In broad terms, Web 2.0 boosts Web sites to heretofore unreachable levels of content and functionality, becoming computing platforms that bring Web applications directly to users. Being able to control, not just use, those applications has put unprecedented power in the hands of users.

“It should make the experience cleaner,” Brown says. For instance, a Web 2.0 methodology such as Ajax allows Web pages to reload more quickly.

“Just few years ago, we used to go to the Web and read, listen, and watch the content and it was one directional,” agrees Kuldeep Dhar, president and CEO of St. Louis Park–based BancSoft, a provider of software for consumer lending systems. “Now the content of the Web is generated by the users and shared among other users. This is content syndication. It is creating a sense of community,” he says.

So what will “Web 3.0” entail? Many feel it will be the long-fabled “semantic Web” where Web applications will have the ability to think and act the way people do, automating such mundane tasks as doing Google searches and trolling through travel sites for the best hotel deals. For instance, instead of just being a repository of information that users must access, a layer of artificial intelligence in a software application would act as a personal advisor for a user as they evaluate vacation options that the artificial intelligence has chosen for them based on a user’s weather and visitor attraction preferences.

But for now, Web 2.0 represents a huge step up from an old, outdated model, giving users the ability to create content while also consuming it. “Now we’re seeing Web sites that build themselves,” Lyons says. “Entire communities of users who contribute, edit, comment, and browse. This level of community interaction was previously unseen outside of less permanent, less accessible venues such as [bulletin board systems] and listservs [mailing list management software]. Whatever the vehicle, everyone has a voice. Web 2.0 is the great equalizer.” 

The Technologies

There’s an element of hype associated with any new technological wave, but Web 2.0 encompasses some genuine innovations. A brief selection of the more notable examples:

Mash-up: First coined to describe Frankensteinian mergers of two songs, a mash-up also refers to the practice of combining two Web applications to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. One particularly odd and useful mash-up: Chicagocrime.org, which combines a crime-record database with a Google map of Chicago to provide detailed visual representations of which areas of the city are most dangerous.

Ajax: Ajax is, appropriately, a mash-up of two terms: Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It’s a development technique for creating interactive Web applications. The idea behind Ajax is to make Web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. Ideally, this increases the page's interactivity, speed, and usability.

Convergence of Web and Television: This is happening in high-profile ways; many new PCs come with TV receivers, and most readers have at least heard about products such as Slingbox, which taps into the user’s wireless network and streams cable or satellite TV signals anywhere there’s an Internet connection. But this convergence is also taking place in more subtle, marketing-savvy ways. For instance, some TV networks, such as NBC, encourage visits to their Web sites by posting extended episodes of its most popular shows on line.

CSS: Short for cascading style sheet, a CSS gives Web developers the ability to separate the layout and styles of a Web page from the data or information in the pages. With CSS, the style parameters of such elements as fonts, font sizes, and margins can be specified and manipulated without disturbing the text, adding to the quick-refresh qualities that are a trademark of Web 2.0 pages.

Microformats: These are Web markup languages that allow desktop programs to extract meaning from Web pages. Adding microformats to a standard HTML Web page allows machines to process HTML text and to possibly load data into remote databases. This lets programs such as Web crawlers to find such pertinent items as contact information, events, and reviews.

Folksonomies: A folksonomy is an Internet-based information retrieval methodology that can categorize (label) content such as Web pages, online photographs, and Web links. The most visible form of this is “tagging,” in which users attach category names to content to aid future searches—see the many tags that accompany each YouTube video, for instance.

REST: Representational State Transfer (REST) is a software architectural style for distributed systems such as the Web. The idea behind REST is to streamline the Web browsing experience by minimizing the number of tasks necessary to load pages.  

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