Web 2.0

So what is this thing called ‘Web 2.0′? Well, glad you asked that question; it is an evolution in the way we experience the web, it is a tidal wave that’s taking the web by storm, it’s been around, being discussed in industry circles for a few years but I believe it’s fullness is only beginning to show. Web 2.0 is a concept that came to being from a brainstorming session between O’Reilly and MediaLive International; it goes back to about 2004 when the first Web 2.0 conference was held.

So what does it mean? Well, according to a paper by Tim O’Reilly (read it here or stream the audio here), Web 2.0 is characterized by a number of principles, that we will get into shortly. One way to learn something is by making clear what something IS NOT and then clarifying what it IS. In this case, what is Web 2.0 NOT and what IS Web 2.0, a simple way of knowing what Web 2.0 is NOT is by looking at it’s ‘predecessor’, ‘Web 1.0′; and this is what is proposed by O’Reilly:
Web 1.0 –>Web 2.0
DoubleClick –> Google AdSense
Ofoto –> Flickr
Akamai –> BitTorrent
mp3.com –> Napster
Britannica Online –> Wikipedia
personal websites –> blogging
evite –> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation –> search engine optimization
page views –> cost per click
screen scraping –> web services
publishing –> participation
content management systems –> wikis
directories (taxonomy) –> tagging (“folksonomy”)
stickiness –> syndication

Though the list is not exhaustive, it does show a significant difference in a sense of what is predominant on the Web as it is in comparison with what was (mostly) familiar, or what predominantly characterized the web in different ways in various areas from before!

According to Tim O’Reilly’s paper, the following are key distinguishing ‘principles’ that are emergent in Web 2.0:

1. The Web As Platform:

‘A Platform Beats an Application Every Time’

Here Tim makes use of 3 examples and some ‘Web 2.0 lessons’ that are evident in them:

Netscape vs. Google: The value of the software is proportional to the scale and dynamis of the data it helps to manage.
DoubleClick vs. Overture and AdSense: Leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.

Akamai vs. BitTorrent: The service automatically gets better the more people use it

2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence:

Web 2.0 shows an incredible enhancement in the leveraging of collective intelligence; collection, distribution and sharing as well as finding information and making sense of it. Here, Tim mentions the roles played by Wikipedia ad collective content creation and editing, del.icio.us and Flickr and the concept of folksonomy (a style of collaborative categorization of sites using freely chosen keywords, often referred to as tags.) and others, especially blogging, RSS and sites such as bloglines that aggregate RSS content and Permalink.

3. Data is the Next Intel Inside:

The race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespaces. In many cases, where there is significant cost to create the data, there may be an opportunity for an Intel Inside style play, with a single source for the data. In others, the winner will be the company that first reaches critical mass via user aggregation, and turns that aggregated data into a system service.

4. End of the Software Release Cycle:

Here, Tim O’Reilly takes notice of some key aspects that Web 2.0 companies have to embrace in their business/software development models. He claims:

Operations must become a core competency. Google‘s or Yahoo!’s expertise in product development must be matched by an expertise in daily operations. So fundamental is the shift from software as artifact to software as service that the software will cease to perform unless it is maintained on a daily basis.

And

Users must be treated as co-developers, in a reflection of open source development practices (even if the software in question is unlikely to be released under an open source license.) The open source dictum, “release early and release often” in fact has morphed into an even more radical position, “the perpetual beta,” in which the product is developed in the open, with new features slipstreamed in on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. It’s no accident that services such as Gmail, Google Maps, Flickr, del.icio.us, and the like may be expected to bear a “Beta” logo for years at a time… Real time monitoring of user behavior to see just which new features are used, and how they are used, thus becomes another required core competency.

5. Lightweight Programming Models:

Simplicity is the name of the new game!

A case in point being RSS and REST (Representational State Transfer)! Tim O’Reilly clearly notes the following key aspects of the Web 2.0 era in this regard:

Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems… The Web 2.0 mindset is very different from the traditional IT mindset!

Think syndication, not coordination. Simple web services, like RSS and REST-based web services, are about syndicating data outwards, not controlling what happens when it gets to the other end of the connection… the end-to-end principle

Design for “hackability” and remixability.

6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device:

According to Dave Stutz, “Useful software written above the level of the single device will command high margins for a long time to come.”

7. Rich User Experiences:

One word: Silverlight! and another word, Popfly

So, really, Web 2.0 is a paradigm shift in the way we look at the web, the way we get information from the web, the way we find information on the web, the way we develop the web, the way we build business models around the web!

Filed under: blog, content, cool, feed, google, information retrieval, microsoft, research, search, SOA, software, yahoo

Local Innovation for the Stock Market

A friend of mine has a start-up and they just launched a product to assist stock traders at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE). It’s a tool you can use to get analytics on the different companies listed on the NSE to avoid speculative investment in stocks. Here is a word from Tony, part of the team that created StocksPartner!

Do you invest at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) and have problems keeping track of share price movement?

I am pleased to announce the availability of a new stocks analytics tool for the NSE that will be of enormous help at www.stockspartner.com!

Its called Stocks Partner 2007 and I think you should use it too. It’s software for tracking price movement on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. Instead of having to go to a website or your email to download daily price lists, just run it. It keeps track of the same information graphically.

The software has these features
. Easy to use
. Easily Analyze Trends
. Easy comparisons
. Get information fast and easy
. Quick Automatic Updates
. Graphing facilities
. Auto verify to ensure graphs are correct
. Update from anywhere

Download a FREE copy from www.stockspartner.com today. You’ll love it.

Cheers
Anthony Shikali

Filed under: cool, kenya, software

What Everyone is Excited About – LINQ

LINQ or Language Integrated Query is probably the most exciting feature of what I will call the future of the .NET languages. It facilitates native, SQL-like querying of data sources within code (C#/VB.NET), and you can query in-memory collections, relational databases and XML data.

For example you can have query a string array or any queryable ‘object’ and do some interesting things with that. Here is a simple example using a string array

using System;

using System.Query;{	public static class simpleLinq    {

	public static void Main()

{

var names = new string[] {"Wilfred","Mwenda" "Mutua",."Mworia"}

		var namesWithM = from n names

                       where n.StartsWith("M")

		       select n;		foreach(var individual in namesWithD) 	{

Console.WriteLine(individual);

}

}

}

}

That simpler piece of code as you would expect return all the names beginning with ‘M’. Of course this is a pretty trivial example. Linq promises to open a door to enable devs to do data manipulation quite flexibly.

You will notice a few things:

The System.Query namespace enables you to use LINQ

var names : the type is inferred

The query structure is SQL-Like but not exactly SQL. The reason given by Anders in a video on channel 9 is that the syntax is actually represents the natural flow of thought. You want to go somewher where you know some interesting things are stored and probablt you want only a subset of these things so you go there and get them, (I hope I have not twisted my logic there).

Anders Hejlsberg is the point-man in Linq, this is a nice video giving a good overview of what LINQ is and where the C# team is headed with it.
Here’s a link to the official project site.
The Linq Project Overview
For tonnes of examples click here.
Scott Guthrie has some tutorials on his blog. This and This.
A look at Linq on codepreject.com

Here are two very interesting articles:

Article 1 & 2

Linq is only one of the really interesting things happening at MS that I am following, the Entity Framework and ADO.NET, Silverlight , DLR amongst others are just a few more examples of some of the good work going on there. I will get to post something on these over time.

PS: If you want the best scoop on all this… bookmark channel 9 and keep an ear on the ground.

———–
var toPost =
from p in wilfredsThoughts
where p.isPostable()
select p;

Filed under: cool, microsoft, research, technology

A Special Night

The last couple of dys have been a bit busy. Following up on my previous post, i did some more reporting with SSRS(That tutorial is still in the pipeline) and I also got a taste of some new things here and there as well as experiencially learning the DOs and DONTs of SSRS. SSRS is a great tool, the only thing i do not quite fancy is the way you have to tweek the report a lot just to get the right print out (and big-up to all those nice folks at MS who worked on it!). For example, there is this interesting thing that started happening with the report i built; on the client machine they would navigate to a page say 221 but oddly when they preview the print-out it would show a page or two ahead (like 222). I have not managed to track whats up with that but i gave the users a simple work-around that suffices.

Other than that I have as usual been doing a lot of work on data and some interesting reports, i did one this afternoon that almost had me jumping up and down in blissful glee.

Other than that, I have been watching all these videos about interesting stuff at microsoft research, stuff to fo with CLR research, an interesting item called DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) that they are doing with Ruby (I really ought to learn Ruby!), F# and Functional Programming, LINQ (very interesting, Anders is pretty good), Silverlight, Programming Language development  and some more stuff, but mostly CLR.

Frankly, a lot has been said about Microsoft, but I think they have some great work going on there and they work on pretty interesting stuff (but i still think Google totally rocks).

I am sure the title of this post has some eye-lids up in curiosity… so I will just leave it like that… for now!!!

Filed under: cool, fun, google, googler, interview, microsoft, research, software, technology, work

Research

Today I am in the office researching some tech options for a potentially major project. This is my first time to interact with Futures Trading and it’s so far been exciting, longs, shorts, hegding… quite interesting. As I write this it’s almost lunch time so I will probably leave in a few minutes to fuel up! This is like the first time in a while I have been able to just do some intense googling on a specific topic in a while and on something totally new, it’s awesome. And I like to think that I am probably the most learnable person you will come across.

I am back in class. Yep, after a one and a half week ‘holiday’.  This semester I am taking Business Law, Introduction to Macroeconomics, Information Resource Planning (I think), Cost Accounting and Computer Graphics (OpenGL here I come!). It promises to be an exciting semester. Yesterday we had Business Law, quite interesting, and the discussion was quite interesting as well.  In case the mix of subjects seems a bit wierd, BBIT is what I like to think of as the outcome of a bond between Comp Sci and BA. This semester has more of the BA than the Comp Sci. What I love about it is that at the end of the day not only do I get to learn all the cool and (mostly) geeky tech stuff but also see how it fits within the business world, plus I have a keen liking for business.

Some pals are asking me to host a 2-day party at my place, yep, 2 days, and there is another group of pals from church who want an overnight party, movies, fun n food! The same thing we did over new-year’s eve. It was awesome, we called it ‘The Wolf Plot’ so they are labelling this one ‘The Wolf Plot II’… cool, eh!

One warrior!

Filed under: cool, friends, fun, research, search, work, working

Yahoo Research Berkley

Filed under: cool, fun, research, search, technology, video, yahoo

New Visitor Log Thingamajig

Hi. How fo y’all like the new visitor logging thingamajig i put on the side bar. It keeps track of how many visitors visit the blog from different countries. And when the list of countries grows it will start to scroll automatically. Cooool!

Check it out!

One Warrior!

Filed under: cool, sidebar, thingamajig, tool