Microsoft finally unveiled its new product, Silverlight. But is it actually a product? Not really. It is more aptly described as a runtime system for a cut-down version of the .NET Framework and just-in-time (JIT) compilers. The runtime is tiny, designed to be a plugin to a web browser much like Flash is also available as a plugin. Microsoft see this technology as a potential "Flash killer", although it is unlikely to achieve such a status, at least in the short to medium term. They have stiff competition from Adobe with the AIR/Flash/Flex combination which is engrained into the designer/developer community. Read more – ‘Microsoft Gets Serious With Silverlight’.
Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) combine the best user interface functionality of desktop software applications with the broad reach and low-cost deployment of Web applications and the best of interactive, multimedia communication. The end result is an application which provides a more intuitive, responsive, and effective user experience. Read more – ‘Rich Internet Applications – A Background’.
60,000 years ago people began to speak. 5,000 years ago people began to write. 600 years ago people began to publish. 47 years ago people began networking computers together. 15 years ago Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. Its all pure, clear, free, unregulated information. No middleman, you produce, you distribute it. However, net neutrality and the internet as we know it is under threat from the big corporates. It happened with the press, it happened with radio and now its happening with the internet. "You know who won't be able to pay, it is the little guys and you'll be crushing the future of inovation..." This video is a look at the history of the communication and where it's going next. Read more – ‘Humanity Lobotomy – Save the Internet’.
Media philosopher Marshall McLuhan observed that "The Medium is the Message". That is, the form of media is what changes consciousness irrespective of the content of that media. Read more – ‘Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us’.
Social bookmarking is a popular way to store, classify, share and search links through the practice of tagging them with informal assigned, user-defined keywords that describe their content, and saving these bookmarks to a public website. This is in contrast to the classic idea of bookmarking, which is the practice of saving the website address to your web browser. Read more – ‘Social Bookmarking a Zeitgeist’.
A new breed of Web-based data integration applications is emerging across the Internet. Colloquially known as mashups, their popularity stems from the emphasis on interactive user participation and the manner in which they aggregate third-party data. A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. Mashups are an exciting genre of interactive Web applications that are characterised by, and draw upon, content and functionality retrieved from external data sources to create entirely new and innovative services. They are a hallmark of the second generation of Web applications widely known as Web 2.0. Read more – ‘Wise Up to Mashups’.
During the 1990s business leaders and venture capitalists grappled with how they would make money from the web. This was tipified by the two VCs, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, investing $25 million in Google in the late 1990s; they new the search engine created by Sergey Brin and Larry Page was a winning formula, even though the pair had not yet monetised search. Bricks and mortar compaines were deemed "old hat" as the dotcom bubble was expanding. Companies such as eBay, Amazon and Yahoo! were at the forefront of every investors' chequebook. Every company needed a 21st Century "Blue Sky" web strategy; every company needed to do e-commerce. However, the bubble burst and everyone was brought down with a bang. Boo.com is a classic example of the fallout from the over speculation. Read more – ‘Drive Business Change with Web 2.0’.
By itself, Firefox is a lean and fast browser, but lacks many functions useful to a Web Developer. This is where extensions come to the rescue. Web Developers use a host of Firefox extensions to increase their efficiency. I have included a list of my most used extensions. All of these plugins are great for developing and bug testing web sites within the Firefox browser environment. Read more – ‘Firefox Extensions for Web Developers’.
Not quite Alex Tew's dollar-per-pixel advertising page that raised over a million dollars in just a few months, the Million Dollar Homepage, but Beggr brings internet money making scams to a new level! Read more – ‘Scrounging Web 2.0 Stylee’.
