Archive of October 2005
eHub interview
I’ve been honoured with being interviewed by eHub about fileNice. Check it out here, and check out the other interviews here.
In other news, Preloaded made it into the NMA most respected list for the fourth year in a row, this year reaching the dizzy heights of 5th. Yep, we’re the fifth most respected interactive agency in the UK. Go us!
Oh, and might as well throw this one in… Google Reader, a Google RSS reader.
01:58 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: ehub, filenice, emily changWeb 2.0
As shit luck would have it, I just spent 10 minutes writing a nice piece about Web 2.0 only to discover that hitting escape while using the Shiira browser refreshes the page and removes all my hard work. The irony isn’t lost on me. A little Web 2.0 style trickery could have seen the article auto saving itself every 100 characters or something. Still, now I have nice opening introduction for those who have no idea what Web 2.0 is or what I’m on about.
You see, effectively, all Web 2.0 is (other than a buzzword) is the updating of the way the web works for the end user. The technology is here now to make web applications behave in a way much more useful to the user.
So when does something make that transition from being a mere buzzword to being useful and tangible? My definition would probably be the moment it crosses over from being talked about by developers to being talked about by users. When I started Ajaxifying (that’ll be a word in about week) fileNice I’d never even heard the phrase Web 2.0 (or Ajax for that matter). I only found out about these buzzwords from sites linking to fileNice.
Now though, for me, Web 2.0 is at that crossroads, it won’t be considered a mere buzzword much longer. I’ve become addicted to watching this transition, both as a developer (check out mHub for a daily zeigeist of Web 2.0 development) and as a user (check out eHub for the same but from the user perspective).
As a user, not so long ago I was looking for a well written, user friendly and above all useful groupware type app. Everything I found was either bloated with features or absolutely starved of them, particularly in terms of connectivity. Now all of a sudden the seems to be a flood of very very well written applications hitting beta or launch. My favourite by far is AirSet, beautifully functional without the bloat. The developers seem to be really on the ball and responsive too.
As a developer I’m starting to see a community of people excited about what each other are up to. The perfect example of this is SWiK – on the surface, a wiki devoted to open source apps and technologies. Underneath, one of the most beautifully subtle Web 2.0 apps I’ve come across.
When the buzzword gets used to build a community about itself, I think it has reached maturity. Give it a few more weeks and my Mum will be asking me about Web 2.0.
04:37 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: web2.0, buzzwords, airset, swik