Well, finally…the Internet. It’s a Web conference and the Internet was down for the 2 hours…geesh. So, this is a fun panel, more comedy for geeks than real information. First up, Andy Budd Creative Dir, Clearleft Ltd talked about how Web 2.0 isn’t really anything. Just something old that is repacked in a shiny new way. His definition: “Web 2.0 is a state of mind. It’s a zen thing. It’s the sound of one hand clapping.” He basically makes fun of all the buzzwords that get dropped in the tech world, longtail, tipping point, leverage. According to Budd, Web 2.0 consists of the following:
- Social interaction
- user participatiohn
- enhanced user experienc
- open data
Vag, Myriad Pro, Clarendon, Arial Rounded, Helvetica, DIN, Interstate…these are the fonts of Web 2.0, joking that logos in Web 2.0 are chunky and 3-D. He said that lots of people misunderstand Web 2.0, just have a surface understanding.
Jeremy Keith Web Developer, Clearleft Ltd
When Keith took over the mic, he described that the components of Web 2.0 apps include Microformats, RSS, API’s. You put these things together and you get a mashup. He gave an example of a map mashup. For example, he showed an example of using crime data in Chicago along with Google Maps.
Something to check out is Twitter, which is a social networking site that asks the question: What are you doing right now? www.twitter.com
AJAX has taken over the semantic form of DHTML (even though they are the same thing…like everything else with Web 2.0.
Budd came back up and talked about a Web 2.0 name generator, hysterical…Zahoo, Mazu, rid.iculo.us, etc.
Keith ended his talk by saying that “a blog without comments isn’t a blog,” then a blog without absolutist opinions isn’t a blog”…then a blog without all sorts of Web 2.0 jargon, also not a blog.
In talking about the wisdom of crowds, his final slide said “None of us are as dumb as all of us.”
A question was posed about Flash, and they said that Flash was cool, but it’s too easy for too many people to use. You should use something as obscure and isolated and elitist as possible.
The most astute things these guys said was that all this Web 2.0 stuff is not new, it’s all the stuff that has been in the Web since the beginning, when Tim Berners-Lee developed it. Keith said that the biggest revolution was the hyperlink, and everything else just flowed from that. I was just in a panel on social media this past week (see below), and in my presentation, I said basically the same thing. Social media’s not new, but the Web 2.0 stuff has made it easier to use for more people and it has gotten more coverage. See www.cindyroyal.com/present/socialmedia.ppt.
Really, they were joking, but some of this stuff was funny because it’s true.