web2.0

Web Innovation 2008 - An Overview

Here are some Knowledge Links for today, If you have them with Tea/Coffee, they will turn all the more interesting (Just Kidding).

Hitesh Mehta's reaction on Jakob Nielsen's talk on BBC : " Web2.0 - Distracts Good Design "

He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served.

Today, the dynamic web pages are not made in any rush hour, plenty of man hours goes in to research and a lot of effort is being put in by the group of experts to make the NEXT web2.0 product / web site totally user-friendly and easy going with the millions of users on the web.

Experts from various streams like research analyst, hardcore technical guys, business development managers, investors, Artificial Intelligence experts, SEO specialists and many others are today extremely involved in making a successful web2.0 product.

He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the “glossy but useless” sites at the height of the dotcom boom.

Research into website use shows that sites were better off getting the basics right, said Mr Nielsen.

Web2.0 does not start or end with Glossy sites. Making your web2.0 powered website does not require any glossy buttons and interface. The designers today should not confuse themselves by looking at the web2.0 sites and feeling that adding a gloss button would categorize their website under web2.0.

Personalization tool, in fact this is what the USP of any web2.0 site is, how effectively you get your information and fantastic use of technology from your desktop. Everything is served to you with just a click and some amount of customization makes your life easier. Earlier for various information you need to go to various website and collect/read data.

One of the finest example of web2.0 ‘personalization tool’ is NetVibes.com and without neglecting the good design and usability. I have been using netvibes.com right from the beginning. Every minute I get fresh news, fresh feeds from the dozens of sites I subscribed at netvibes. This is simply amazing and is getting better and better everyday.

Good practices include making a site easy to use, good search tools, the use of text free of jargon, usability testing and a consideration of design even before the first line of code is written.

Mr. Jakob is already talking about a good web2.0 site. A site, which is easy to use, good search tools, text free jargon, usability and lots more. I vote DIGG.com at this point. A highly used website by millions of users which is so good to use and you don’t have to actually search for anything latest but it gives you the information which is most active, most voted and widely discussed with the registered members. On the usability side they are genius and one can understand this well only after registering with digg.com and using it.

“That was just bad,” he said. “The idea of community, user generated content and more dynamic web pages are not inherently bad in the same way, they should be secondary to the primary things sites should get right.”

“The main criticism or problem is that I do not think these things are as useful as the primary things,” he said.

The primary things of today’s web users is to get the solution, solution which is feasible, accurate, master solution and all this is possible today just by dynamic web pages, community based sites, user generated tools, wherein everybody can be part of this and is well moderated by the owners of web2.0 sites. We just need to look at what we need first and what is more important to us. Nobody here is criticizing with the evolution of web2.0; everyone likes it, learning it and will be using it.

Research suggests that users of a site split into three groups. One that regularly contributes (about 1%); a second that occasionally contributes (about 9%); and a majority who almost never contribute (90%).

“Most people just want to get in, get it and get out,” said Mr. Nielsen. “For them the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool.”

Talking about demographics and statistics, people who contributes, occasionally contributes and never contributes does not matter at all. If 90% of users do not contribute, they gather the information for which they go online and look out for sites, which provides useful and efficient information. The number of users are growing enormously everyday and making the web2.0 work for them. Most people get in, get in and get out only after they have found a solution. People are getting in every second at web2.0 sites, which are made popular by other users.

Mr Nielsen also questioned championing teenage use of the web as a harbinger of what people will continue to do when they were older.

Come on! Let us be more practical today, people still talking about web2.0 failure and criticizing on this is not and will never make a difference. A lot of people are already talking about web3.0 today. If one has to wait and wait until someone comes and spoon-feeds you about what exactly web2.0 is then…? I don’t have anything more to say.

To conclude:

Is Web 2.0 ‘neglecting good design’? ABSOLUTELY NOT AND I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH MR.JAKOB NIELSEN.

Web2.0 actually gives the designers a new platform, a new challenge and opportunity by producing the best product/website, which is an integration of Text, Audio, Video, RSS, Ajax, CSS-design, usability, simplicity, wikis, blogs, standardization, mobility and lots more plus a glossy feel, but this is not mandatory.

The good web2.0 sites without neglecting the design element and usability/navigation and are going places:

• Digg.com (Get the highly voted, commented, interesting and fresh news)
• NetVibes.com (Subscribe to your favorite news, rss content)
• Technorati.com (Look out for what live on worldwide web with millions of blog listed)
• SimplyHired.com (Get your relevant job results)
• Hakia.com (Check out the search results, try the word USA)
• Free411.com (radically changing the directory assistance industry)

And, other web2.0 sites with great technology and bad design, purely needs good designers. Could anyone tell me why the most popular site on usability http://www.useit.com/ never thought of facelift? Or is it still holding the basics of web.

Google released Google Web Toolkit(GWT) 1.2 recently. This toolkit is an open source Ajax library that translates java code into javascript. It means that you can develop your javascripts in java using your favourite IDE and later compile it into javascript for deployment.
Please let us know if anybody evaluated this tool already or interested in working on it. You can reach us at alice101@ekartha.com.

Venture capitalists are going nutty over Web 2.0 companies, pouring $870 million into these companies during the first three months of the year, up from $786 million the quarter before, according to a new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

Here is a list of all Web 2.0 companies that received venture backing. Download the list here; note the tabs at the bottom, which show all 2005 fundings, and then 2006 Q1. Scroll to right to see the funding amounts, etc. (Hat-tip to PwC for sending it on.)

At the moment, if you think of Web 2.0 sites, your list is likely to include mostly businesses with a technical (horizontal) focus or no focus at all. Sites like flickr (photos), del.icio.us (browser favourites), last.fm (music) and technorati (tags) have made a big splash, and pointed the way for specific Web 2.0 functions. Other well-known sites, such as Blogger, Blogspot, MySpace and Facebook have taken a broad approach, and built up enormous subscriber bases in a short time.

I am a big fan of Rajesh Acharya's idea of Samooha, which clearly is a web 3.0 model of businesses working seamlessly in a collaborative,inter-dependendent environment.

Narain shared with me another great web 3.0 idea which will allow creation of many web2.0 projects effortlessly. Connect with him if you want to forward your web 2.0 ideas faster.

Narain, also refered to me to a great project swarmcreativity.net, and this document on Coin - Collaborative Innovation Network reveals on how we are at the dawn of a whole new way of working together. ITVidya aims to facilitate innovations, collaborations, actions and transactions amongst our target community of Indian IT Professionals and Technopreneurs, and the global IT community and businesses who want to tap into these talent, Thanks Narain for sharing the document, it has already forwarded my thinking.

Couple of weeks back some 300 Web 2.0 websites were reviewed in about 38 categories, and winners were announced. I have tried a few of them including travbuddy, writely, deliciious, basecamp, linkedin, myspace, technorati, yousendit, housingmaps, gabbr.com , flickr, myspace, rollyo...all very great ideas and applications, and am tempted to try all of them.

It was good to see our member Anand Chhatpar's BrainReactions.net get a honorable mention, hopefully we will have many more contributions from India in the next year nominations. I can see Narain's Tracbac getting mentioned next year, also Veer Bothra is working on MyToday which is highly promising with its idea. We at ITVidya will also aim to be running for global recognition by next year.

Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions, shares his story of creating a successful business around ideas and brainstorming to CNBC India.

Click here to view Anand's interview

Barcamp was recently organized in Chennai by Narain,Kiruba Shankar and Vijay Anand, the theme was Web 2.0 and Next Generation Internet. Narain gave a useful presentation on What/Where/Why of Web 2.0? and also gave a demo of his innovative design collaboration tool, Tracbac.

The folks at 37signals.com have released a book that encompasses their business philosophy that is very innovative and agile. The book is called Getting Real and is available at http://gettingreal.37signals.com It is a fairly quick read and is easy-to-read even for the non-technical readers.

This current month's issue of BusinessWeek also has a feature on 37signals and their approach to go from concept to released product in 3 and a half-months or less. I am a big advocate of their philosophy because it can be a great mantra for Indian IT start-ups. The book professes a low-cost and lean approach to starting up that enables you to move quickly and engage customers early. Other key points in the book include the technique of being customer-centric in your product design and starting at the market-end, not at the engineering-end. They also list pitfalls that web-application-developing entrepreneurs commonly run into, and suggest how those can be avoided.

Dear friends,

Wish you all a very happy new year 2006, let us this year accelerate our growth and contribute our best in the areas we choose to.

2006 will see the rise of blogging in a big way, blogging builds your brand and network which will bring in known and new opportunities.

ITVIDYA is being built on web 2.0 principles, and hence set to grow exponentially with all its members benefitting immensely out of it.

Look forward to your participation, Gain IT, Share IT.

Regards,
Ajay Sanghani
Founder
ITVIDYA.COM : India's first technology blogging network