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The Next Big Thing: Why Web 2.0 Isn't Enough

techconsumer.com — It’s easy to spot revolutions or major events in the past. The shrinking of computer parts in the 70s, the PC revolution of the 80s that led to the internet explosion of the 90s, etc. The latest ‘big thing’ has been the socializing of the Internet. We now find sites like Digg, reddit, and Del.icio.us. But here's what needs to be next:

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 17, 2007

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  • radicaldementia, on 10/11/2007, -1/+71The article basically says the next big thing is localizing and mobilizing data, but they're really touching on a bigger idea, organization. Right now the internet is like a big jumble of data. Each site stores a particular type of data, be it news, articles about stuff, social networks, etc...but all these sites mostly work independently and are unable to process information from other sites in a generic way.

    The next generation of the internet is going to be about taking all this information and organizing it all in such a way that web sites truly understand their own content and the content of any other website. Right now to most search engines, the internet is just pages and pages of text. Tomorrow's search engines will know the difference between news articles, history articles, train schedules, music lyrics, and so on. Once you do that, then you can easily do the kind of cool things the article talks about.
  • jennamalia, on 10/11/2007, -0/+15re: the gps coordinates, i've been adding geourl metadata to my sites for a few years now. http://geourl.org/

    meta name="ICBM" content="XXX.XXXXX, XXX.XXXXX" (latitude, longitude)
    meta name="DC.title" content="THE NAME OF YOUR SITE"




    it's just fun to add ICBM coordinates to your site. :)
  • darthmdh, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10O noes!11!! The plot spoilers for Hairy Pothead have hit the internet and they must all be true, because I read them on the internet! My life is over
    [connection reset by peer]
  • Jofaba, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8"Here's hoping the next iPhone has GPS". Since this is an article about Web 2.0, social networking, and freedom of information, can't we point out that the Neo1973 does indeed have GPS, and since it's an open source device, much like Ubuntu, there's a worldwide team of volunteer developers who have already started shooting for the stars with application concepts (like your phone turning to vibrate or turning off completely when you step into a movie theater, etc)?
  • Jobless06, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9Web 2.0 isn't enough 'cause it's social, Web 3.0 will be semantic.
  • achinda99, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7can someone explain to me why that article ends with the iPhone? I mean really? I thought we were done with the iPhone shizzaz...
  • vdog, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4There's an interesting article in the latest issue or New Scientist that basically talks about while location based services are good from a convenience standpoint, there are serious privacy concerns that need to be addressed, who will have access to that information, and what will they use it for?
  • Tunguska, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8Sounds like Streamy does Creamy all over your face and it isn't even out!

    "If Kevin would combined Pownce and Digg"

    Yeah, that's why they're separate to begin with, because he's thinking of combining them later.
  • stephenwq, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4It appears your wishes have been fulfilled - his comments are gone!
  • cr1t, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6I like the idea of adding meta data location to data would make finding stuff so much easier.
  • martyf, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4It's good that you use GPS as an example of Meta-Data. As a bit of a GPS nutter, as well as a firefighter, I'm driven mad by the potential for GPS, yet it's a classic case of Meta-Data gone wild. For example, here's GPS coordinates for the same exact location:

    43 degrees 12 Minutes 16 Seconds (43º 12' 16")
    Some GPS devices will show this location as 43º 12.266666666666667 minutes
    Others will display it as 43.20444444444445
    That's assuming they are all usign the same Datum (survey of the earth uses as a basis for the coordinate system)
    Now if my GPS is set for WGS-84 as a base datum, as is yours, then we're golden, right? Wrong. Because many topo maps use NAD-27 as a Datum.

    So even something as new and useful as GPS has a meta-data problem. GeoURL is fun, but hardly a solution.
  • Robyr, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4"Getting lost is what it's all bout, especially if you're out there to relax. ( do not attempt to get lost with paranoid people, women especially become really irate in situations such as these )"

    You have no idea how true that is. I went to go look at a car the other day with my other half, and i decided it would be a good idea to mapquest it first, but she was rushing me (why? I'll never know, it was MY car...). We ended up getting lost, and she threw some big PMS fit, ripped her rearview mirror off, broke it on me, and attempted to jump from the car. Jesus ***** Christ.
  • celerityfm, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3We're about as done with the iPhone shi as we are with the iPod.
  • arjie, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Yeah, it's seriously cool to have that there. I came across GeoURL some time back and added that and the geotags meta tags to my page. ICBM indeed :D
  • martyf, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4I suggest the book "Everything is Miscellaneous" (ISBN 0-8050-8043-0) by David Weinberger before you propose to organize the web. In the book, he discusses the many attempts over time to build an ordered system of organization of information, including the Dewey Decimal System, ISBN numbers, UPC Codes and much much more. In all cases, these methods are incomplete and fail to support all information or physical objects - so a new system comes along. Ultimately, the concept of "Tomorrow's Search Engine" knowing that a train schedule is a train schedule means that all train schedule publishers need to agree to publish their timetables online in a machine-readable way, to agree that we use common nomenclature for key aspects of the schedule (departs or leaves? arrives or arrival?) and that we don't run into situations where the train schedule is actually a bus schedule running to replace a train. The Meta-Data problem that the semantic web folks are attempting to solve has been part of human civillization has been working on for about 5,000 years. I suspect we'll always be working on it.
  • falco1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Would be really cool if cameras implemented GPS information into pictures (of course the option to enable/disable it).

    GeoURL sounds like a really cool idea, I'll start adding it to relevant pages of mine from now on.
  • AlexApetrei, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Man, getting lost is half the fun of exploring new places. These devices of which he speaks are no more than spoilers, granted in a business environment maybe they could come in handy, but that stuff he said about parks and bike trails and restaurants, that's just pointless.

    Getting lost is what it's all bout, especially if you're out there to relax. ( do not attempt to get lost with paranoid people, women especially become really irate in situations such as these )
  • tybris, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4How is it that these meaningless articles get so many diggs?
  • joethepeacock, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Tetsura:

    Have a cellphone? It's already happening.
  • darthmdh, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Digging up because you're using the Dublin Core metadata standard =)
  • jubalharshaw, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Ok, I said LIKE tagging, but NOT tagging. This is about a website being, in essence, just an interface to a reasonably complex AI. In AI, you don't consider individual 'things,' you consider relationships. it's algorythmic thinking, interpretation and inference based not on what people say about the data, but what they DO with it. I can't explain any more simply until you get some grounding in machine-learning and AI - fields which have developed ways past the need for the system to 'understand' what we as humans understand, and instead create a semantic organised structure that the system is responsible for developing, evolving and maintaining, which cannot be understood (easily) by humans. At the moment, people think of web interaction as being a text-based approach (as evidenced in your reply), but this would be a visual approach (for humans interacting with data sets), and a pattern-based approach (for the system to ascertain what the data is by how it is linked and used).
  • jubalharshaw, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4Only web 2.0 sites usually do not use the most recent technologies. To me, Web 2.0 is a term that defines a certain philosophical / sociological outlook as to how you want users to see and interact with the site and each other. It's not a technological term, it's about designed relationships.
  • jubalharshaw, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3That's simply not true if you accept that there will be some level of error (which there is even with a centralised, defined system). You're looking at this from an organisational perspective, rather than a machine-learning perspective. Instead of organising into defined 'types,' each datum would have attributes (a much like tagging), but each of these attributes would mean something specific to the system organising it. Such attributes could be inferred from user interactions with the data (which requires a slightly different ui than traditional websites - a more visual, interactive approach). I'm working on something quite similar to this, I hope it works.
  • orioni, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4Geo-tagging is not so new anymore, but I do understand the point that the author is making. This could prove to be interesting, yes, but I think there is also a serious downside that might prevent this from being accepted anywhere. It surprises me not one of the commenters above has mentioned any privacy concerns. I don't want some device tracking my every move, even if it's just to provide me with useful information. Everyone knows technology is not 100% secure, so there is a chance information gathered from your personal locator could be abused by..

    Advertisers: pop-ups with discount when you're near their store.
    Criminals: see when you're not at home.
    Government: tracks your every move.
  • scrimaxinc, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3woah woah woah.....what's wrong with drinking whiskey with bimbos?
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2mapping, yes, more SVG, which conveniently most mobile phones already support
    See the mobile section on http://svg.startpagina.nl
  • NikoKun, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Fine, dig me down... Streamy is not a digg killer, it will be able to work with Digg, due to the RSS feeds.
    I merely wanted to suggest Streamy because of the Organization features.
  • tetsura, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2"there was never a web 2 technology-wise"
    Well done Einstein.
  • j3one, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2It was a brunette, thank you very much..
  • MacEnvy, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2"the iPod is just a top of the line mp3 player"

    With market share still hovering above 70%, I would hesitate to call the iPod "just" anything. There's still good reason to be talking about it, and I suspect that by the end of the year Apple will give us all plenty to say about the next-gen iPods, and we can keep on talking about it. It's not just about marketing, it's about changing the market (largely via demographic expansion).

    This is the same reason "Web 2.0" is worth talking about. Sure, the Internet has always been a social place - that was the whole point of IRC, remember? But since the rapid expansion of dynamic web interfaces and widespread social networking sites, there has been an explosion in the demographic range of the user base. It's no longer just a bunch of nerds on terminals, it's your Grandma and Aunt Tillie making use of rich web environments. That's really something, if you ask me.
  • HonoredMule, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I beg to differ. Predictable patterns abound in the evolution of hardware, software, and general technology. In fact, its the unpredicted phenomenons that are rare. Just because a thousand voices spew ***** without any historical knowledge or technical understanding doesn't meant there aren't people who know what they're talking about who can thus...know what they're talking about. Neither does the ignorance of the layman indicate anything.

    Since we're on the subject, here's a few amazing predictions for you: computers will continue to get radically smaller, but input/output devices (that already make the majority of what we see when we look at a computer) won't so much. Text will continue to be the most useful and ubiquitous form of information output (seconded by still images), and devices that have limited viewing space for media will continue have a marginalized role until neural interfaces become ubiquitous. No form of neural interface will be commercially accepted by the public within the next 25 years...at a minimum. Hardware minimization will have virtually no effect on "power" or "gaming" systems, which will continue to use a form factor similar to the current one to handle whatever power/cost/energy consumption/thermal output a customer can handle. Every time a proprietary standard changes, some open alternative will gain market share, until proprietary software becomes a marginalized, specialized corporate service, and non-corporate commercial software is 90% entertainment (mostly some form of game, but I suspect there'll be some form of conceptual revolution there, which we will need to classify as something other than a computer game).

    Today, you may plug your laptop into a comfortably large docking station. Tomorrow, you may plug your mobile into one...but until you do, it'll still be just a glorified phone.

    And finally, consumer market evolution will continue to be predictable because of it's direction being set by the needs and wants of consumers.
  • jubalharshaw, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Ah, but we're looking here for a way for computers to organize and produce relevent information / data, not an all-encompassing defined system that all will bow down to. Instead of seeing data as data and things as things, take an ultra-reductionist approach and seperate everything you know into its smallest component parts. Then understand that that's how your brain works - each individual info-component, useless on it's own, becomes useful data through its links to other info-components - which build up to define something your conscious mind can recognise as 'a car' or something. How each component is linked and what it is linked to provides more information for the whole than each individual info-component. Now I've lost my train of thought, dammit. I'm sure I was going somewhere with this...
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3it's hard to not ignore the term completely if you know of the underlying technologies. web 2 to an experienced mind is simply translated to 'most recent technologies used'. it's extremely unspecific since before "web 2.0" there were technologies used on more recent sites only. e.g. first sites were text predominately, then some had java, then most abandoned java, then flash, etc. etc.
  • allbubba, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Organizing the web will never happen from a top-down approach where a semantic model for everything is worked on by some omniscient committee. Despite what people generally think, organization is an organic process. Organization grows out of need. Examples of the web being organized include vcard, ical, rss, etc.

    This organization revolution has been occurring for years, check out http://microformats.org/wiki/what-are-microformats
  • jer2eydevil88, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2More like Web 3.0 will be corporate without any Net Neutrality laws.
  • b3mus3d, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2I think some do already? The tagging of images with the longitude and lattitude of where it was taken is called 'geotagging', and I think it's supported by sites like zoomr.

    I've only heard of it in passing, so some of that info might be wrong :P
  • littlespy, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1@perandigital

    i was jut about to say the same thing, web 2.0 WAS a marketing term used at first, but now when you say web 2.0 anyone can easily identity sites off the top of their head. cnn.com is not web 2.0, and youtube certainly is.
  • Aensland, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Good luck getting people to follow standards. Me-first-ism isn't going anywhere any time soon.
  • tetsura, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2***** *****
  • jasoninoakland, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2I think you're confusing Tim O'Reilly with Bill O'Reilly. The latter is an idiot in a black suit who likes bimbos.
  • MasterThief117, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1So, finding porn will be easier? Not that I look at that stuff anyway...
  • r00ts, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Hermione dies.
  • Fuline, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1I'm _still_ having problems installing this Web 2.0 thing on Mac OS X. I saw a video where some other guy also had problems but with Windows. Any pointers to a tutorial/faq etc ? k thx
  • achinda99, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1you need to clarify that one... as far as i see, the iPod is just a top of the line mp3 player... it had good competitiors but apples bite into the marketshare and good advertising has it still selling better...
  • HonoredMule, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1It will take a movie romanticizing the concepts for them to take a grasp on imaginations and the development budgets of the players with the power to make it happen. (i.e. the next minority report-esque movie shows a guy drop into a grocery store, pop open his mobile, and be instantly perusing that week's flyer online. He runs back outside with the mobile open, and it automatically switches to a weather and traffic report.)
  • stupergenius, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1And he has a talk at google on youtube. Good stuff.
  • HonoredMule, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Equally importantly, we need to see more such context-sensitive information delivery outside the mobile market. Like for example how Google's movie listings tend to list movies showing in my area between now and the next few days. Think social news site, pushing to the top of my personal homepage stories that are submitted by people who live near me and/or are particularly relevant to my hometown.

    This article is coming off way too much like mobile internet access is the Holy Grail, when it will never be more important than the full-scale version, nor will it ever catch up to ever-developing full-scale networked applications and information driven services.
  • mwhatley, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1one idea: hyper-local
  • thatsmith, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Ok, so you want me to wear more pieces of flair?
  • ilovenicotine, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Um, No...
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