Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Geek Speak => Topic started by: chris on 25/10/2008 11:23:20
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It gets trotted out hither and thither "web 2.0" etc. But what actually IS web 2.0 ?
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Web 2.0
a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html) in 2004 to refer to a “second generation” of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in new ways such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.
It has become a popular, though ill-defined and often criticized, buzzword amongst the technical and marketing communities.
http://opencontent.wgbh.org/report/glossary.html
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Web 2.0 is mostly overrated hype.
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My opinion or observation is that it's a overused buzzword that means all things to all people.
People seem to draw some kind of distinction as in "web 1.0" being essentially static webpages, a one-to-many form of publishing that happened to be electronic. "Web 2.0" seems to be more broadly associated with user-interactivity and user-generated-content.
But when push comes to shove, "Web 2.0" is marketing-speak rather than any well-defined technical standard or anything like that.
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Web2 tends to use quite a bit of Ajax. Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript And XHTML for those who are interested) allows portions of the page to be updated without re-displaying the whole page. If anyone has used the chat facility on Facebook, that's the sort of thing I mean.
There has also been a lot of talk about the colours of Web2 pages. Personally, I agree with techmind's comment that it's "a overused buzzword that means all things to all people".
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To save starting a new topic...
what, if any is the significance of addresses that start with www2 or www3 ?
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To save starting a new topic...
what, if any is the significance of addresses that start with www2 or www3 ?
erm... (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fbestsmileys.com%2Fclueless%2F1.gif&hash=ba6e884e2ac18d739c0e89967c82862b)
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what, if any is the significance of addresses that start with www2 or www3 ?
You mean like www2.microsoft.com or www6.microsoft.com ?
I think these are just sub-domains.
Just the same as agentsdiary.blogspot.com or photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com or diamondgeezer.blogspot.com to name a few.
The last bit of the domain name (microsoft.com or mysite.co.uk) maps to an IP address, but the first bit gets passed to the server as some kind of parameter (as far as I understand). In some cases, servers can be configured so that subdomain.maindomain.com maps to maindomain.com/~subdomain
Possibly the subdomain can also be used to split the load between servers in some way.
But back to topic, the short of it is that www2.something certainly is in no way indicative of "Web 2.0" or anything like that.
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Is Web 2.0 the same kind of thing as I hear people talk abouth 'the cloud' ?
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No. Web2 doesn't dump rain on your head [;D]
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Web 2.0 is not defined in real terms at all. It's just what people are calling modern functionality.
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Is Web 2.0 the same kind of thing as I hear people talk abouth 'the cloud' ?
Maybe if it's more woolly thinking... but 'cloud computing' usually refers to the notion of having your software/applications (typically accessed via a web-interface) and data being managed remotely rather than locally. As the user, you don't need to know (or in theory even care) where your data/apps are being served from (out there somewhere in 'the cloud'), and different data/apps will typically come from different places.
The 'cloud' approach has the advantage of you being able to access your data and applications from any web browser anywhere (and not having to lug your own laptop around). If you want to, you might also be able to allow shared-access to your files/applications to friends/coworkers. It also has the further benefit that you don't personally have to worry about keeping the software up-to-date (or patched), and making backups etc.
The flip side is that you lose control - the service provider could pull the plug at any time, or change the a feature you relied on so it no-longer works the same way anymore. Since the present business model seems to be advertisement funded (rather than paid subscription) the end-user has little in the way of an enforceable contract with the provider. There's also obvious privacy/confidentiality issues. And do you trust their backups with stuff that's important to you, or which you spent many hours creating?
In some ways, this is a new resurgence of the user-has-a-dumb-terminal philosophy which goes around and comes around (and has been just around the corner, according to it's proponents, for what, the last 15 years?). Granted there may be some good applications for which the cloud model is a perfect fit, but it's probably naive to believe that the revolution is coming. [;)]
Google is testing the water with its Google Apps ( http://www.google.com/apps/ ) with the Google Docs (on-line wordprocessor, spreadsheet etc) being notable examples.
Another reason (excuse?) for excitement is the new business-models which web-based applications can open up, particularly pay-as-you-use. I can see valid potential for this with highly specialised software which more people might use occasionally, but could not afford conventional licenses. Conventional licenses for various forms of CAD software can run to £5-10k per user per year... which is clearly not viable for small companies (or small groups within large companies) who don't require anyone to be a full-time user of the software.
Needless to say, big software (ie Microsoft) also sees remotely-managed software as a nice easy way to take back control and kill off software-piracy.
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Web 2 as described by the W3C.org is simply a "concept" and "makeover" of old principles of web technology from learning by past experience.
Since it became faster and larger and much greater experience with how to handle users and inter-networking protocols(because of the massive advancements) it is a point that the "services" provided can be structured in an OOP(Object Oriented Programming / flow diagram / UML'ish) type of process management.
Part of it is the drive toward user participation by services that previously were not available in net construction techniques such as beforementioned AJAX.