The Web 2.0 has arrived There were days when people were very excited with just being able to communicate using their computers on the hyper terminals .Then came world wide web and full fledged messengers working over internet protocols .There were times when Bill Gates said that hardware would become unimportant and software would take over the machines .So was thy wish and since then the windows has now become the most dominant Operating System all over .When the windows was at its peak Bill said the next generation will be dominated by devices that will be interconnected and they would seamlessly connect each other .
Today most of the applications and databases are updated and operated in real time than offline for example the recent BPL census in RAJASTHAN used the web based application and the synchronization for compiling the various subjects under the census .It was implemented with the help from the NIC(National Informatics centre) and the technologies based on the .Net framework.(PCQUEST JUNE 2008, internet sources) Web 2 arrived and the torch bearer of this civilization is none other than your family’s favorite search engine Google. Seemingly the powers of web 2 has gradually replaced the importance of OS as the vital component of computing applications .Almost all applications can now be found integrated in your browser only with support systems based on either JAVASCRIPT or FLASH or the newcomer silverlight. Whether it is office application , Blogging ,Image editing ,file sharing ,Networking or Albums; you find numerous online applications for suiting your needs and providing the equivalent support facilities as their cotemporaries are offering now .
ONLINE OFFICE : There are host of providers working in this field the main ones being the ZOHO , GOOGLE DOCS and THINKFREE. These sites requires the user to have an ID and password to login and but that’s the only thing required these services are absolutely free (except the cost to stay afloat online ,gee!).They are just designed similar to the traditional MS office applications. Google provides the Google document , Google spreadsheet and Google presenter the contemporaries of MS word ,MS Excel and MS PowerPoint .The options to save the file are plenty , you could chose the format in which you want to save the file be rtf, open office formats, zip and word file formats .The most important and the attractive feature is that you can create and save the file in google itself and it can be edited from various location through multiple user working on it .For example , you require a file to be edited after you have last saved it then the next user can update the file and the file in the ends remains updated in real time at all locations .And finally you can publish it over web where other will be able to see it . Google spreadsheet is the contemporary of the MS Excel , in fact most of the excel features are available on it and you can readily make all your databases online .An interesting feature in the Google spreadsheet is its analogous function to the VLOOKUP , HLOOKUP ; the “Googlelookup” this function actually searches the world wide web for the value in the data field !! Zoho is equally good office provider .Interestingly Zoho works faster than the Google Docsand offers about 14 different services including the project management software, web conferencing , CRM database and reporting an online organizer as well as the chat facility .Zoho is among the few online office providers that offers online spell check too ! Here too you can save the document in various formats like word formats , sxw ,PDF ,ODT ,RTF ,TXT and HTML formats .
BLOGGING: Blogging can be defined as : A portmanteau of Web and log-blogs are simply personalised Web sites that are as good as an online diary. This has become a transforming and most proactive phenomena in the web lately these days you even find the Indian bollywood stars hooked to blogging .This has been the mouth piece of the internet’s democratic character . Infact many a times the blogger have brought a real insight into the happening of the areas against the biased reporting . Blogger and WordPress are unarguably the best of blogging providers .Blogger was an independent company earlier but it has now been taken over by Google , so your google Id can work here too . Besides the blogger also supports the OPEN ID so that you may use you’re the same id across the various supporting sites .The blogger provides a lost of gadgets that you can apply to your blog like photos , links, RSS feeds ,videos ,polls ,labels or your own javascript or the HTML. There are a lot of templates to choose from in the blogger index ,still if you are the kind who is very keen to details a lot of sites provide free templates for the blogger site like the www.bloggertemplates.org , www.finalsense.com/services/blog_templates . Another good feature in the blogger is seamless integration with the youtube videos ,you can easily add your youtube videos for sharing in the blogger. Now the questions is if blogger is so good what’s different with the wordpress? WordPress is the favourite choice of the geeks .It provides the ability to put plugins-downloadable windgets that improve the functionality and tweaks in the weblog .With a few tweaks on the blog the blog just looks as if professionally designed website. Besides you have excellent facilities to export or import the blog from and to wordpress.
ONLINE IMAGE EDITORS : And finally the image or graphic editing part that catches the fantasy of every kind on the block and even of the great engineers working on it .Online graphic editing has not evolved so much as the offline ones but the start has been really commendable .However the image editors come with a pre requisite that you machine must have been installed with the JAVA-virtual machine or the flash plugins . The contenders in the fray include www.picnik.com , www.pixenate.com , www.snipshot.com and www.splashup.com . These site have the integration with the flickr , webshot , photobucket or other photo sharing sites. You can choose the image to be edited and get started with the editor right away .You can set the light , intensity , size , hue saturation ,cropping and various other aspects of the picture with the tools provided. My favourites include the splashup site , it has an easy interface and the most advanced features of the her pack. The interface resembles the interface of Adobe photoshop and would be a little intimidating to the people who would just want to crop or resize the pic but the splashup site offers many powerful tools .
SOCIAL NETWORKING: Most of us are aware of the social networking sites and the greatest fad of the young surfers in the net ORKUT. These come under the social networking sites. The largest of social networking sites is the FACEBOOK and it offers a host of services under its website.It has host of its own as well as third party windgets and applications that you can add to your own page and interact with others .
MASHUPS: In technology, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source. Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API (web services), although some in the community believe that cases where private interfaces are used should not count as mashups. Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS or Atom), and screen scraping. Many people are experimenting with mashups using Amazon, eBay, Flickr, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and YouTube APIs, which has led to the creation of the mashup editor. The architecture of Mashup web applications is always composed of three parts: – The content provider: it is the source of the data. Data is made available using an API and different Web-protocols such as RSS,REST, and Web Service – The Mashup site: is the web application which provides the new service using different data sources that are not owned by it. – The client web browser: is the user interface of the Mashup. In a web-application, the content can be mashed by the client web browsers using client side web language for example JavaScript
Overall the focus has now shifted to the internet and the coming decades are seeing the rise of this new space with Google is grabbing with both hand at every chance it sees .(Read the acquisitions of blogger, youtube and host of other web companies, besides of course spoiling the sweet adventure of MS with Yahoo by playing the spoil sport. Playing the influences in US govt policies on 3G and other technologies).Lets wait and watch ,the century saw the rise and fall of IBM, MICROSOFT and now may be GOOGLE is awaiting to take over.
