New to Web 2.0? Here’s a great book review for you
Exploring the Web 2.0: Second Generation Interactive Tools: Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis, Networks, Virtual Worlds, and More
By Ann Bell Katy
Crossing Press Copyright 2009
Web 2.0? What happened to Web 1.0? For that matter, what is the difference? And more to the point, who cares?
According to author Ann Bell, an online instructor and course developer at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, Web 1.0 faded away shortly after the Dot Com debacle at the turn of the new millennium. Before that, he says, the information paradigm was “publish and browse”; the web was there to read, not to interact with. Today, in Web 2.0, data streams from every conceivable source continually mix and match. As for who cares, knowledge, as they say, is power; Any entrepreneur planning to make a living on the web should pay attention to some of these things.
And this is a good book for someone who wants to learn more about the Internet but doesn’t want to get stuck in the technical quagmire. Author Bell does not torment us estimating kilobytes or explaining domain name servers. Web 2.0, he says, depends on sharing among users, and it aims to show us how we can all benefit from this collaboration. The chapter on RSS Feeds, for example, gave the clearest explanation of what RSS is and how to use it from everything I have read on the subject. Information diced and sliced and delivered on your plate to suit your needs. It also gives us a list of valuable links to use in building our own RSS feed.
For those of us who have always been enthusiastic about nonsense words like metadata and folksonomy, there is an interesting section that explains these terms and shows how they are important in social bookmarking, another system that any entrepreneur hoping to be successful online should know about. . from. Are you on delicious.com yet? Okay, so you understand the labeling. Of course, there are still Podcasting, Vodcasting and ScreenCasts, Wikis, Mashups, and Back Office apps to discuss.
Virtual office applications, or cloud computing as many call it, is a valuable addition to any business office. Free software and free storage that is far beyond the reach of your crashed hard drive. Not sure where to find these valuable things? No problem, Bell lists several of the best known services: Google Docs, Microsoft Live Office, and Zoho. (I tried Microsoft Live Office for the first time and found it too complicated; I have gone back to Google Docs.)
Some readers may find this book a bit light. Ms. Bell spends very little time on technical matters. With the exception of the section on RSS, it tends to be more descriptive than helpful in using the various elements it describes. But the book serves as an excellent introduction to the new interactive resources of Web 2.0.