The State of Web 2.0, The Future of Web Software 216
SphereOfInfluence writes "Despite some disdain for the term Web 2.0, the underlying ideas seem to be genuinely taking off from the seed of successful techniques of the first generation of the Web. Here's an in-depth review of the future of Web 2.0 and online software from Web 2.0 proponent, Dion Hinchcliffe. Like or hate the term, the actual ideas in Web 2.0 are turning out to not only usable but a growing cadre of companies are actively being successful with them. This includes the Ajax phenomenon being actively pursued by Microsoft and Google, widespread social software, and massive online communities like MySpace. These trends are all leading to predictions on the ultimate fallout of these changes, something increasingly called social computing. "
Why is it called web "2.0" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but, what about the porn? (Score:2, Insightful)
Summary of the article summary (Score:5, Insightful)
More like Web 1.0.2.14 (Score:3, Insightful)
Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is it called web "2.0" (Score:3, Insightful)
What future? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:2, Insightful)
MySpace is sort of a step sideways from GeoCities. Or down. Which of those depends on whether or not you're a teenage girl.
Re:Why is it called web "2.0" (Score:3, Insightful)
No. It's a pretty vague concept, but basically it's an overall design strategy / feature set rather than a particular implementation detail. Read the article, it explains it in more detail.
Re:Why is it called web "2.0" (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is just another guy giving his differing opinion on what "Web 2.0" is. You can find those in the thousands, and there is nothing about this one that makes it more compelling (in fact, and all apologies to Mr. Hinchcliffe, but his take seems even more vacuous and ignorant than most).
To quote from the article: "Web 2.0 is not a technology, it's a way of architecting software and businesses and companies see the value in the Web 2.0 way of doing business.". What an awesomely vague and useless statement that is. Basically what he's saying is "We'll pick whatever is successful and call it Web 2.0". The mention of MySpace is telling, given that MySpace is nothing more than a continuation of the sorts of social sites that appeared when HTML first hit the mainstream.
Re:Why is it called web "2.0" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree completely (Score:3, Insightful)
The "killer apps" of tomorrow's mobile infocom industry won't be hardware devices or software programs but social practices. --Howard Rheingold
In his recent essay, Paul Graham pans Web 2.0 because it can't be used to make predictions. Paul is right; the reason is that we have been classing Web 2.0 by its technology instead of its social implications.
Because, really, who gives a shit about technology? I don't care about technology, I care about me. I don't want to know how Web 2.0 will get me AJAX, I want to know how Web 2.0 well get me laid.
When caught in the throes of our meme 2.0 ideations, it should be the social over the technological that inspires. When we do this, not only can we make falsifiable predictions, but we can make actionable business plans and compelling emotional appeals as well.
So if you think it's too late to start a billion dollar AJAX business... You're right. But don't worry; the revolution isn't over, it's barely begun.
Web 2.0 = low-contrast pastel colors (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The irony of X (Score:2, Insightful)
More Management Bafflegab (Score:4, Insightful)
But all that other crap? Like (and I quote):
Key Aspects of Web 2.0:
- The Web and all its connected devices as one global platform of reusable services and data
- Data consumption and remixing from all sources, particularly user generated data
- Continuous and seamless update of software and data, often very rapidly
- Rich and interactive user interfaces
- Architecture of participation that encourages user contribution
Good God where does this dross emanate from? These are the engineering principles that bind together Web 2.0 concepts? It's notable that these attributes can also describe a client/server or 3-tier application, if you hold head just right. They could also describe how my grandmother's recipee book worked. Very interactive... encouraged user participation and contribution (that's what the pencil dangling from it was for).
If you're the hard-core engineering type, spare yourself a disorienting tour of pseduo-engineering psycho-babble and skip to the graphs at the end.
Was I too harsh?
Re:Why is it called web "2.0" (Score:3, Insightful)
HTTP deficiencies (Score:4, Insightful)
Each instance of said application is going to consume massive resources (on the server..again not the X server), and is ABSOLUTELY NOT SCALABLE!
As opposed to spawning a new process or thread to handle the HTTP connection? There really isn't much difference. Your criticism might be valid if the world still connected to the internet through ppp. It is not. Considering the explosive growth in high speed networking I think the X solution has finally come of age.
Compare the HTTP architecture with X. You have a few significantly incompatable browsers that are among the most complex programs ever written. There is no steady definition of what these cesspools of code really are. For all that complexity it is remarkable how little they do! HTTP servers are less complex but must be programmed at an absurdly low level. Get into multi-tiered architectures and you have to wonder if people are designing on acid. Page navigation is a huge problem for programs with dynamic content. Those pages are generated inefficiently again and again. Information is typically passed uncompressed across the wire, which is silly.
X client interfaces (GTK/GDK, Xt/Motif, Qt, ...) are amazingly rich and robust. Your programs work perfectly remotely or locally by definition. As a programmer you never see the X protocol, which is as it should be.
Network-wise this is not ideal either as their is a tremendous amount of inefficient bi-directional communication just to click buttons and type in fields.
Bi-directional communication is sort of essential for any network app. Also all significant actions behind those HTTP button clicks are done on the server side to there is no effective difference. HTTP interfaces are very primative of course they are more efficient. Your point is invalid.
Re:HTTP deficiencies (Score:3, Insightful)
Which HTTP servers do that? The most common architecture is to spawn a few child processes on server startup, not to do it for every connection. Don't forget that because HTTP is a stateless protocol, when a connection is closed, the process can just handle another request again straight away. There's a world of difference between X and HTTP.
I think you've completely missed the grandparent's point. It wasn't merely that the network latency is the killer, it was that maintaining a stateful connection for each and every every logged-on user (X) doesn't scale anywhere near as well as simply processing requests for information when they come in (HTTP).
You seriously think web browsers are "among the most complex programs ever written"?
I'm sorry, but what you are saying has simply no correlation to reality. HTTP servers must be programmed at an absurdly low level? In what way? And how are X clients any better?
Well yes it would be silly if it were true. HTTP has compression and caching built in. You don't seem very familiar with HTTP at all.
Of course there's a difference. The bi-directional communication happens with web applications when you are actually sending information back and forth. The bi-directional communication happens with X applications for each and every interaction you have with the application.