Hurry, speed, fast cars, fast lanes, fast trains …

……………still it takes 2 hrs to reach office

while in the villages, farmers just need 10 min,

……………..that too in their bullock carts 

Well, if you leave aside this contrast (due to traffic and other things), time, and
speed is the core in the business/social world. Every problem begins with a
need and right now there is a “Need for Speed”. This speed, in turn changes
the way we used to do business before.
 It’s a networked world.

Sun has been saying "The Network is the Computer." It's one of those rare
vision statements that is becoming more true over time.

The dot, in the “Microsoft .NET” framework, could be suggesting, lets stop
development for a moment and lets network existing technology together!! 

Internet is a network of networks.

Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix, stated a simpler formula for
defining the phases of the Web:“Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average
bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average

1 megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the
time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0.”

While we are riding Web 2.0 (Web 1.0 is a history now) currently, web 3.0 is
somewhere near but yet to make it’s impact.

What is Web 2.0 really, Is it the technologies like podcasts, blogs, feeds, social
community sites like ‘facebook’, social content sites like ‘you tube’? which
help individual socialize and keep his personal identity?.
It’s a collection/combination of these, actually.

Web 2.0 has three aspects to it actually.

1 RIA (Rich Internet Applications)
2 Social Web
3 Web Services.

But the fact remains. Any technology developed, for social or for personal
use, companies must see how to leverage on these technologies/ideas to take a
competitive advantage. In tern we to see, how these technologies impact
business, directly or indirectly
How do companies get returns this technology?
What are the risks associated in using web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise?
Let’s try and find some answers.
Before we proceed, request you to take a look at the following railway reservations sites,
http://www.indianrail.gov.in/ and http://erail.in/ , one based on web 1.0 and the other,on
web 2.0 technology respectively.

http://www.indianrail.gov.in/

http://erail.in/

Though I know, there are thousands of better web 2.0 sites available and we talk about
them later; I just wanted to give you a test of how transition is happening and to point you
to one clear fact that web browser is getting more and more powerful day by day.
RIA (Rich Internet Applications)

One RIA (Rich Internet Applications) which give an intuitive experience of simplicity is
www.like.com or www.amazon.com, www.igoogle.com just to name a few.

The www.like.com site has many interesting search paths into the merchandise than just
choosing ‘watches’ or ‘boots’.

Simplicity is a feature

Under any definition, Web 2.0 applications leverage advanced Rich Internet Application
(RIA) technologies such as Ajax and Adobe® Flex), along with enablers such as RSS and
blogs. From an end-user perspective, these technologies allow a richer, faster, more
interactive experience with browser-enabled applications and services. From an enterprise
perspective, these RIA.

The difference is usability, simplicity and speed.

Just visit http://www.jiibe.com/browse or http://www.twitter.com, www.flikr.com

and you will realize what I mean by simplicity.

If you observe all these successful sites, apart from the simplicity and some unique selling
proposition, a common platform is also there.

I remember reading an article which said, in web 2.0, the popular web sites are the once
which help in either:

1. Make individual/companies earn many (Media companies like Google/Yahoo/..list goes

on)

2. Help individuals network and socialize (Facebook/Orkut …list goes on)

3. Help publish their thoughts/work/art (flickr.com,wordpress.com ..list goes on and on).

This enhancement of Web 2.0 technology is a result of need for speed. It does not just
impact our networks, it impacts our psyche too! We need everything fast.

Users expect fast responses to the requests made on the web. The study shows that users
tend to opt for competitor web sites if the original site takes more than 3,4 seconds to
respond. Users expect a desktop kind of look and feel to the applications which run on web.

The same philosophy if you project further, I feel, it resulted in immergence of ‘Agile
development’ or scrum methodologies, and of course, these have inherit ant advantages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development) of their own.
The Social Web

Companies take advantage of another aspect of Web 2.0 The social web in Two different
ways viz., external facing and internal facing.

The internal facing web 2.0 features are

1. Executives blogging to employees

2. Corporate communication thro RSS
3. Intranet applications etc.

The external facing web 2.0 features:

Social Networking for awareness:

Pl visit http://my.barackobama.com

An Official Website of Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign. The site invites
supporters to create a profile, blog their campaign experiences, plan and attend events, find
other supporters, and help raise funds for the campaign. Obama already has an official
presence on Facebook and YouTube.
2. Corporate messaging thro blogs

A blog called fastlane from General motors http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/

Customers can directly communicate with top officials get their personal views on the
developments in the company.
How do companies get returns on technology:

Using Social networking for brand awareness.

VocalPoint is a unique marketing tool designed by the Procter & Gamble Company,
http://moms.vocalpoint.com

It's aim is to help companies better design their products by getting feedback from Moms
through surveys, product sampling and previews of products and services, while building
word-of-mouth among other Moms.

After all, they are usually the ones buying and using the products, so why not find out what
you think? They then use the information to generate valuable knowledge and insight for
their clients. This branding then helps reach 15 million people worldwide saving millions
of dollars in its Supply chain network.

Side note: The power of social web is so much so, there is a web browser called
Flock, dubs itself the “Social Web Browser.” is a derivative of the hugely popular
Firefox/Mozilla browser, but with “social network” features added.
How web 2.0 technology can impact adversely?

There was a new product launched by Sony, knows as PS3, “Play Station 3”. Just after the
release, a different company came out with a video on YoutTube, you can watch it for
yourself and decide to buy PS3 or not. More than 2.5 million users viewed the video the
impact on the sale was devastating. This one example says it all about the direct impact of
technology on business.

This leads to the next question, about what are the risks involved in using Web 2.0

1. Possibility of Excessive socializing

2. Users could spend more time writing blogs instead of their core responsibility
3. Duplication of information
4. Though, the concept of mashing is available, it's power yet to be optimized, so, currently
it might lead to maintaining up-to-date information at multiple places.
5. Inadvertently or intentionally, posting information that's private could lead to worries.

Bottom line: Where there is a power, there has to be a control.

In my next section, I will just give a brief of web services aspects of Web 2.0, and where
the web technology is heading for.
 Web Services
Software as a Service (SAAS) and Web as Platform are only two of the larger mantras of
Web 2.0. We can go on talking about web services, RESTful web services, but here, I
would like to make a note of one specific web service, Amazon, S3. I feel like saying, its
not just ‘Amazon’ but its, ‘Amazing’ web service  Pl take a look
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261, if you have not already.

It’s a Simple Storage Service (S3), providing Web Service based storage for applications.
Based on this web services, Amazon team has developed, an innovative search engine:
http://www.a9.com

One search result on ‘Ruby on rails’ gave me the following result.

Of course, the Google ‘BigTable web service’ is not behind at all. Bigtable is a distributed
storage system for managing structured data that is designed to scale to a very large size:
petabytes of data across thousands of commodity servers. Many projects at Google store
data in Bigtable, including web indexing, Google Earth, and Google Finance.

Now that they are opening these web services to general public, am sure many applications
will maximize this opportunity.

Mashups

A Mashup is a new service, that combines functionality or content from existing sources.
These existing sources can be Web Services (through the use of API’s), RSS feeds or even
just other Websites.
We see a growing trend of adding ‘maps’ to our web based applications. If you try and
generalize the behavior, what we see is 2 or more diverse applications get together (thro
web services) and share data for obvious advantages.

http://flickrvision.com/
http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/
iGoogle are some examples of Mashup applications.
 WEB 3.0, an age of Images and still …Imaginations
More Interactivity - More Personalization - Visual – Speed

We learnt the web 2.0 as a social web and as per the Wikipedia, web 3.0, is called as
semantic web. How is the transition, just due to speed? Definitely not.

For that we just take one step backwards and observe Web 2.0 content. Millions of blogs,
podcasts, web pages are being put up everyday. The information, though related is being
put-up in a piecemeal fashion. If this is collected, collated and mined properly, new details
could immerge, most probably, that’s why the word, semantic web!!

Pl take a close look at the site http://www.eyetools.com/

Eyetools can test your homepage, website, email campaign, landing pages, or shopping
cart. We can also test your competitors for you.

By supplying us with a URL or A/B mock-ups, along with a description of your

demographics, we can deliver to you eye tracking data on those pages, typically within 10
business days.

Expert interpretation and advice is included — we review your data with you to combine
our expertise in Eyetools data with your expertise in your business.

and you will observe how the same web page can be analyzed with advanced biometric
technologies like the one above or by companies like http://www.iristech.com/

I just want put these things in notice of the reader, how companies are working and taking
things forward. Let me give you one more example.
For a naked eye, to differentiating between the dog and a girl below is not at all difficult.
But can an image processing software, do the same?

That’s why on http://www.fliker.com without the 'tagging' feature, it is just not possible to
search the right images, but just wait, technology companies like http://www.numenta.com
are working on these lines and we can expect a new paradigm getting evolved in the near
future future.

So, there you are!! Generating, keeping, cleaning, collating, (mashup-ing ),analyzing
and progressing.

Read, http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/1/28/6781 an article of what

visionaries such as Bill Gates see the future as. I liked a comment somebody put as a
feedback to the same article which read:

“A good internet/computer experience is software that removes the limitations and

annoyances of the real world, while taking advantage of the things that only a computer can
do. Start with a real world metaphor, but don't be chained to it!”

Sometimes I imagine, like the one below:

Well, everything is possible in dreams and even in reality :).

Images from www.flikr.com
Farmer - 121383081_007d2e0499_m.jpeg
Train - 127166990_fd23fd4e45_m.jpeg
Train 2 - 2323062830_235b92884e_m

Assignments:

In the article, I just mentioned briefly on ‘search’ engines or

‘Search engine optimization’ (SEO). Request you to read on it further.

Discuss: Web 2.0 and mobile computing.