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It is getting a little old hearing the techie community continue to gripe over and over again about the terms Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. If you are privy to such discussions or complaints, just about every argument that makes sense boils down to one thing: “Why is everyone calling it Web 2.0? There isn’t any such thing as a new version of the web. The underlying technology hasn’t changed for years. We can do the same things we could always do. Why is everyone being so naive and calling this ‘new wave’ of technology that has been around for many years something like Web 2.0, making it sound new and shiny? They [the marketing people and business community that coined Web 2.0 and use it daily] are so [insert nerdy insult here]!” – I can say things like ‘nerdy insult’, because I myself am a nerd, and embrace that fact with zeal.

To be honest, this position isn’t completely unfounded, because the facts are correct. Nothing has truly changed in the way the web actually works. I won’t waste time explaining why this is true, the explanation would put even some of the loyalist Trekkies to sleep.

The irony is that the argument itself presents a position as naive as the use of a term like Web 2.0. What makes this term, and others like it so necessary, is that by a generally widely accepted rule, those who make and understand technology can rarely explain that same technology to someone who isn’t technology inclined, and it is even more rare that they can actually sell it.

Techies are into details, and they have a terrible time selling ideas in terms that make business sense. To that end, techies are their own worst enemy. Generally a sarcastic and critical crowd, techies are doomed to look arrogantly down upon any jargon that doesn’t state exactly what they think is the true meaning of an idea, while ironically creating the need for such jargon by their own inability (and sometimes proud refusal) to communicate with a different vocabulary.

When O’Reilly Media introduced the term to the world in 2004, it gave some shape (vague as it was) to the ideas that were the genius of the dot-bombs and the future of business investment online. It abstracted a bunch of existing (and in some cases ancient) applications of web technology to a high enough level that decision makers could finally get on board. It’s a lot like the references to human generations we have created. We’ve had the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y… We are all still human with the same DNA, but they have figured out characteristics that can be generalized about each generation. Web 2.0 encapsulated conceptual use of technology towards social networking, collaboration, richer UI interactions, etc.

In conclusion, Web 2.0 exists because it sells. Screaming from the top of a building that the web has been, still is, and will be for a long time nothing more than simple data transmitted by packet switching enabled by HTTP over TCP/IP only puts people to sleep. Web 3.0 exists and will continue to exist because Web 2.0 sold, and the model seems to have legs at this point. And every techie that complains about it is more than likely complaining about a term that probably directly or indirectly saved or created their job.

You may or may not have noticed the recent buzz about Adobe releasing their first non-Beta version of their latest product Adobe Air. The interesting thing is that (in my opinion) Adobe doesn’t do a great job giving any business benefits that the new product brings to the table. And they use way too many buzzwords without any tangible application.

From the product home page:

Business Benefits
Adobe AIR offers an exciting new way to engage customers with innovative, branded desktop applications, without requiring changes to existing technology, people, or processes.

Haven’t we heard this before in various forms? Many times? And they don’t seem to do a much better job on the next page with their expanded explanation.

Adobe Air seems to be a natural evolution of Flash. Flash has served to solve two primary problems with the web (each ultimately associated with cost):

1. The browser wars can make creating Rich Internet Applications very expensive. Basically because you have to test the application and possibly make adjustments/fixes for every browser type and version that you want to support. So, if you want to support IE6 and IE7 on Windows XP and Windows Vista, you need to test the entire application or website 4 times if you want to be sure everything works and looks perfect. This can be very expensive. Flash solved this problem by delivering content through a plug-in, that allowed all Flash applications to look and act the same, regardless of browser, without the need of extra work per browser.
2. The existing standards for HTML/CSS/Javascript make creating and maintaining applications that have the interactivity and experience that you see in today’s best Flash websites and applications very expensive. Flash solved this problem by providing creative and development resources that were previously unavailable.

However, the Flash product is currently tailored to work in a web browser, with all of the assumptions and limitations that would come with that delivery mechanism. One primary limitation is that it is very hard to store very much data on a computer, creating a need to stay connected to the Internet to retrieve and store data.

This is where Adobe Air fits in. It is positioned to solve this last problem, by leveraging the existing technology that solved the first two. The other benefits that Adobe Air is, positioned to carry are, in my opinion, overstated since they are already addressed by many other technologies.

Ironically, Summers Pittman presented a fantastic business case for a product like Adobe Air in a recent blog post (before the Adobe Air press release hit the web, so Adobe Air wasn’t mentioned in the post). In short, he presented a real life (and very common) situation where he finds himself away from Internet connectivity with the need to work with Google documents and spreadsheets. The problem with this is that you can’t currently make changes to and create new Google documents without an Internet connection. And this is the same problem with 99% of all web applications. This is the problem that Adobe Air is positioned to solve.

An example of a Google Docs application using Adobe Air would allow Summers to create new and edit existing Google documents locally on his computer, without an Internet connection. Then, the next time he connects to the Internet, the application will sync his local documents with his documents stored on Google servers. This would reduce any need Summers would have for any other document creation and editing tool that worked offline, like Microsoft Office.

A couple of days ago, I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine about how weird it feels to go on a trip where there is no internet access. These, of course, are generally trips to see family or friends that put you in a location where getting online is usually not impossible, but a at least a chore, so you wind up doing without for some period of time. My buddy and I were joking about how it changes the dynamic of conversations, because you can’t just go “Google” something to help resolve a friendly debate, or look up something that you’re trying to figure out. My friend called it the “third brain” in a conversation.

While most of what we were saying was in jest to some extent, there was obviously some truth to it. And there was something about that truth that bothered me a bit, and got me to worry a little. Will the internet affect our ability to critically think for ourselves?

How many times a day/week do you wind up solving a problem by going straight to the internet?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to paint the internet as evil or something harmful. I’m only curious about what subtle differences in the way I think – or my children think – that it can impose, and what about those differences is healthy or unhealthy.

If more and more problems are solved and those solutions posted online, do I need to find ways to ensure that I maintain my ability to problem solve? What about my children?

Part of me knows how valuable it is to be able to find a solution online in a matter of seconds instead of taking hours or days to figure it out myself, or even worse taking up several of my peers time and energy as well. But at the same time, isn’t there usually some intangible benefit to just figuring it for myself?

I can see future households where children are taught to look something up online before they ask their parents. I can also see a workforce full of people who can’t solve problems without looking up the answers.

So, I pose the question to readers … is this a problem?

Anyone remember that 2002 Tom Cruise movie The Minority Report? One scene has Tom Cruise frantically running about the city. He eventually walks through some public area where there’s a slew of 3D hologram ads; and they all know his name and turn toward him, trying to sell whatever product they represent. This high-tech advertising is made possible because “in the future” humans have a tracking mechanism implanted in them. These implants can be detected and it seems that certain high-level information is publicly accessible to any system that can detect the implant. This publicly accessible information makes it possible for the ads to respond and adjust on-the-fly to someone just walking by.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s what every online advertising mechanism currently tries to do – customizing ads and content with what they know about the user viewing the content. The primary exception is that this ability has mostly been contained to the domain of the website, requiring a profile on that website. This ability to customize advertising to user profiles has been evolving for some time, from customizing ads based on searches (probably the most intelligent customization not requiring profiles) to ads, based on preferences and behaviors in online social networks.

So here comes what feels like another step towards that sci-fi future where no matter where you go or what you are doing, everyone seems to know who you are and how to sell to you.

Google has announced that today they will launch a new set of social networking APIs named OpenSocial. OpenSocial will provide a basic set of functions that will allow developers to access profile information and basic features from any social network that decides to accept the open invitation to play along. A band of existing networks have already backed the platform, including Plaxo, Ning, LinkedIn, Orkut and Friendster.

Google is taking the infamous Google approach to providing such tools:

Part 1) Magnanimously provide a solution that has the intent of making developer’s jobs easier (who currently find themselves having to add another social networking API to their tool belt on a regular basis)

Part 2) Create a more standardized social community so that ads can be delivered across more platforms to more people with more accuracy than ever before so that everyone can make more money (with Google at the center of that exchange)

I have to admit, it will be interesting to see this unravels as the product matures and the powers at be take sides.

Reference Links:

• A draft of the Google news release can be found at here at VentureBeat.
• TechCrunch does a good job of giving a high level summary of what the OpenSocial offering will include out of the gate.
• CNET has a nice article talking about how hairy this approach can get for Google.

I ran across an interesting article listing 10 Gmail interface tweaks available when using Firefox and I found them interesting enough to try out. After installing and testing each script I found a couple of them worth passing on.

These tweaks are actually GreaseMonkey scripts that you install and run in Firefox, and that only run when you are viewing and interacting with Gmail. So, if you aren’t a Firefox user (shame on you!) then this might be a neat introduction into what’s possible with Firefox plug-ins. The article gives a nice description of GreaseMonkey and what it is used for at the top of the list, so no need to repeat that here.

For the most part, I only found a couple of the scripts to be useful to me personally, and are my diamonds in the rough from the article:

#3: Label Folders – This does a fantastic job of displaying sub-labels as drill-down folders making it much easier to find things.

#4: One Click Conversations – I dig the pop-up that this script gives you with some info on the author of the email, and one-click ability to access all emails from the sender.

The others were either useless to me, or I just didn’t like the implementation. For instance, 1, 2, 6 and 8 in the list are just small interface customizations that didn’t really do anything for me, and didn’t seem worth the extra overhead of having to run the script when the page is rendered. These scripts can slow download times significantly depending on which ones you have installed and how many you have installed since each script has to run on page load.

Some people might like number 9 depending on how you use Gmail. This script adds the ability to assign different colors to each label. This can help you pick out particular labels in a list of emails on the screen.

The last one, number 10, provides some keyboard macros for interacting with Gmail, but they conflicted with macros I already had in place from other plug-ins. Assuming you have multiple productivity plug-ins installed you might experience the same thing.

Bonus Tip: Unrelated to Gmail, I discovered this yesterday on the Firefox Blog. You can specify multiple Home Page links in the Firefox options by separating each link with a pipe ‘|’. This will open Firefox with a tab per link. I found this pretty helpful since I usually start each day with a few web-based applications, and don’t typically open that many new instances of Firefox during the day. If you tend to open a new instance of Firefox frequently, this will be a drag because it will open each tab every time.

Enjoy!