The State of Web 2.0, The Future of Web Software

SphereOfInfluence writes "Despite some disdain for the term Web 2.0, the underlying ideas seem to be genuinely taking off from the seed of successful techniques of the first generation of the Web. Here's an in-depth review of the future of Web 2.0 and online software from Web 2.0 proponent, Dion Hinchcliffe. Like or hate the term, the actual ideas in Web 2.0 are turning out to not only usable but a growing cadre of companies are actively being successful with them. This includes the Ajax phenomenon being actively pursued by Microsoft and Google, widespread social software, and massive online communities like MySpace. These trends are all leading to predictions on the ultimate fallout of these changes, something increasingly called social computing. "

Comments

StumbleUpon

[gihan_ripper]

One of my favourite innovations in recent years has been StumbleUpon. It's a very simple idea — you install a StumbleUpon Firefox toolbar and click the "Thumbs Up" button when you come across sites you like, or the "Thumbs Down" button for sites you don't like. This way, StumbleUpon builds up a profile of the sorts of web surfer you are, and will then offer up a suggested website when you hit the "Stumble" button.

Using StumbleUpon, I've been presented with many really cool websites I woudn't have been able to find using Google, because I wouldn't have known to search for them. It seems my own interests are interactive flash websites, mathematics news, food, and philosophy. You mileage will vary, but will be catered for none the less.

Re:The irony of X

[jdeluise]

I'm sorry, but X is neither efficient for the client or the server. The premise behind X is that the application is running on the server (not the X server) and merely displaying on the workstation (the X server). Each instance of said application is going to consume massive resources (on the server..again not the X server), and is ABSOLUTELY NOT SCALABLE! Network-wise this is not ideal either as their is a tremendous amount of inefficient bi-directional communication just to click buttons and type in fields. This equals poor performance for the client (and what about printing, or other types of interactions that are now made far more difficult because the application is not actually running on your machine?) Have you ever tried to run X applications over a modem connection?? Well let me tell you the performance is miserable, even when you use X compression protocol modules.

I think the requirement of any scalable solution is for the application to in fact run on the client and merely communicate with the server. This cuts down on excess bandwidth usage, memory usage and CPU usage on the server while providing a much faster and better experience for the end-user. I'm not saying AJAX et. all is the solution but X certainly is not!