west drags web 2.0

Times of recession and it’s about business  survival. Stories of cost cutting, layoffs, no funding for research, frozen development etc…, are closely related to corporates and governance. Ok enough of those boring lines of corporate lecture. Do we see web 2.0 getting affected by these uncertainties of the business world. As a close observer of the web, i could see some sort of dizziness in the world of web development.

I don’t want to talk big players like Google and Micorosoft as they already established some sort of revenue model out of web, but i am worried about the startups. Since most of them being funded by west, aspiring startups might go for a halt for some time. I should say post 2006, the world of web saw many new ideas like Flikr, Facebook , Youtube etc.., Do they evolve as a model ?

So, how long do we wait. Wheres are those budding mobile VAS providers. Can this ecosystem sustain the tides of economic crisis ?

Another important question is: will web 2.0 take a turn someway or take a temporary halt ?

What does web 2.0 means to the users ?

This is one question which raises in my mind frequently these days. Every day there is a new startup and everyday the garage filled up with a new idea or a betterment sort. There is a truck load of information we can find across all the street corners of the web.

Has any one took hold of the market or does it need more time to evolve? Are we designing anything which centers society and social welfare? Do we really have time to explore new applications or are we wasting our valuable time before the PC.

One thing i could see is that there are lot of blogs made about many yet another web 2.0. How much the IT majors fund/invest on these startups? Does it open new IT oppurtunities? Does technology and application ideas flow parallel to complement each other?

How much time can we effectively(recommended) spend on a web 2.0 in an average? This question is irrelevant to the geeks or the developers. But it’s most relevant to the average consumer of the services of web 2.0.

There are more serious question waiting to be posted on these web 2.0 companies and service providers.

google watch

Few of my personal Favorites.

1. Who thought that gmail will get a big welcome and user space in the world wide web email service usage. The simple user interface and elegance in look and feel is definitely to be appreciated. In those days, we had to get invite from a friend to get a new gmail account which was in it’s beta stages. It’s never like yahoo where you can get a free account just like that. But still this approach was widely welcome and people felt the seriousness of using an email account.

2. The ajax technology was brilliantly consumed with the idea of maps. I could see even now many services making use of google maps. Gpedometer is one cool application everyone must try.

3. Orkut made a huge impact on social networking business. Now every Ram, Rahim and albert uses this networking service. Another big impact. How people use the service is another issue. But it’s one stop place for all friends meet and share.

4. Brought in a great deal of integration with a single signon mechanism. I like it when i could open that .rtf file in google docs even in my machine with no office suite installed. I also use zoho at times. But prefer google docs.

5. Google docs is my favorite application and it’s got much more potential and future. I would even afford dollars of subscription if it can maintain my documents online (time when i become operating system free). Google gears is another interesting story to make impact in the world of off line working. It’s really worth giving it a try. It’s in beta stages i guess.

6. Not to forget, the revolution it made in the web search. And it’s pretty well supported by Firefox web browser too with a ready made default search box. I guess they fund the project more than any other company. But of course we can always choose to use a different search engine at our own will. Still google tops there too.

7. My latest interest is the GWT. I am quite positive about it. But still it’s very early to say how it impact the client side industry. There are hell a lot of competitors trying to bring in that layer of browser independence. I have always been reluctant to using such layers of programming tools and comfortable writing raw javascript code on my own. But who knows, i may have to work on such a technology some day.

8. Blogger is one thing which i am not much impressed since i could not find new features like i find in wordpress. But still i use it because i get a theme which suits my blogs.

Future in pocket

mobile lot

It’s very obvious that the world i going to see and use lot of mobile apps very soon. What we see now as a web is about to experience a major drift. All web protocols are going to be clubbed together and made to work on mix. I am sure HTTP is there to live long. The mobile application will have to be more web centric and be very specific for it’s purpose.

I am really impressed by SMS 2.0 which i use in my N72 for sending and receiving color messages and it has got a beautiful interface for reading news side by side. XHTML is another ground breaking solution to the structuring of displays in web browsers in mobile. I could see many articles being published on mobile market in recent years. One interesting thing is that there i no one right way to make applications because no one knows exactly what to do with it till date except few internet applications.

What does flex, flash, xhtml are to offer the user interface richness ?

Almost all software vendors are eying the market inclusing Microsost and SUN. Big players support and fund lot of startups too. Is this a right market for free software to make money for the service ? That looks like a very bright chance !! Already lot of free software solutions creeping up!!

software, lawsuit, and patentable

Software patents have always been a controversy and much worse they are not understood by most of the people. Even the lawyers are paid to decode them. The most obvious reason is the way in which they are developed, maintained and shipped unlike the other products like refrigerators, motors etc..

Any standard or protection law need not go to the extent of encouraging innovation. But atleast it should not curtail it. The nature of software being such a fluid idea, lacks clarity even to the person who developed it, the idea is nothing but asking for trouble. And as Stallman says, it;s just a pure math and that math could be formulated in many ways resulting in similar ideas. So, taking the ownership for the way of math doesn’t make much sense.

And the idea of cross licensing is another matter of concern. It behaves simply as a trade tool and nothing else. Obviously makes the world of software a pure business that doesn’t give room for innovation or new ideas. More seriously, It affects the small companies entering the market. If i have to publish a software idea, there is most likely a similar math already patented. If i am a big corporation then i am likely to be noticed by the cunning patent holder but even in that case i can fight it out with my lawyers. It becomes a story of lawyers and lawsuit.

Registered patents under US Patent could be read online. Just a Google search will take you there. It’s fun to read them and definitely the inverse when we understand that we are troubled by the same.