Web 2.0
It is appropriate to draw upon information from Wikipedia to introduce
Web 2.0.
Afterall wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org, is a classic Web 2.0
application.
Wikipedia is a
"Web-based free-content encyclopedia. It is written collaboratively by
volunteers, allowing articles to be added or changed by anyone with an
internet connection."
A cut down definition of Web 2.0 from Wikipedia is
"Concepts and technologies ... contributing to Web 2.0, include
weblogs, wikis, podcasts, rss feeds and other forms of many to many
publishing; social software, web APIs, web standards, online web services,
AJAX, and others."
"A website could be said to be built using Web 2.0 technologies if it featured a number of the following techniques:"
- CSS, semantically valid XHTML markup, and Microformats
- Unobtrusive Rich Application techniques (such as Ajax)
- Syndication and/or aggregation of data in RSS/Atom
- Support posting to a weblog
- REST or XML Webservice APIs
- Some social networking aspects
Here is an image that attempts to capture an overview of some of the terms
and websites associated with Web 2.0.
The font sizes are indicative of the relative importance of the terms
This web site has a list of 700 web 2.0 applications sorted by category.
Although we will look at a number of these technologies including RSS Podcasting and AJAX in this section be aware it is a rapidly expanding and changing field.