Web 2.0 The Future of web interactivity

What is Web 2.0? The concept was first coined by a brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International. The term might suggest a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to Web technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the web as a platform. What platform you ask? Well now the web is used as a platform for social networking,online banking,online buying & selling etc. The list goes on. Before, the web was only used as a tool for finding information, however now it has evolved into a platform whereby users can do a lot of stuffs. E-mails used to be popular back in the 90s, but it has been overtaken by web messaging - msn messenger, yahoo messenger.

Web 2.0 can refer to one or more of the followings:

• The transition of websites being isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming computing platforms serving web-applications to end-users
  
• A social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversion"
• Enhanced organization and categorization of content, emphasizing deep linking

The web has certainly changed over the years since its inception. Below, i'll list a few examples between web 1.0 which is the old web and web 2.0.

Web 1.0
Ofoto
Britannica Online
Personal Websites
DoubleClick

Web 2.0
Flickr
Wikipedia
Blogging
Google Adsense

The complex and evolving technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 includes server-software, content-syndication, messaging-protocols, standards-based browsers with plugins and extensions, and various client-applications. These differing, yet complementary approaches provide Web 2.0 with information-storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that go beyond what the public formerly expected in Web 1.0.

Web 2.0 websites typically include some of these features:

• Rich Internet application techniques, optionally Ajax-based
• Cascading Style Sheets to separate presentation from content
• Semantically valid HTML markup and microformats
• Syndication and aggregation of data in RSS or Atom feeds
• Human readable URLs
• folksonomies (in the form of tags or tagclouds, for example)
• Wiki or forum software to support user generated content
• use of Open source software, such as the LAMP solution stack
• XACML over SOAP for access control between organisations and domains
• Weblog publishing
• mashups, merging content from different sources
• REST or XML Webservice APIs

Web 2.0 may be short-lived as another emerging technology is appearing on the horizon. That technology that will replaced Web 2.0 is Web 3.0. Web 3.0 is about transforming the Web into a database, a move towards making content accessible by multiple non-browser applications, the leveraging of artificial intelligence technologies. An example would be having a database that websites can tap into such as your credit card number, personal details,address. Right now i'm sure that no one would want to share these details but however it will happen sooner or later probably in about 5-8 years time.

Below is a video on Web 2.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE