Web 2.

0 Tour
by Mike JC Smith “Web 2 Tour”
Links to resources (including this file) are available from: http://del.icio.us/mikejcsmith/web2tour
and here http://www.esnips.com/web/mjcs-Web2

Overview
This tour of Web 2.0 is provided to help teachers and presenters who have been tasked
to use or teach about this new facet of the Internet. Please note that this aspect of
information technology is fast-changing and this guide is probably becoming out-of-
date even as I press these keys.

Feel free to contact the author by email or phone if you need more help. We are very
aware that the teachers’ the (initial) level of knowledge in these areas may be quite
low. The content covers semi-technical areas of the useful (and often entertaining)
‘new’ Internet phenomenon known as Web 2.0.

A good place to start is Wikipedia, the rapidly expanding online encyclopaedia with a
major point of difference – anyone can add or edit the content. Wikipedia is itself an
excellent example of what Web 2.0 really means.

All necessary materials can be downloaded from the Airset Teacher and trainers group
area, the homepage of which is publicly available here:
http://www.airset.com/Group/Home.jsp?gi=hIOWRJajOBxN

Mike Smith has also set up also two guest accounts for access to Airset member only
areas such as files and calendar:
username/email: teacher@mjcsmith.net
password:
username/email: student@mjcsmith.net
password:
These passwords are used during my presentations and may change from time to time.
Contact the author if you need the latest password.

Further Research

This guide is very brief and cannot cover all that is Web 2.0, but we hope to have
inspired you to explore further.

The Wikipedia gives a comprehensive account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Links to these and other useful resources are here:

http://del.icio.us/mikejcsmith/web2tour

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 Introduction to Web 2.0
The World Wide Web (or just ‘the web’) is what most people would be familiar with.
It is the interlinked collection of publicly available Internet sites. It does not, however
encompass all of the Internet – only what is publiclly available. Web 2.0 is a term that
loosely covers the newest parts of the web. There was never a term ‘Web 1.0’ before
the advent of Web 2.0. The term Web 2.0 just serves to describe some of the newer
websites with particular attributes.

The basic difference between Web 2.0 and the original web is that the focus of who
generates the content has very much shifted from the website manager to the people
using it. That is to say, the general public can now much easily put their own material
on the web. This change in focus has dramatically changed both the type of content
dominating the web, how people use the web, and also critically how the people share
that content with each other.

Let’s compare some typical sites: older static sites (Web 1.0) and newer ones (Web
2.0). Older sites are mostly static and offer limited interaction with the visitor, newer
sites are extremely interactive and allow visitors to add comments and perhaps other
content, as well as links to their own site or browser. Do you reckon these sites to be
Web 2.0?
http://iteslj.org/
http://telstra.com/
http://www.mjcsmith.net/
http://del.icio.us/
http://www.drivl.com/
http://www.airset.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/
http://www.myspace.com/
http://www.newzealand.com/travel/Australia/
http://wordpress.com/

While it has always been possible for people to generate their own web pages, it has
never been as easy as now using Web 2.0 sites. These sites offer abilities for people to
post their writings, photos, videos very easily and quickly without the need for special
tools on their local computer. A key concept in Web 2.0 is that people can share their
posted content, and make comments on other people’s content. Another key concept
is that of ‘tagging’ (explained below) allowing people to very easily find exactly the
type of content they are seeking.

So these are the key concepts to Web 2.0

• anyone can post content,
• sharing content easily and widely,
• commenting on other people’s content, and
• tagging content for easy finding of material.

These attributes of Web 2.0 have rapidly created new communities of truly staggering
proportions – like nothing ever seen before in human history (a dramatic statement
but true!) These have come to be called ‘folksonomies’.

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Web 2.0 Examples – A Cook’s Tour
Blogging

Blogging came very early in the advent of Web 2.0. A ‘blog’ or ‘web-log’ is simply an
easy way to post a journal on the web. In fact journalists were very early adopters of
this technology. Now every man and his dog has a blog.

Wikipedia’s article on weblogs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
A review and comparison of different weblog sites:
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm

View my weblog containing a version of this very document here:

http://mikejcsmith.blogspot.com/

Photo Sharing

One of the first things that people really wanted to share was photos. Email was
always problematic for photosharing, particularly with the larger files sizes from
modern digital cameras.

Flickr http://wordpress.com/
Flickr is a very popular Web 2 site specialising in photo sharing. It was one of the
original Web 2.0 sites and is now one the biggest. It has a simple interface and is
adding features all the time.
Others:
http://www.smugmug.com/
http://beta.zooomr.com/
http://www.pbase.com/
http://www.bubbleshare.com/
and dozens more.

Tagging became a way to categorise photos, allowing people to easily find material
they were interested in. Tags are simply keywords attached to items. People search
the web based on these tags – a simple yet powerful technique.

Social Bookmarking Sites

People have always posted their ‘favourites’ or weblinks on their own sites, and new
Web 2.0 sites appeared to allow easier sharing of weblinks.

Delicious http://del.icio.us/
Craigslist http://sfbay.craigslist.org/

This is where the concept of tagging really started to takeoff and it has the potential to
rival the power of search engines (such as Yahoo and Google) because it places the
function of labelling back in the ‘hands of the public’ rather than in a select group of
paid people – possibly with commercial interests, or in some computer algorithm
interpreting ‘what you really intended to search for’.

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Personal Sites and Social Networking

Then people wanted to share more information about themselves and create a more
personalised space for themselves on the web.

MySpace http://www.myspace.com/
MyYahoo http://my.yahoo.com/

MySpace started out as a site for developing your own personalised spot on the web
and it continues to have this focus. Members tailor the look of their site and can have
the full range of Web 2.0 paraphernalia: photos, videos, blogs, sharing, linking,
favourites, messaging.

Wikipedia has a huge list of social networking sites for all types of online
communities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Some of them specialise for example functioning as a travel diary and meeting place.
http://www.wayn.com/

Video sharing

The advent of broadband Internet allowed video content to be shared

MySpace http://www.myspace.com/ (again)

You Tube http://www.youtube.com/
These sites offer an ability to upload and share videos which has caused a huge ruckus
in the Hollywood film industry with Viacom trying to sue YouTube (recently bought
by Google). However recent developments may have defused the situation (film
companies may be releasing legal videos through MySpace).

Other video sharing sites (including some photo sharing)

http://www.vimeo.com/
http://www.pickle.com/

Not Just for Fun – Useful Tools for Life and Business
Email

Email was one of the earliest Internet tools, pre-dating even the original World Wide
Web, and has always been one of the most useful communication tools for people.
People generally received an email account through their work or University, however
this caused problems as people moved about, or with employers becoming anxious
about personal mail at work.

Online or web-based email allowed people to keep their email account name
unchanged even when they moved jobs or ISPs (Internet Service Provider). That
meant, for one thing, that you could put an email address on your CV. Early accounts
had quite limited space and people often complained about mailboxes overflowing as
their friends started sending them digital photos (without shrinking them first).

Web-based email providers:

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Hotmail http://www.hotmail.com
Rocketmail (now part of YahooMail)
Ozemail (now part of IINet)
YahooMail http://www.yahoomail.com
Google GMail http://mail.google.com

Calendars

Other useful tools people use in their everyday lives are calendars and diaries, long-
used out as paper form and then on personal computers, and more recently on portable
electronic diaries and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and also the latest smart
phones.

As people wanted to carry more information around, Internet sites started to offer
online storage, calendars and address books. This also allowed people to more easily
share their files and calendars with their colleagues, initially, and also their friends,
families and social groups.

Yahoo and Google have offered email-based discussion groups for a long time, and
before that were ‘bulletin boards’, allowing like-minded people to keep in touch and
up-to-date on events of their common interest. They both now offer online calendars,
address books, blogs etc for free and many commercial variants also exist.

The issue then becomes synchronising your (now extensive) online information with
your local PC or PDA. As of writing, Yahoo and Google are probably the biggest
players in online collaboration (apart from corporate products such as MS Exchange,
and Novel Netware and other specialist corporate providers). Yet neither of them
provide a (reliable) synchronising tool for use with software on a personal computer
(e.g. MS Outlook, Palm Desktop).

This is a major irritation for many Internet users, and a reason why businesses
continue to feel ‘hostage’ to Microsoft Exchange Server, or similar, very expensive
and requiring specialist IT support. As of writing, the only online calendar offering
proper synchronisation is Airset (more below).

Yahoo Calendar http://www.calendar.yahoo.com/

Google Calendar http://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/googlecalendar/tour.html

The stage was set for the next generation of online ‘collaboration tools’. Here’s what
Wikipedia has to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_software

Note: The term ‘collaboration’ has a broader meaning in the corporate world,
encompassing team work tools (called groupware) such as screen share, distance
presentation delivery, audio/video conferencing, project management, shared editing
of documents, co-browsing and other team resource management tools. Well-
regarded examples of these products are offered by http://www.37signals.com/ These
interesting topics are not covered here, nor are other technologies such as VOIP –
voice over IP (Internet telephony).

Other highly regarded calendar applications include:

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30 Boxes http://30boxes.com/ (free I believe)
Airset http://www.airset.com (free, used as a working example in this guide)

Online Storage and Document Processing

Many people carry their documents around on USB keys, but if you intend sharing
your documents online you could use the many online services for document creation
and storage.

Online storage and sharing of general files:

Esnips http://www.esnips.com (5Gb of space)
Airset http://www.airset.com (1Gb of space)

Online Storage, Word-processing, Spreadsheets etc:

Google Docs http://docs.google.com/
Mofile http://www.mofile.com/en
Zoho Writer http://www.zoho.com/
Ajax Write http://www.ajaxwrite.com/

Blog-like online word-processing but with privacy and sharing features:

E-Blogger (now Blogspot owned by Google and accessible via Google Docs)
http://blogspot.com/ and http://www.blogger.com/
http://mikejcsmith.blogspot.com/ (my blog)
Word Press http://www.wordpress.com/
Scribd http://www.scribd.com/

A review of “Top 5 Free Online Word Processors by Lee Seats

http://freebies.about.com/od/freesoftware/tp/freeonlinewp.htm

Mashups Combinations Sites

Things now start to get very interesting with Web 2.0 sites combining content from
other Web 2.0 sites.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)
A current list of Mashups is given here (over 1700 at last count):
http://www.programmableweb.com/mashuplist

Check out these sites:

The 7 Wonders of the World http://coolmaps.7wonders.googlepages.com/
Actor Tracker http://www.actortracker.com/
Bikely http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Brisbane-the-River-Ride
Beam me up hottie http://beammeuphottie.com/

Most news sites are now mashups:

BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/
SMH http://www.smh.com.au/
ABC Australia http://www.abc.net.au/

And the all-rounders:

Drivl http://www.drivl.com/
Digg http://www.digg.com/

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Technorati http://www.technorati.com/

Mashups can be truly astounding. Imagine being able to see what people all around
the world are reading and commenting on in real-time – right now. To see what is
happening in the blogosphere try this amazing timewaster:
http://labs.digg.com/swarm/ (my current favourite)

The Giants – Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Amazon

Yahoo and Google currently dominate the consumer market in Web 2.0 each offering
combined email, personal website, groups, blog, maps, calendar, address books, chat
and more. Google additionally offers video sharing through its acquisition of
YouTube. To get an idea of what is on offer look at Google's ‘more’ page:
http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/options/

E-Bay and Amazon are both well known web enterprises using Web 2.0 technology.

All You Can Eat - RSS

How to keep up with all on offer on the Internet? Try RSS. Look for the RSS button
on any site (e.g. a news site) and have it delivered automatically to your browser or
your email.
ABC Australia RSS feeds: http://www.abc.net.au/services/rss.htm
All the mashups (in the world):
http://feeds.feedburner.com/programmableweb/mashup
Where’s the Fire http://www.technorati.com/wtf/

You cup will truly runneth over.

Working Example – Google Docs

Google Docs is not the only online word-processing site. However it is easy and free
and will serve our purpose here as a working example.

Google Docs
http://docs.google.com/
To use Google Docs you will need a Google Account. These are my Google Docs.
As you can see you can create documents and spreadsheets.

The top one Web 2 Tour is the document you are reading now. In this picture I have
just uploaded it (an early version) to Google Docs from my PC.

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You can share documents in two ways. Collaboration is where other people you
invite can co-edit your document with tracked revisions much like MS Word.
Viewers can not edit your document, only view it (although they can save/edit/print
their copy of it). Sharing with viewers is done in two ways: via a blog, or with a
public URL (web address).

The first document is not shared (as at the time this snapshot was taken, although now
it is). The second document is shared with viewers via a web log, while the third has
been published with a URL which I can give anyone I wish.

We’ll now go through the process of publishing the first document both ways.
Clicking on ‘Share’ brings up the following dialog box:

In this example we don’t want to collaborate so we click on the ‘publish’ tab on the
top right corner.

In this example we want to publish to both my blog and generate a publicly viewable
URL. Firstly to generate the URL we click on and then click OK.

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The web address shown will take anyone to your document on the web as shown
below. You can have the document automatically updated at this address. (This
address was for an early version of this document and is no longer correct.)

Next we publish it to a web log (Blog) by pressing the button (and OK).

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We won’t go into the blog settings at this stage but you can publish to most common
blog sites. Since Google recently bought www.blogger.com that is the easiest one to
use. My blog site is http://mikejcsmith.blogspot.com/ and you can see this very
document has just been published there:

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I have since replaced this post with the most current version, so the date will have
changed.

That’s the end of the Google Docs working example. You can save word processing
documents in a variety of formats including HTML (web page) and PDF. You can
also count words, spell check and print to a local printer. Try creating your own
documents and spreadsheets.

You might even dabble with your own blog - now that you have a Google account
anyway. While you’re at it have a look at all the Google goodies you can now play
with (as a Google member):
http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/options/

Working Example – Airset

Airset is not the only online calendar and groupshare tool available, but it is free and
works well. You will need to join Airset as a member to get all the features, however
the basics of this tutorial will work as a non-member.

Airset
http://www.airset.com

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First take the demo:
http://www.airenainc.com/Home_Page_Demo/Home_Page_Demo.html
You will need the latest Flash player for your web browser. The demo audio
sometimes starts before the video is ready to play. Just re-start the demo once you can
see the picture.

Ignore the part about mobile phone SMS services since they are available only on the
US at this stage.

I have a number of links to my Airset pages listed in my Delicious account. Go to this

link and then try visiting the public areas.
http://del.icio.us/mikejcsmith/airset
Note that there is no ‘www’ at the beginning of Delicious addresses. Delicious is an
excellent way to direct someone to a complex web address. For example the real
address for my Teacher and Trainer Group Page is:
http://www.airset.com/Group/Home.jsp?gi=hIOWRJajOBxN
Much better to have people enter via my Delicious area.

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If you become an Airset member you can ask to join the Teacher and Trainer Group
page that I host. If you are also a teacher at ACE you can ask to join the ACE Group,
giving you access to an ACE online storage area for file sharing. In either case we
can then share our resources, calendar, and weblinks, as well as communicate via the
group blog.

The ACE Group page has links to files for Power English Web 2.0 and this document.
http://www.airset.com/Group/Home.jsp?gi=VzChwXHOCpwP

Conclusion
This guide has only scratched the surface of Web 2.0 but I hope it has inspired you to
explore more for yourself.

Enjoy!

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Further exploring:

These sites give reviews, ratings and summaries of the best Web 2.0 sites around.
http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/
http://www.econsultant.com/web2/
http://www.allthingsweb2.com/

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 Produced by Mike JC Smith
Updated 18/10/2008 4:17 a10/p10
Document Name “Web 2 Tour”
Tags “mjcs lesson mikejcsmith web2 web2tour ace aceweb2.0”