Some cool web development cost images:
Web 2.0 Digitage 2012
Image by ocean.flynn
Logos from Web 2.0 are caught in the web somewhere a starry night, clouds, science fiction landscapes of our inner space, the synapses of the brain, the virtual space that is not abstract, imagined or really real.
Web 2.0, is a term coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2004 for a series of conferences on a revivified Internet. O’Reilly (2005) in what is now considered to be his seminal article claimed that, “If Netscape was the standard bearer for Web 1.0, Google is most certainly the standard bearer for Web 2.0 (O’Reilly 2005). He contrasted Web 1.0 with Web 2.0 by citing examples: DoubleClick vs Google AdSense, Ofoto vs Flickr, Britannica Online vs Wikipedia, personal websites vs blogging, domain name speculation vs search engine optimization, page views vs cost per click, publishing vs participation, content management systems vs wikis directories (taxonomy) vs tagging (”folksonomy”) and stickiness vs syndication. The conceptual map his team devised provides a sketch of Web 2.0 showing social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.
Although some argue that it does not exist as anything more than geek jargon, for this new user, it is a promising and surprising paradigm shift in the Internet and in software development. I began blogging using Web 2.0 freeware in September 2006. Numerous users like myself have access to sophisticated, ever-improving software technologies since the cost of development is shared among enthusiastic nerds and geeks (in a good way). Freeware on Web 2.0 is not proprietary by nature but is capable of generating huge profits because of the viral way in which users share in the development, marketing and growth of the product while improving connectivity and in content in the process.
NB Original Digitage Web 2.0 December 5, 2006 www.flickr.com/photos/oceanflynn/315385916
Selected webliography
Tim O’Reilly, 2005. "What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software". Uploaded 09/30/2005. Accessed January 6, 2007.
A sketch of brain neurons, digital layers: synaptic gap, starry night, Web 2.0 icons, clouds, using Adobe PhotoShop layering capacities
Get Wowd
Image by jurvetson
Wowd has entered private beta testing, and I got some invite keys for my flickr friends if you want to give it a whirl. Feedback on the concept and implementation are welcomed.
In short, Wowd has built a fully distributed search engine. No server farm. No web crawlers. It’s like the Skype of real-time search.
Besides changing the cost, and data center energy equation for a new entrant, we think this architecture will have some interesting implications. Instead of relying on content or link analysis for page rank, which is architected – and sometimes gamed – by the publishers on the web, Wowd relies on the real-time surfing behavior of real people. It’s hard to game the behavior of the crowd in the cloud as this scales. So, you get the real-time web, the social web, and over time, the deep web. Think of all those sites that block web crawlers or are hopelessly out of date in search results today – from social networks, to eBay and Craigslist to various niches, like used car sites.
It has been quite exciting to see the product in development over the years. When the founder, Boris, first came to us, he had a bold vision and a smart team of young developers in Serbia. It reminded me of the Skype team from Estonia in so many ways. Boris and I spoke with the founders or original programmers at most of the major search companies, and they opined that it couldn’t be done (with reasonable system latency). That made it all the more interesting, and we seed financed the company. In full disclosure, I am also on the Board.
We thought that we would need many thousands of users before the distributed search engine would “work” and that early search results would be skewed by small numbers, biased by a disproportionate number of Serbs =). It is fascinating to watch in the early days, as many of the properties of the system are emergent, and the quality and performance of the system should improve with scale.
So, if you want to play with it, the link below should take you past the gates to the Wowd site. Please do so only if you are curious and willing to play with early code. It is a browser app that works across Windows, Mac and Linux. If you like it, great, if not, please keep it open and check in from time to time to see if it has improved, and of course, constructive feedback is even better. OK, so here’s the private beta Invite Link. Click on the "Get Wowd" button there to join the Wowd cloud.
• Recent article and video in readwriteweb (their invite keys ran out, fyi)
• Blogs: Wowd, Boris’ Distributed Search
