Web 2.0 "The seminar"

Web 2.0
hmmmmm......
Yesterday i attended training and it was regarding Web 2.0
I did not like the idea of attending that training owing to the fact, one i had to get up early in the morning (I got up at 7 which not early in the morning but the middle of the night for me) and two I had loads and loads and loads of work sitting on my head to be completed (which am still thinking how to finish).

But anyways with a real heavy heart and sleepy eyes I went for this training named Web 2.0.
The first shock i got after reaching there was that everyone (and I mean every bloody person) was in formals and I was in a crumbled top (I thing ironing clothes is a sheer waste of time) and jeans (which are crying for a wash and have colors sticking to them from other clothes and that’s the reason I wear then during the holi period).

Anyways with an even heavier heart and no more sleepy eyes I approached one of colleagues and asked him if there was a dress code for today's training.
And being helpful as he is always, along with his friends, gave a reply in total honesty "of course, what were YOU thinking".

Not that am scared of anyone or anything, but the very idea of being singled out on my extraordinary dressing sense was not appealing to me, at least not at that moment.
But then by god's grace my manager came (clad in a new shirt and pant) and I ran to him and told him how sorry I am for being "properly" dressed.

But he started laughing and said NP (that's no problems for the tech savvy ppl )
Anyways we proceeded for the actual seminar half heartedly and it began.
There were two trainers Jeff and Francis.

Both very good orator and had full command on the training or seminar despite of the fact it went on for the whole day (I still marvel their energy at 5.45 when they were holding the crowd since 9 in the morning).
The training was about WEB 2.0.
What is it?
How is it different from web 1.0 version...................?
How it is beneficial to anyone and everyone’s..................
And who's the boss in the case of web 2.0..................

At the beginning I thought I know a lot about web 2.0 and its functionalities and what’s going on but to my surprise what I knw was just the tip of the iceberg.

There is so much to it that no one could have ever stopped it from emerging as a winner.
It has to be the most popular thing as the contributions comes from the common man.
It’s us who would be driving the whole thing and that will make the news or the views are always up to date and current.

The fact that amazed me the most was that its not just restricted to Google anymore (although it still is the BIG DADDY in web 2.0, remember how its introduced Ajax in Google earth) but there are so many company who are dipping there hands in this.

Apart from the basic things that we can have there are various things like mashing up which means taking up one particular functionality of a particular site and mixing or mashing it up with the information provided by some other one.

For e.g. combining the info from Google maps and crimes from this we will get the mapped information of a particular place with the time and the date of the occurrence of time.
The above example is what http://www.chicagocrime.org/ is all about.
Similarly the Google maps thingy can again be combined with classified from some other source and VIOLA.... u get the information about anything present anywhere.
http://www.zillow.com/ is one such example which give information about real estates along with their locations.

Apart from this all these companies are also using the resources with utmost optimization.
If they have certain requirements (for their business) which consume lot of resources then companies look out for these requirements in other companies dealing in these filed.

They would then borrow these APIs (application program interface) from the company who has a huge resource of them and in return pay then certain percentage of their profit or it would be with regard to the kind of application they are using.

For example yahoo can lend its friends list to some other company which would use this buddy list for some other purpose and in return would pay yahoo a certain amount.

Also they talked about how everyone is moving away from the conventional mode of checking surfing the net and how it moving to small screen of their mobile devices.
And how companies are adapting themselves to give information, which would fit that tiny screen.
Sony mylo is an excellent example of one such mobile device.
And this web 2.0 is not just restricted to general things the network effect is for seeking out to each other.
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/ and http://ficlets.com/ gives everyone a chance to tell people what they have got.
ficlet is for all the writers who would like to contribute their great ideas to an already running story or may be they can start their own story.
similarly craigslist is for telling people what u have through ur resume. apart from the resume thing they also have communities all you need to do is find r group and tell them bout you and ask them whatever you want. apart from these there many other interesting site like http://technorati.com/ (Searches weblogs by keyword and for links. Also provides news from general news services and blogs)
http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home (Allows blog owners and pod casters the ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers)
http://navteq.com/(NAVTEQ creates the digital maps and map content that power navigation and location-based services solutions around the world including automotive navigation)
http://sourceforge.net/ (The world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications.)
http://digg.com/ (determines all site content by discovering, selecting, sharing, and discussing the news, videos, and pod casts that appeal to everyone)

It is so much out in the open that now even the companies are participating and asking everyone to participate in it just to create awareness bout their product.
one such example is GM. when they came up with the idea of Chevrolet Tahoe they hired the common people for marketing.

They asked people to use certain basic things that they provided and come with an Ad.
this idea was totally shunned down by various marketing gurus but then EUREKA...........
they came up with some real cool ads which gave then a lot of publicity and not only that the issues and the concerns raised by these ads were a que for the GM people and they very patiently listened to them and solved them.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4oNedC3j0e4



well there is so so much about the web 2.0 that i wont be able to complete( wonder how did they squeezed everything in a day) but still many things i said above are an example of how much the things appealing to common people matter today and how small the world has actually become.