Social Bookmarking, a new trend in links sharing.

Have you heard about tagging? And wonder why people are using ‘tagging’ more and more. Do you know about del.icio.us? Are you using your browser for saving bookmarks? Then, you are still behind in web 2.0 world. More than two-million users are using del.icio.us. And many more are using Digg, StumbleUpon, Furl, Google bookmarks, Yahoo MyWeb.

These sites let you share your Internet bookmarks on their websites. You can access those and also can view others by searching on the site. Generally, for adding bookmark you need to add link, title and description.

del.icio.us uses collaborative filtering including searching. Where digg.com combines bookmarking, blogging and syndication. In Google, you can add & manage links using your 'Web History' service.


Look at this report from Addthis.com.

See the image link below this article with the text ‘Bookmark’, using which you can bookmark this blog. Once you click on it, you will see the list of social bookmark sites available.

Does adobe have an eye on Fauxto?

Web applications are applications which are accessed via web using internet or intranet. The main advantage of web application is ability to maintain and update without installation on client machine.

As web 2.0 progresses, RIA that is Rich Internet Applications started popping up on web, which has features and functionality of traditional desktop applications. People started working on flash based applications, and flex technology emerged. As flex was setting up on the web Ajax based applications with no proprietary like flex entered in. And it started a new era for webapps. Techies started comparing both Ajax and Flex. We will come to know which will sustain down the line.

As of now both flex and ajax based applications are used in web 2.0. Google’s gmail, Google suggest, Google maps and many services are Ajax based. However, Google’s chat gadget, Yahoo’s online chat, online streaming media like YouTube are using flex/flash technologies.

Office applications started online and spread to wide by the initiative by Google doc, spreadsheet and presentation. Now photo editing applications are also started entry in this new web. Check out these online photos editing applications comparison.

Apart from these, one application which really dragged my attention is flex based online photoshop, having very basic tools to play with image yet. Fauxto providing Canvas, Toolbar, Image info, Color info, Layer info with few Filters and Zoom in/out facility. Image crop, transform, editing is possible in it.

Adobe must be waiting for mature development in Fauxto, probably this will be their next acquisition after Buzzword.

There is a big fight ahead

Improvement in Communication between people, Improvement in Communication between separate software applications & Improvement in Web interfaces are major hit in web 2.0.

Many social networking sites Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube etc are connecting people worldwide. Web standards like XML, RSS etc for describing and accessing data, using which online applications are exchanging data within themselves. High use of single sign-in with wide range of online application, services as Google, Yahoo! providing. Real-time responsive applications using Ajax, Flex technologies are popping-up only in one browser window.

Now, when Google, Yahoo & Microsoft are having really tough competition these days among them, Adobe jumped into with acquiring Buzzword, a web-based word processor, a Flex-based RIA that represents the future of online collaboration. Before, adobe also announced Adobe AIR, Its Adobe Integrated Runtime, is a cross-OS runtime environment for building Rich Internet Applications, using Flash, Flex, HTML and Ajax, that can be deployed as a desktop application.

There is a big fight ahead.

Picasa Web, photo sharing web app from Google

A web 2.O application integrated with its desktop brother Picasa, having two modes of uploading photos. First is online, by creating online album and web upload option. Second is using Picasa on desktop which upload photos in bulk.

PicasaWeb uses an "unlisted number" approach for URLs for private photo albums. This allows a user to email a private album's URL to anyone s/he wants; the recipient can view the album without having to create a user account.

Other than this sharing feature, PicasaWeb is integrated with Google’s mapping service. While creating an album, it also takes an optional field, 'Location' and map comes beside it will point a location there. This will not only show album location, but also offer to place a picture in the map where we want it to relat. This is the cool thing I found in PicasaWeb.


Start sharing and mapping your album now!

Ref
Picasa Web
Picasa Desktop
Wiki – Picasa

iGoogle, making life integrated!

One more interesting thing I’m using more in web 2.O is Internet Gadgets. I remember before using it, I used to surf few sites here and there. I need to search for the related information and it was very much unmanaged.

RSS feeds; it was a solution for many news related sites, but how to use it on internet instead using few different desktop applications?!

I was often using google for many simple tasks like for many types of conversions, tips and tricks, stock values, keeping watch on portfolio, technology updates, dictionary, wiki-ing and mapping. With all this checking email, connecting with pals using IMs, todos, calendar.

Internet Gadget is perfect solution from RSS feeds to many small web & personal tasks. I’m using iGoogle for integrating, with wide range of gadgets classified in News, Tools, Communication, Fun & Games, Finance, Sports, Lifestyle, Technology.We can also create our own gadget and share.

Checkout Features, Themes, Compatibility on Wiki for iGoogle

Web 2.0

The concept of "Web 2.0" began when the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. In the dot-com boom some of the web-sites which survived in collapse had something in common to make an impact point for the web.

The term became popular following the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. This is not the upgrade for any technical specification, however new version of for World Wide Web.

Watch this awesome video.



Ref
What Is Web 2.0
Wikipedia - Web 2.0