"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is." - George Bernard Shaw

Characteristics that define Web 2.0
• Dynamic content, viewable on multiple platforms.
• User contribution (user generated content or user generated value)
• Social media
• Online applications
• Harnessing collective intelligence.

First Characteristic

As mentioned in lab, the first characteristic is "dynamic content, viewable on multiple platforms." In other words, it's content within content, pretty much. This includes mashups and applications that take content from other places on the web (e.g. blog posts, news stories, podcasts, etc) into another location on the web. An example of this would be iGoogle. iGoogle allows users to decorate their page with applications that they choose. For example, my iGoogle page has an RSS feed from CBC, which shows me all the top stories at the moment. Another application is my horoscope, which is taken from tarot.com. All these applications give me content from another website (like tarot.com, or CBC) and puts it right on my google search page. Voila! Dynamic content, viewable on multiple platforms.

Second Characteristic

The second characteristic of Web 2.0 is user contribution (user generated content or user generated value). What does this mean exactly? This means that the user (you, sitting at home on your computer) can choose what content goes on a website. Generally examples of this are ones mentioned in lecture such as YouTube (where users put their own videos up) and Wikipedia (where users write their own articles). Another one NOT mentioned in lecture is websites such as forums like proboards.com or invisionfree.com. These are places where users can create their own forums, their own posting boards and their own posts and dictate what content appears on their forum website.

Third Characteristic

Social media is the third characteristic. Social media can be described as "online media that provide opportunities for socializing, connecting, sharing." So, pretty much the exact definition of Facebook and Myspace. Both these websites were created for the sole purpose of networking and being social. On these websites you can cyber socialize, share photos and notes, join groups with other people, plan events, etc. Another example of this would be sites like plentyoffish.com, or other online dating websites wheren you can create a profile for yourself and socialize with other users.

Fourth Characteristic

The fourth characteristic is online applications. An example of online applications could be the applications found on Facebook (such as the photo upload tool which comes with every profile, or the applications you have to join to use such as graffiti or games.) Another example of online applications could be online games such as Winterbells or anything really found at NewGrounds because all these things - applications, games, etc - are all "software that we’ve traditionally thought of as something you buy and install on your local computer. There’s a new trend towards software that runs online." All those things are just that, software that runs online.

Fifth Characteristic

The final characteristic, harnessing collective intelligence, can be described simply as things such as tagging. Tagging is giving keywords to content which makes it easier for users to find when searching for specific things. Tagging can be found on blogs, flikr, deviantART, etc. Anywhere that a user would be searching for something specific. For example, I could type in "orange sunset" to deviantART and get pictures of orange sunsets because the user who uploaded the content put the tags as "orange" and/or "sunset".

That's my blog for this week.
This semester is almost done! Phew. Will I make it? I guess we'll see.

Also, check out the album In Flight by Florez. Amazing.

S.