That’s true of every successful web 2.0 business: it puts its customer first.
O’Reilly Radar > Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream
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Web 2.0 going mainstream?
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007The Three
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007Over at O’Reilly Nat Torkington asked what the three most important open source projects were.
I (and many others) listed:
- Linux
- Apache
- Mozilla
I said those because with them you have an end-to-end solution that can do pretty much anything. You have the OS, you have the internet server and you have the client that can talk to the internet server. Missing, possibly, is a programming language and environment but I see less of a threat of death against programming languages than I do against the operating system, server and client.
Naturally the OS covers quite a range of sub-projects including all the bits that make TCP/IP, routing etc. go on the internet. Within Apache too you can argue what is integral to it and what are sub-projects or add-on modules. I also listed Mozilla and not just Firefox because an email client, Thunderbird, is quite important and Mozilla also covers XUL and other supporting frameworks that can be used to create new and existing client applications.
I would have liked to have included Ruby on Rails and Java in the list because they are why I am employed. But I am just one person and the other three projects have broader scope.
Though one could say if you just listed an operating system and a programming language and environment you would have everything covered as together they could create the server, clients and everything else. But that is a bit too high-level and so much has been already done in Apache and Mozilla that to loose them and start again would be a severe blow to computing technology.
What are your three?
Ninged
Wednesday, July 19th, 2006I’ve never really got Ning but Nat over at O’Reilly Radar comes closest to explaining it to us “Apache configuring MySQL-worshipping junkies with Rails up both forearms” types (i.e. techies):
If you want a photo site, you go to someone’s photo site and hit the “ah gotta git me wunna thayem!” button. Boom, you have a photo site. If you want a new feature, you hit “edit my app” and add it.
and then the kicker:
a Ning photo app is like a “group” on Flickr
So you can take any Ning app, clone it (much better than “Get Your Own” IMO, but then I am an ACMR) and modify it to your group’s needs.
The bit that still makes me shy away from Ning is that you can’t then say “take all the cloned photo apps and aggregate the photo data.” But that is apparently being worked on. That will make Ning work for me.
Couple other good points:
Premium features are things like … putting it in your own domain (instead of foo.ning.com)
and
what if I write a great app and Yahoo! wants to buy me? Their answer: go for it. Your app is your app. You can take [it] off their site.
Though in the later case it isn’t that easy as you then loose Ning’s “storage, tagging, and authentication modules” and have to write your own. I’d like to see Ning support S3 and other storage options through a Ning Storage Abstraction Layer.
Still, Ning is clearer in my mind thanks to that article and with a bit of that cloned-app-aggregation magic I think it could be something amazing.
Tim Responds
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006Tim O’Reilly arrives back from his well deserved holiday and responds to the Tom Raferty/IT@Cork Web 2.0 dispute:
Now, I want to address the deeper issue that’s been raised, about whether it’s appropriate for anyone to hold a trademark on the term Web 2.0, and to give some backstory on how this happened
Tim goes on to say that he feels it is appropriate for CMP and O’Reilly to enforce their trademark. I fully understand it is a business issue but Web 2.0 has come to mean something important to a good number of people. This isn’t Coca Cola or LinuxWorld which are specific and contrived. I was unaware that O’Reilly coined Web 2.0 until quite recently. I had assumed it was a phrase that grew from the blogosphere just like the term blog had, with no distinct owner. It suits the nature of the phrase too.
In my opinion they would be wiser to let it go and continue to reap the good will rather than reap a few extra dollars from their Web 2.0 conference. To be clear; once they get the trademark they have every right to defend it. If they think that is the right course of action then they should. I simply think it is a course that is more trouble than it is worth (as we have already seen.)
Tim points out that Microsoft with Mix 06, Google with Zeitgeist and the Ajax Experience all step around the Web 2.0 trademark problem while retaining the Web 2.0 feel. I disagree. Ajax is a small part of Web 2.0 and I wouldn’t go to the Ajax Experience expecting to learn about open data formats, social software and other Web 2.0 themes. Google Zeitgeist covers far more than Web 2.0 and Mix 06 (which I went to) had only a minimal Web 2.0 theme.
“Web 2.0″ covers what many of us think it to be. It is appropriate to use in a conference title with some consideration. Is CMP going to send cease and desist letters to Web 2.0 Unconference? Or Web 2.0 Barcamp? How about Mixing Web 2.0? The IT@Cork lads should avoid Web 2.0 Conference in their title next year but not drop Web 2.0 from the title totally. Web 2.0 @ Cork Conference?
