Leo's Updates Articles about Technology, Cycling and Politics

Web 2.0: Eliminating The Boundaries Between People and IT

My first article on this website will actually be a paper that is intended for my application to the Rutgers School of Communication, Information and Library Studies. There are many boundaries that separate people from IT, and more precisely, boundaries that separate people from experiencing the full spectrum of what IT has to offer. A big part of the problem is the computer itself. Computers, specifically ones that run Windows (which is on 90% of computers on the Internet) are insecure. They encounter worms and viruses, become infected by spyware. Software on computers that run windows are often hard to configure and install, and are often times entirely unstable. These problems turn many people off from IT. In addition, boundaries are created between the user and what he wants to accomplish on the computer. With Web 2.0, all of these problems can be solved. Web 2.0 is a revolution that is recently developing on the Internet. However, many people don't know what Web 2.0 entails. Technically speaking, Web 2.0 is a collection of technologies, such as AJAX, DHTML, XML, RSS that allow users with broadband connections to use programs which are located on a central web host directly through the Internet. However, to become more familiar with the possibilities of Web 2.0, you must first imagine the capabilities of accessing any service or program that you usually would from your computer (email, schedules, and bookmarks) from any web-browser equipped computer in the world. Imagine that you wouldn't have to worry about the set-up of these programs, as it would all be set up on the web server. Imagine that the interface for these programs was just as refined as the most well-developed program on Windows. Lastly, you could share things such as your favorite bookmarks, pictures, and news stories with your friends, access the favorites of others and see what other individuals are reading right now. These are all capabilities of Web 2.0 and merely in the past year have websites taken advantage of all of these capabilities online. Perhaps the first high-profile Web 2.0 website to be launched was Google's GMail service. Typical webmail programs have unattractive interfaces and lack features to products such as Microsoft Outlook. GMail, however, was different. GMail offers it's users over 1GB of storage space on each email account. More importantly, the GMail user interface is arguably streamlined and more appealing than any Windows e-mail clients. GMail also has more features than most email clients. These features, such as searching your inbox work much faster than with a typical client due to the processing done on Google's high-powered servers. AJAX powered Web 2.0 applications similar to this work on any modern web browser (such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera), without the need of installation. They are simply available to users at any time. Another high-profile Web 2.0 website is del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us). This website allows the user to store and view his or her bookmarks from any computer on the Internet. A user logs into the del.icio.us website and then proceeds to view or add new bookmarks. The innovative feature of this website is not only does the user keep his or her bookmarks in a central location, but once a bookmark has been added, the user sees what other users bookmarked the same website including categories they filed it under. This feature allows people do something that has never been done before, and is to easily find people with the same interests as them. Through this, an individual may opt to find more websites that they may interest them. The bookmarking also allows people to skip the more seedy parts of the Internet, such as spyware distributing websites, since it is unlikely anyone would bookmark those. del.icio.us is by its very nature a social website because it facilitates greater communication and interaction between people, In turn the result is a better Internet experience for all who are involved.

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