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Features
Aug. 1, 2006
Rosie's Ramblings
Web 2.0: What's the difference? Plus, MrSmarty Sez. By Sandra Rosenzweig
Linnaeus was right: To know me is to name me. (Yes, you ?ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny? fans, I?m at it again.) Because Western brains don?t know an object or phenomenon exists unless it has a name, Carolus Linnaeus developed our system of biological classification, as in kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. When I studied comparative anatomy, we students used ?King Phillip Came Over For Great Sex? as our mnemonic device. Not quite as good as Roy G Biv for the colors of the visible spectrum, but it got the job done. Thank heavens no marketeer tinkered with Linnaeus?s system. I?m not sure we were up to creating a mnemonic for Kingdom version 7, Phylum version 1, Class of ?08, Order version 3.14, etc.Linnaeus was right: To know me is to name me. (Yes, you ?ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny? fans, I?m at it again.) Because Western brains don?t know an object or phenomenon exists unless it has a name, Carolus Linnaeus developed our system of biological classification, as in kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. When I studied comparative anatomy, we students used ?King Phillip Came Over For Great Sex? as our mnemonic device. Not quite as good as Roy G Biv for the colors of the visible spectrum, but it got the job done. Thank heavens no marketeer tinkered with Linnaeus?s system. I?m not sure we were up to creating a mnemonic for Kingdom version 7, Phylum version 1, Class of ?08, Order version 3.14, etc.
When we use the Linnaean system to name a new species (Homo sapiens, for example), we make that species real. Before, it didn?t exist. Now we know there?s a thing out there called Homo sapiens. When Tim Berners-Lee et al. created a project based on the concept of the hyperlink and married it with some Internet protocols and a browser he?d made up, he named it the World Wide Web. And it was good.
Web 2.0, on the other hand, is just a marketeer?s catchy phrase for most of the recent innovations on the Web?as if these new developments were actually some hugely different organism, a new species that broke off from the family tree.
So-called Web 2.0 features include news feeds, blogs, podcasts, tags (to make other people?s searches easier), and wikis (in which someone posts something on a public forum and then everyone else corrects or vandalizes it). To my mind, they also include attempts at universally accessible Web pages (ideally for not only all cultures and languages but also all gradations of human mobility and technical prowess). Social-bookmarking sites share your bookmarks and recommended reading lists with the world (and the world?s with you). They may also share you?providing a site where like-minded total strangers may join into a community of, say, UCLA incoming law students, or people who need help with their Chinese studies.
Another Web 2.0 feature I?ve become fond of is the Web mashup. Musical mashups (combining music and lyrics from two or more songs to make a completely new song) have been around since the fifties and probably earlier. A Web mashup uses content from more than one Web source to make a completely new service. There were plenty of Web mashups before, but a lot of the 2.0 mashups use Google Maps, itself a relatively new addition to the Web. For example, Zillow.com provides an estimate of what your house?or the one up the block?is worth based on so-called real estate comparables. Or Upcomingscrobbler (www.triv.org.uk/~mavit/upcom ingscrobbler/), which uses favorite music from your Last.fm profile (www.last.fm) to tell you when your favorite bands play in your area. Or HousingMaps (www.housingmaps.com), which combines Google Maps and Craigslist classified listings to give you mapped property listings. Or, even more interesting, Chicago Crime Maps (www.chicagocrime.org).
Google?s almost universally available, easy-to-use searching technologies get much of the credit (or blame) for stimulating this new Web development. But Google is not just a marketing and search-engine company. It now offers Google Writely, a free online word processor set up for collaborating and publishing. And Google Picasa photo organizer, Google Mars, Google Trends, and Google Video (searchable, of course).
[Editor?s note: This is the first in a series of useful jits and shorts by the very famous MrSmarty, who has the temerity to write his name with an inner cap. These snippets will continue irregularly until they become useless.][Editor?s note: This is the first in a series of useful jits and shorts by the very famous MrSmarty, who has the temerity to write his name with an inner cap. These snippets will continue irregularly until they become useless.]
No. 43: Just as I was getting mighty tired of trying to manage lists of all the websites I?d recently visited (monitor sticky notes, browser favorites, links, and whatever), I discovered Google Notebook at www.google.com/googlenotebook/overview.html. Now with just a mouse click, I quickly annotate and store every important link in its appropriate notebook, of which I have several. Hot stuff!
No. 27: [Editor?s note: Don?t panic. MrSmarty just can?t count.] There are lots of online PDF forms out there, and most of them are just for printing, not filling. How dumb is that? Get smart with the newest Adobe tool: the typewriter! If you have Acrobat 7.0 and the free 7.0.5 update, go to the Tools menu, choose Typewriter, and select either Typewriter or Show Typewriter Menu. Then you can click anywhere in a PDF form and ? type. What a concept!
When we use the Linnaean system to name a new species (Homo sapiens, for example), we make that species real. Before, it didn?t exist. Now we know there?s a thing out there called Homo sapiens. When Tim Berners-Lee et al. created a project based on the concept of the hyperlink and married it with some Internet protocols and a browser he?d made up, he named it the World Wide Web. And it was good.
Web 2.0, on the other hand, is just a marketeer?s catchy phrase for most of the recent innovations on the Web?as if these new developments were actually some hugely different organism, a new species that broke off from the family tree.
So-called Web 2.0 features include news feeds, blogs, podcasts, tags (to make other people?s searches easier), and wikis (in which someone posts something on a public forum and then everyone else corrects or vandalizes it). To my mind, they also include attempts at universally accessible Web pages (ideally for not only all cultures and languages but also all gradations of human mobility and technical prowess). Social-bookmarking sites share your bookmarks and recommended reading lists with the world (and the world?s with you). They may also share you?providing a site where like-minded total strangers may join into a community of, say, UCLA incoming law students, or people who need help with their Chinese studies.
Another Web 2.0 feature I?ve become fond of is the Web mashup. Musical mashups (combining music and lyrics from two or more songs to make a completely new song) have been around since the fifties and probably earlier. A Web mashup uses content from more than one Web source to make a completely new service. There were plenty of Web mashups before, but a lot of the 2.0 mashups use Google Maps, itself a relatively new addition to the Web. For example, Zillow.com provides an estimate of what your house?or the one up the block?is worth based on so-called real estate comparables. Or Upcomingscrobbler (www.triv.org.uk/~mavit/upcom ingscrobbler/), which uses favorite music from your Last.fm profile (www.last.fm) to tell you when your favorite bands play in your area. Or HousingMaps (www.housingmaps.com), which combines Google Maps and Craigslist classified listings to give you mapped property listings. Or, even more interesting, Chicago Crime Maps (www.chicagocrime.org).
Google?s almost universally available, easy-to-use searching technologies get much of the credit (or blame) for stimulating this new Web development. But Google is not just a marketing and search-engine company. It now offers Google Writely, a free online word processor set up for collaborating and publishing. And Google Picasa photo organizer, Google Mars, Google Trends, and Google Video (searchable, of course).
[Editor?s note: This is the first in a series of useful jits and shorts by the very famous MrSmarty, who has the temerity to write his name with an inner cap. These snippets will continue irregularly until they become useless.][Editor?s note: This is the first in a series of useful jits and shorts by the very famous MrSmarty, who has the temerity to write his name with an inner cap. These snippets will continue irregularly until they become useless.]
No. 43: Just as I was getting mighty tired of trying to manage lists of all the websites I?d recently visited (monitor sticky notes, browser favorites, links, and whatever), I discovered Google Notebook at www.google.com/googlenotebook/overview.html. Now with just a mouse click, I quickly annotate and store every important link in its appropriate notebook, of which I have several. Hot stuff!
No. 27: [Editor?s note: Don?t panic. MrSmarty just can?t count.] There are lots of online PDF forms out there, and most of them are just for printing, not filling. How dumb is that? Get smart with the newest Adobe tool: the typewriter! If you have Acrobat 7.0 and the free 7.0.5 update, go to the Tools menu, choose Typewriter, and select either Typewriter or Show Typewriter Menu. Then you can click anywhere in a PDF form and ? type. What a concept!
#335199
Annie Gausn
Daily Journal Staff Writer
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