It's the Age of Communication

Wayne McPhail came into our class recently to give a talk about the direction things are taking with regards to internet technologies and communitites. It was quite interesting and informative. He talked about Web 2.0 and various emerging social aspects of new web development.

Web 2.0 was a bit of a mystery to me prior to this day. I thought it just referred to the clean designs that used alot of funky reflections that is gaining popularity now. Beyond that it was a haze of uncertainty. Not so now! Wayne revealed to us (or at least me) that Web 2.0 is more than a slick clean design, it's communication and collaboration as well. Often a Web 2.0 site is focused on one single goal that often involves moving applications and data sharing to the internet. Wikipedia for example is an example of web 2.0 - it's a simple design and it's task is purely to share information and offer a collaborative encyclopedia of information.

Tagging is something that is becoming more and more popular. You see it on alot of sites like Flikr and YouTube. They seem to be a very usefull way of helping people find your content. Tags are basically key words that are attatched to content by it's owner. According to Wayne 'tags catch on like fashion' which would further extend their usefullness in helping people find and use data on the internet.

Social bookmarking was something that I had never heard of. It's a simple idea really - basically it's saving your bookmarks on the internet rather than in your personal browser. It makes your bookmarks accessible to the public. It allows you to share things that you find interesting and worthwhile with your peers. It's definitely something I will be looking into. Even on a personal level it would be nice to have one central place to keep your bookmarks. I find it a bit frustrating when I go to use a bookmark I've made only to realize it's on a different computer. Having them all in one centrally accessible location is a great idea.

RSS feeds are something that has been gaining popularity for some time now I think. It's not something particularly new but I think more and more people are making use of them. It's a very convenient way to keep up on the latest news from sites you like or tv shows you watch. Alot of shows are using RSS to disseminate podcasts of their shows to the public. It involves having an RSS reader and simply subscribing to the feeds that you want. I have to admit it's another thing that is 'on my list' of things to set up. Maybe when I'm done my portfolio, web authoring personal project, mulitmedia pioneering prototype, client project and animated short...

I think Embed Code being made available to people on sites like YouTube is great. You see alot of people taking advantage of it. It makes it easy for less tech-savvy people to include interesting things on their own site or facebook or whereever. Why not share it on your site when it's as easy as cutting and pasting the code given on the contents originating site. I think it's great that they are encouraging people to do this rather than trying to keep the content for themselves.

Alot of new social media is coming out now. Facebook is one of the more popular right now though from what they say it may be losing some popularity. It seems to be more and more commercial and alot of people don't like that aspect of it. Personally if it weren't for Scrabulous I'm not sure I'd be using it much anymore. But there are other things out there... Twitter, Utterz... that will be happy to take it's place I'm sure.

The emphasis with web 2.0 is obvious creating a community that collaborates, shares and converses with 0n and other. The world seems to just get smaller and smaller.