Rosie's Ramblings

By Sandra Rosenzweig
     
      The Devolving Web
      You'd think the guy who claims he named our current version of the World Wide Web Web 2.0 would be able to define it for the rest of us. But Tim O'Reilly is no dummy. (If he demystifies it, how could his company charge $995 to $1,495 for conferences about this new and confusing phenomenon?) He tosses around words such as Web ecosystem and memes and folksonomy, but the fact that his explanation runs on for pages tells me he can't define it. Well, let me solve this mystery: Web 2.0 is a rubric for all of the niche marketing we've seen pop up in the past few years?all the localized advertising programs Google and other search engines have sicced upon us. Localized advertising may be a beautiful concept for sales and marketing departments, but I consider it an invasion of privacy. Read the whole manifesto at www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html, but let me warn you, he does go on.
      I don't know which annoys me more?the niche or the marketing. Almost every application or service in Web 2.0 is aimed at some tightly defined audience?be it Cook County public defenders calling up a map of last year's homicides by neighborhood (www.chicagocrime.org), or, say, a traveler needing a map displaying 100,000 cellular phone towers, to gauge where cell reception is good and where there'll never be any (www.cellreception.com). These combinations of mapping websites and various databases are called mash-ups. Other small, narrowly focused uses of today's Web include blogs (a mere ten years old), podcasts, videocasts, and flight trackers. Some commercial enterprises have figured out a way to make money off of these. For example, one flight-tracking site (www.fboweb.com/ fb40/pu/info/freebies.aspx) offers both free applets and monthly subscription services, starting at $9.95.
      So, if Web 2.0 means niche marketing to niche audiences, it's not much of a revolution. But combining the services of two or three websites is just a start; wait until the big commercial interests wade in. That's how the Web was ruined in the first place.
     
      Same Old Aria, Much Better Voice
      I'm undecided about whether to recommend the latest version of an old favorite browser: Opera 9x. Opera Software (headquartered in Oslo, Norway) appeared in 1995 and produced a browser that was far ahead, even then, of Netscape's and Microsoft's browsers. For one thing, even before the American browsers worked particularly well on just Windows and Mac machines, Opera had versions of its browser for many additional operating systems.
      Opera is popular in Europe but didn't get much of a toehold here because Opera the company charged money for Opera the browser. And then they didn't. And then they did. And then they didn't, which is where we are now. Since in the United States we didn't have all that many other operating systems, and since we in the United States thought we were the world's best programmers, Opera has always played backup here to the Big Two?whoever they were.
      But Opera provides features that I love to use?foremost among them the Opera Widgets. These little programs do only one task. Examples include the frequently updated EarthQuakes Map; the Universal Currency Calculator; and JuggleMaster (a stick figure that shows you, step by step, how to perform, among other things, a 35-ball cascade).
      Opera's pages are more customizable than those of the other browsers, which inevitably leads to such clutter that a user can barely find where she's going. The address bar is in the wrong place. And so are the Back and Forward buttons, although you certainly can change settings to move the icons where you want them. Even fairly stripped of fancy features, Opera's page architecture takes some getting used to, but, mercifully, it uses most of the same keyboard shortcuts as Windows Internet Explorer 7x and Mozilla Firefox (see chart, page 37).
      It's difficult for me to recommend that you switch from your current browser to a new one?you're used to the way yours works. And they all do about the same jobs, except where security is concerned. When I switched from IE to Firefox, the new browser seemed to operate with streamlined logic. And then I discovered indispensable Firefox extensions such as Adblock (I see about a quarter as many ads as most surfers do) and Nuke Anything Enhanced (I routinely right-click on blinking banners and boxes and, from the dropdown menu, select Remove this Object. Heh, heh, heh.). Many extensions burrow their way into Firefox's universe so that you don't even realize they're separate little programs doing all those jobs you need done. Sweet.
      However, I see no reason to spend a week or two learning all new browser habits. Unless you're adventurous?then you may love Opera's different approach to the Web.
     

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