» Tracking the DIY phenomenon Part 1: Widgets, badges, and gadge
One of the hallmarks of a good Web 2.0 site is one that hands over non-essential control to users, letting them contribute content, participate socially, and even fundamentally shape the site itself. The premise is that users will do a surprising amount of the hard work necessary to make the site successful, right down to creating the very information the site offers to its other users and even inviting their friends and family members to use it. Web 2.0 newcomers MySpace and YouTube have shown how this can be done on a mass scale surprisingly quickly, and of course older generation successes like eBay and craigslist have been doing this for years. Particularly younger, Web-savvy users have been encrusting their blogs and MySpace profiles with things like badges and widgets for a while now, especially now that a significant number of Web sites have opened up their content to let users do this. Motivation, Benefits, and Business Models Considerations when designing widgets
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Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search
Written by Ebrahim Ezzy and edited by Richard MacManus. Ebrahim is lead developer and co-founder of Qelix Technologies, the company behind a search 2.0 contender called Qube. This 2-part series of posts is adapted from Ebrahim's research material in developing Qube. Let's start be defining what we mean by "search 2.0" vs traditional search. Traditional Search (TSE): Traditional search engines are based on information retrieval technologies. Examples: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Search 2.0 (S-2.0): What I'm calling Search 2.0 are actually third generation search technologies. First-generation search ranked sites based on page content - examples are early yahoo.com and Alta Vista.Second-generation relies on link analysis for ranking - so they take the structure of the Web into account. Examples: Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty, Wink, Lexxe The Search 2.0 Companies (Pt 1) Swicki Swicki is a community-driven search engine that allows users to create deep, focused searches on a specific niche. Rollyo Clusty Wink
Yahoo! Pipes and The Web As Database
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus. In this post Alex tests out and explores the emergent world of Yahoo! Pipes. He sees some interesting parallels with Relational Databases in the 90's, concluding that with pipes, the Web essentially becomes a giant database that can be queried and remixed in any number of ways. One of the central concepts in Complex Systems is Emergence. It is this automagical process through which elements of a system give rise to a higher order system. While the exact mechanics of emergence is complicated and far from being completely understood, scientists know that a new system emerges as a combination of its elements and their interactions. Perhaps today we are witnessing one of the most vivid examples of emergence - the remixing of the world wide web. What is new though is the recent systematic thinking about the web as a database. Ye Olde Relational Databases The Web is just a vast database of information. Microsoft Access Circa 1999 Yahoo!
Presentation Zen
With all the excitement concerning the worldwide release of the new Cosmos series with Neil deGrasse Tyson this month, it's a good time to repost this piece from 2009 on the remarkable Mae Jemison. Young people need role models, and Dr. Jemison is a great one. Mae Jemison: The arts and sciences are not separate Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a medical doctor, a scientist, an engineer, an art collector, and a dancer. Art & creativity or science & analysis: a false choice Dr. "If we keep thinking that the arts are separate from the sciences...and that it's cute to say 'I don't understand anything about [the arts] or I don't understand anything about [the sciences]' then we're going to have problems I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to be Leonardo da Vinci or that we all should be enlightened, well-rounded generalists. Mae Jemison: NASA astronaut, scientist, medical doctor, teacher, former Peace Corps Volunteer, multilingual, Stanford graduate, and....an artist. Science or art?
Internet search gets Web 2.0 style
The big search engines are taking a cue from Dear Abby. In an acknowledgement that some questions may be better answered by a human than a search engine algorithm, Yahoo, Microsoft and others are embracing so-called social search. Social search generally refers to a Web site or service that relies on the participation of a community to come up with answers to specific questions or to provide links to Web sites or other resources of common interest. Don't bet on social search usurping the algorithm, say experts. But it's likely social-search answers will provide a strong second option to mathematical results. "Ultimately, it's likely that a combination of algorithmic search and the various types of social-search systems will fuse into a hybrid that will work really well for satisfying a wide variety of information needs," Search Engine Watch Executive Editor Chris Sherman concluded in a recent blog posting titled "What's the Big Deal With Social Search?" Yahoo Answers is growing fast.
Prototip - Tooltips for prototype
Intro Prototip allows you to easily create both simple and complex tooltips using the Prototype javascript framework. If you also use Scriptaculous you can even add some nice effects to them. A new version of this script is available, check out the Prototip 2 website for all the details. Upgrading to Prototip 2 is recommended, the 1.x version will no longer be upgraded. News Prototip 1.3 - Ajax tooltips April 15 - 2008 : Nick Stakenburg Finally Ajax tooltips that just work! If you have feedback or feature requests, leave a message on the Forum . Enjoy! Demos 1 : A simple tooltip 2 : Add a title 3 : Add offset 4 : Fixed positioning 5 : A different target 6 : Hooking! 8 : Effects! 9 : More effects 10 : Delay (500ms) 11 : Click me! 12 : Links 13 : Toggle (click) 14 : Custom events 15 : Style with CSS 16 : Element as tooltip 17 : Auto hide 18 : Stay within the viewport 19 : Ajax tooltip Installation Include Prototype in your header. If you want to make the filesize smaller, have a look at Protopacked . How to use
Presentation Zen
Who's Asking? A Roundup of Q&A Sites - ReadWriteWeb
Yesterday Google's Russian Blog announced the launch of a new site on Google Russia called "Questions and Answers." The site uses a points-based system, where questions cost points and users are rewarded for participation (answering, rating, even logging in all apparently earn you points). This development has caused a lot of speculation about whether the Google Answers program, which was shut down last year, would be making a return in English-speaking markets. Of course, it remains to be seen if the Google Russia project makes its way onto Google proper, but in the meantime there are a ton of other question and answer sites that you can use now. Below is a round up of places you can go to get answers that are hopefully more accurate than a fortune cookie. Free Sites Yahoo! Pay Sites Uclue - Uclue is almost identical to the old Google Answers. Other Sites Conclusion
