly or unknowingly, no one knows for sure.
Google started off big, converting Usenet into Google groups. And then came Orkut. There was a time when Google said, it had no idea of taking over Orkut. on 15th of September 2005, however, Google turned on its words. There were a lot of debates on this action by Google, but it chose to remain silent as ever and sure enough, the debates died down. Then came Google Personalized Home and Google Reader beta, an RSS feed aggregator was recently released. It won’t be long before Google combines the power of its many
MSN cobbled together a few pieces and gave its users MSN spaces, but even MSN itself knew that was not going to work. So they closed their doors and came up with start.com - an AJAX based interface that defies the trend followed by MSN. All that MSN has doled out previously as products, suddenly seem cheap by comparison. Suddenly, MSN has this sexy look and feel attached to its products.
One thing I note is, every one of these giants has its own developer space. MSN has MSN Sandbox, Google has the much publicized Google Labs and Yahoo! has the secretively hidden Yahoo! Backyard (Just a guess, but like all secrets, everybody knows.).
And now for the interesting part. While the Goliaths have been resting on their laurels with these puny apps, the Davids have been silently chipping away shares in the market. Here are a FEW names:
37signals.com is an interesting collaborative tool.
Ups-Simple and ease of use.
People on the net swear by Zimbra & Kubisoft.
Positives - Contextualizing eMail
Prototype.com - Ajax implementation of your Workspace on the Web (Yes, Really.)
Positives. Drag and drop. Click and Save. Feel of a Desktop, work on the Web.
Blinklist - a Web2.0 implementation which allows people to share bookmarks with ‘blinks’.
Positives. - The collaborative approach
Technorati Tags - a Web2.0 implementation of collaborative blogs sharing with ‘tags’.
Positives - The collaborative approach
These are but a few examples of the many that I can’t even begin to count. Where were these players for so long? They were around, but suddenly they are being ‘discovered’. Why?
(To be continued)
5 Comments »
The story until now…
This is the last of three parts in a series on Collaboration. The first of the three articles presented a quick introduction to the historical aspects of collaboration. The second article discussed the concept of Wikis as the new collaborative concept. The final part of the series concludes with an analysis of the current alternatives. Possible alternatives to the current scenario are suggested, and probable outcomes described.
RSS - Really, Simple Syndication!
The primary element of a collaborative process is - obviously, participation. For synchronized alternatives, this is obviously mandatory and hence, somewhat redundant to talk about. For asynchronous software, the process of collaboration relies heavily on syndication - some sort of information must be given to ‘alert’ the invited party. And so RSS comes into the picture. RSS, or Really Simple Syndication (Yes.) manages this by drawing ‘feeds’ from the source and then sending the updated ‘feed’ across to the subscriber(s). Thus, when you add a new post to your blog, your RSS feed ensures that your new post appears in all your subscribers’ pages, the next time they log in or refresh the page.
RSS has added a new dimension to collaboration by speeding up the process of collaboration. On the other hand, RSS posts need to be aggregated and you need to visit the posts regularly to see which of your comments has been answered. One alternative to this is to subscribe to the comments as an RSS feed. But this, according to me, is merely patch work. A blog post (as Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! says ) has a short shelf-life. The discussions decay with the addition of every fresh post . Truly, I agree with Jeremy when he says Following online conversations is hard work. And remembering to unsubscribe from the comments aggregator is another job, that many people would love see become automated. But is that the solution?
A few stubs…
Aggregators and Newsfeeds help in tracking information. What do you do when your Nerws page becomes untrackable? Or how do you know when to track it? Refreshing the page is just an alternative, and definitely not one that many self-confessed lovers of automata would appreciate. With speed and time becoming two major factors in communication, the obvious requirement is of a tool that combines these two factors and uses them effectively. A tool that saves time and speeds up aggregation.
eMail is passe. All innovation comes with an expiry date. No, not because eMail has become ’square’ but because it has outlived its innovation. And eMail has outlived its date. RSS and Wikis are the new kids around the block. And they have come with an expiry date, too. Only, nobody knows what the dates are. Only time can tell.
Ergo Cogito Sum…
The collaborative process has seen evolution worthy of Darwin’s praise. From Messenger pigeons to RSS feeds collaboration has definitely come a long way. With each evolutionary step, the world became two sizes smaller. This, in times, where collaboration was just another one of those words that described brain-storming. With collaboration becoming the buzz-word today, I wouldn’t be surprised, if the major players like Google, Yahoo! and MSN soon step into the market with some of their own ideas.
Personally though, I feel, the time is ripe for another innovative idea to sweep the Internet junta off its feet. Much as I hate to admit, I am not too sure where it’s coming from.
I would give an arm and a leg to find out what that is. But I think, I’ll just wait and watch.
What about you?
No Comments »
The story until now…
This is the second of three parts in a series on Collaboration. The first of the three articles presented a quick introduction to the historical aspects of collaboration. Collaboration has made the best use of the fastest communication methods available in any given era. The article now continues with collaborative techniques and a critical analysis of the current scenarios.
Inter-Net-Working
eMails were the first instrument of information exchange on the web. Of course, they were built to serve that way. Information flew back and forth with ’suitable’ comments, modifications suggestions, revisions and what not. The process of creation received a shot in the arm. But soon, spammers joined the fray and eMails, once the lifeline of the internet, were reduced to annoying snippets of information lodged between pieces of Junk - like an annoying strand of edible fibre stuck between your molars.
Usenet was popular as an information broadcast medium. ‘Newcasts’ were read daily by thousands and millions of users on the world wide web. Links were exchanged and offices discussed the hottest usenet topics overs steaming cups of coffee. eMail was the prime information exchange medium. Many a discussion happened over eMail. But, owing to spam, and fragmentation of context, Usenet discussions had a short life-time. Even today, one can find a lot of posts hanging without a child thread.
Then came blogs and comments. Blogs were simply an extension of the Usenet concept. With an attractive interface and the subsequent ‘children’ appearing as comments to the original post, Blogs served as attractive modifications to the fora-like look of discussion groups. Moreover, the ‘author’ of the blog held exclusive rights over his ’story’. And the commenst that ensued after were merely discussions, however, intelligent (or not) they may have been.
The next step in evolution had to be something that combined the features of the three tools/utilities - eMail, Usenet, and Blogs. And so, the Wiki was born.
Wiki-wiki-wow-wow!!
The Wiki had the interface of a blogs, the versatility of eMail and the usability of the Usenet fora. Anybody who wanted to make a correction could do so. All he needed was a login. People are hailing Wikis as the next step in the evolution of the collaborative process.
This is not far from the truth. Wikis do offer you the ability to co-create. For the uninitiated few, here’s how wikis work: A member puts up a post (stub) on a Wiki board. Another member with additional information, adds his thoughts to the post, and they are incorporated into the main post. A third member, notices the discrepancies in the underlying concepts and edits the post accordingly.
The co-creative process progresses asynchronously until the final blend of ideas and concepts is found. However, it is worth noting that all Wiki posts are always stubs. Simply because, information is never complete. The deeper one delves into the subject, the more information is uncovered. No Wiki post is ever a final edition.
Wiki-ed!!
Many extensions of the Wiki-concept (but essentially containing the same fundamental element) have sprung up. The Writeboard is just one of them. Writeboard allows you to create and save edited versions of documents and allows you to compare any two versions online. Ñandu is a web-based Office application that allows you to edit and co-create Office documents online. Instacoll goes a step further (or backwards?) and allows you to edit your Microsoft Office documents in realtime. Instacoll relies on a P2P model wherein participating users are invited to download a P2P client that connects two (or more) users in real time for synchronized Collaboration.
(To be concluded.)
No Comments »
|
(Not to be taken seriously)
Entries (RSS)