Disruptive Technologies, Education and Some Social Issues » Web 2.0

Events 2.0, MobShare Style.

Kenney Jacob — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:16:39 +0000

Mobme is a complete web 2.0 company and our products and services follow the philosophy of user participation and enhanced end user experience. Now here is another product from us that makes events go 2.0.

The product, still unnamed can be installed on a PC or a laptop with a bluetooth dongle or built in bluetooth device. Once installed mobile users near the PC or laptop can send in pictures via bluetooth this software and after screening the image will appear on the projector screen.

If a college event uses this software, the audience can also participate by sending in pictures taken live at the event or pictures that are relevant to the event to be shown on the projector. Now thats really Events 2.0.

This is one usage scenario and users are free to come up with more ideas. After using the software, please report bugs. New feature requests are also welcome.

This software requires the latest version of .NET Framework. Install it before you install the software.

Here is the download link.Similar Posts:

What is Actually Web 2.0

Kenney Jacob — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 05:31:04 +0000

This is a small article I wrote for Technofirst.

Products have many versions. Is web 2.0 another version of the internet ? It is not. It is the same internet that existed 10 years ago. Then why is this hype around web 2.0 ? What is web 2.0 ?

The term web 2.0 has got nothing to do with a product version or some enhancements to the current internet. It signifies the change in approach to creating websites. The term Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O’rielly, the founder of the O’rielly company.

When we think technology wise, there is no difference between the web 1.0 and web 2.0. Almost all web technologies that existed 10 years ago are still here and most of the new names in web technology that we hear are enhancements of the earlier ones. The real change happened in the way how we use the technology to deliver a better user experience.
The three corner stones of web 2.0 are

Collaboration
Participation
Networking

The so called web 2.0 applications focus on these areas. The users can participate in an activity. The users can achieve something collaboratively. The users can network with other users.

Web 1.0 was the read only web. Web 2.0 is the write enabled web.

That ends the theory part. Now lets looks at some examples.

Blogs
Wikipedia
Social Networking

In web 1.0 content writers created websites and webmasters maintained it. There was no easy way in which a normal user could participate in any of those. Then came the blogs. Blogs let you create your own space on the internet where you can write about anything you like and your readers can interact with you through comments.

Wikipedia allows you to create something collaboratively. You can start by creating a wiki page and then others can join you in the process. Wikipedia is the worlds largest collaborative project where a complete online encyclopedia is created and maintained by the internet users.

Social networking sites allows you to be in touch will all your friends and family in a single website. Social networking sites allows you to express yourselves and network. Humans are social beings and social networks are the online extensions of our real world social interactions.

In all these examples its the users who are important. Users produce content and the same users consume it. Now they cannot be called producers or consumers because they do both. They are the Prosumers. And this change in focus to the users is the real essence of web 2.0.

The web 2.0 concepts are affecting every web application that is being built these days. The user participation elements can be found in almost every new website in the form of user profiles, tags, comments etc. Youtube, the 15 Billion dollar company is entirely built using user uploaded videos.

Are you still living in web 1.0 ? If yes its time that you moved on. You can enter the web 2.0 world by creating a blog and then sharing your thoughts with the world. Check out my thoughts about the web, wireless and education at www.kenneyjacob.comSimilar Posts:

JavaScript Again – This Time its on Your Mobile

Kenney Jacob — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:27:38 +0000

Mobitop is the product I am talking about. Its a mobile phone application development platform that combines the power of the web and the native features on a mobile phone. I met the guys behind this cool product in the modemo event.

Mobitop allows you to create rich web 2.0 mobile applications. With mobitop, a mobile application developer can develop applications very fast using standard web technologies and minimize porting problems.

The product is cool, but the fellows are not giving it the publicity needed. Also the licensing procedures are not very friendly. I hope some big company will acquire them and make this product free for development.Similar Posts:

Google 2.0 – The User Improved Google

Kenney Jacob — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:09:17 +0000

When the whole web world was going behind web 2.0, all the user participation thing was making headlines, digg stumble, all those social bookmarking hype was going, I was wondering why google is not trying bite. But now it seems they are.

Google is experimenting with a social bookmarking or social voting right inside its search. This feature will enable users to vote for search results. Users even can ban results are spam also. There is another cool feature to suggest a relevant link.

Now thats what I call Google 2.0

When this comes into implementation, this is gonna change the way SEO is done. Search is going democratic. This is gonna improve googles results qute a lot. What a great way to tap collective human intelligence.

Right now they are not planning to open it up to the public. Each users preferences will be saved in his login only. But I believe the plan is to use all the results to improve the search results.Similar Posts:

P2P also part of Web 2.0

Kenney Jacob — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:29:11 +0000

Web 2.0 is all about participation and sharing. P2p is also exactly about participation and sharing.

Every user gets to become a server and contribute to the community. Every user can simply share his files across everyone on the internet very easily.

P2p trackers are now capable to tracking usage data and then rating users. Leechers will be banned, seeders gets rewarded automatically, users who maintain higher ratios can download more files.

There are many communities that have evolved around p2p file sharing. P2p combined with social networking is taking shape now. Allpeers, a firefox plugin is the best example.Similar Posts:

Tagging – Light Version of Web 3.0

Kenney Jacob — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:21:52 +0000

Semantic web is considered the next big thing on the internet and its also called Web 3.0. Its an extension of the WWW where the web content can be expressed not only in natural language but also in formats that can be read and understood by machines. This will allow better search crawls and organization of information.

Tagging which is an essential part of web 2.0 can be considered as a light weight form of Web 3.0 Tags allows a broad classification of data, and these tags are machine readable also. The number of tags around a keyword emphazies on the importance of that keyword according a parameter that is set by the programmer.Similar Posts:

A Platform Always Beats an Application

Kenney Jacob — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 03:43:23 +0000

This is an sentence that is found in every presentation of Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media and the person who coined the term Web 2.0).

Windows as a platform

Windows became a success because Microsoft opened up its win32 API to developers and developers created millions of applications that required windows to run.

Facebook as a platform

Facebook grew from being ‘just another social network” by opening up developer APIs. Developers can make use of the millions of members in Facebook by using the API.

Amazon Webservices

Amazon has got developer services for on demand storage (S3) and Processing (EC2). Every developer now has got access to an unlimited pool of storage and processing power which he can access by writing 10 lines of code.

As I write this, I am understanding some of my mistakes in approach to various businesses which can be corrected by thinking about a platform instead of an application.Similar Posts:

Web 2.0 Business Model

Kenney Jacob — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:57:23 +0000

As you might be knowing, Web 2.0 is about user participation. All the web 2.0 businesses have two common strategies. This was discussed in the Web 2.0 summit in 2006. The strategies are

1. User Self Service

2. Harnessing Collective intelligence

User self service was a part of the the old web also. But the web 2.0 enhanced the user experience to a greater extent by improving the GUI. Ajax played a good role in this transaction. The web businesses were able to grow faster than any other business only because of the “Self service” aspect.

Web 2.0 businesses tap every users intelligence to improve the experience of other users. Collective intelligence of users can be seen in rating systems, tagging systems etc found in almost all modern websites. User generated content creates a lot of rubbish, but the users itself classifies and filters them.Similar Posts:

FastAlerts – The Ultimate Online Communication Tool

Kenney Jacob — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 03:25:08 +0000

FastAlerts is an online communication tool that joins the powers of SMS, email and voice call to help you be in touch with your staff, friends and family with just the click of a button. The interface used by fastalerts is the most advanced and its a complete web 2.0 application. The user experience of the website is really good. Take a look at it by visiting www.fastalerts.in

Using the application you can

Create and maintain a list of members online
Add them to different groups in a tree structure and maintain hierarchy
Select individual users or groups and send them SMS/email/voice call

The usage costs are the lowest in the industry. For a preview you will get a limited free account also here. So what are you waiting for, Register now.