La Vita Bella

According to O’Reilly there are 20 million citation of WEB 2.0 on google.Now Prashn Ye hai ki Why I am writing about it the 20,000,001 st time???… Because my flight to Delhi got delayed due to bad weather and I wanted to write something to overcome the fear of journey ahead.

Now the second question you may ask is why the person who has no relation with Web Designing writing about Web2.0. I am writing because Web2.0 fascinates me, not as a developer but as a user. We all feel there is a subtle change in the way internet has behaved after the 2001 bubble burst.If you don’t agree with me than think of names like Orkut,Gmail, Amazon, Blogger/Blogspot, flicker, eBay, Wikipedia, Napster,Google Map,Google Earth, Google Video,Double Click etc etc etc etc.Those who are technical may like to hear words like AJAX,RSS,ATOM,DashBoard,Flash and blah blah blah.

My biggest motivation to move from rediffmail to gmail was the message “Sorry,Your login failed!!!”.As my blog name suggests I have a good habbit of forgetting almost every thing in life, this obviously includes my passwords.Almost 9 out of 10 times I would type a wrong username or password and rediff(even today) will take ages and then return with an impolite page saying Sorry,Your login failed!!!.Now gmail also gives me the same message but in a flash of a second and on the very same page.

Gmail is tailor made for forgetful people like me.There is a kool mail dropdown list.I can mail,chat,maintain my budget sheet,save my google search,read news,get weather update and even (un)manage my dates with girl friends on google calendar .Look at Google AdSense.Now there are no huge un-necessary Naukari.com pop ups when I open my mails but fairly intelligently placed ads which depends on the kind of mails I am sending/receiving.Some of them are so close that I actually click them!!!.
When I use Gmail I don’t have to refresh my inbox, or press send/Recieve Button every second to check if some one has commented on my blog.Google does it for me.It uses AJAX(If you are a History lover it not at all related to the one you know from Greek mythology) a technology which divides several internet applications in independent asynchronous tasks.This means that when my chat session,AdSense,calender,and other stuff are still uploading,I can see my inbox and even send mails without having to wait for any usless stuff.

OK now enough of gmail Gun-gan we all know it.Lets talk about RSS or ATOM feeds.
Feed is a way of informing that a perticular website has been updated without actually visiting that site.This meant that when Govt Of India banned Blogger I could easily read posts of my loved one’s thru feeds. I don’t know if you guys(ok girls also) have come across with a site called reddit.It uses RSS feeds to publish news.One don’t have to visit BBC,CNN,FoX News etc etc to get updated,feeds from all news sites are shown at a single place.Doing this it also saves lot of bandwidth for the actual news website.
I will now give a simple but effective example showing utility of feeds.First type “Girls” in google and you will see it comes up with links on Suicide Girls,Girls Human Rights, Guerrilla Girls[..ehhh scary ] etc etc but when you type “Girls” on a feed based search engine it may come up with results like “How to friend a girl in 20 days”.I think the later would make much sense to you as probably it was most read article on girls..One may think why all of a sudden microsoft is scared of these mext generation companies.Microsoft’s market is different and is generally focussed on desktop application.But see as the internet speed increases, there would be no need of desktop, all those stuff that we do today on desktop would eventually move on the net.Clearly a warning bell for microsoft.

All this leads to one conclusion that while technology has taken one step, business has taken ten.The entire world is shaken today not because of numorous technologies, but because of the innovative ways these technologies have been used.Web2.0 thus cannot be just a set of technologies..
Then WHAT THE HELL IS IT??
People have different opinions.I think it is an idea which was left on itself to evolve. People from all corners of the world come and contribute to this idea.The ordinary user which was a mock observer a couple of year back is an active participator today. It is the user and not the provider of technology who changes the world.Don’t agree then see some of the individual blogs.They are drawing more people than many official web-sites present on www. Humor,Gyan, love, philosophy or “How to become a terrorist” you will find everything in blog world.
I also feel more attached to people when i read their posts regularly and I am sure those who read my posts may know me better than even my parents.

Take Wikipedia for another example.Any body can put any rubbish in it and no body will stop.Few days back I put my name in several avatars of Lord Vishnu.But still it is one one of the most widly used online encycopedea? Why??? because of some fundoo technology..NOOOOO.It simply runs as there are more people to put correct information than those who create nuisance.Today When I checked Wikipedia my name was removed from Avatars of Vishnu.(click here to see yourself).Somebody must have corrected it.Good people always outnumber bad but we simply don’t agree.

There are lots to say but I think I should move to airport before my bad luck strikes me again.

“Software Development is an Art, people take is as science and continue to hate it”

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Fun lovers: Sorry to bore you with a bad post,Just gimme three days, I will return from delhi and i will come up with a regular post
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Technical Purists: I have already admitted that Web Services is “Maya” for me.Please don’t mind if I have gone wrong somewhere.Your insights are very welcome