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The Information Architects did it again. A successor to the Web Trend Map. This time they have more websites more lines and more inside jokes that I don't get. But also another great feature; a clickable version of the map.

To add some buzz a web generation number is added. For instance FaceBook is categorized as Web 2.5 while our  usabillity friend Jakob Nielsen scores a meager Web 0.5.

 Altough it's getting a bit commercial with the selling of sponsor spaces and A2 versions it's again a fascinating map.

Internet 2007 Predictions? Ok ok , I know it's almost halfway 2007 as I write this but I just recently stumbled upon this online article from iA. The presentation of these predictions is just great.

"The iA Trend Map shows all the big players, the current Internet trends and how they’re connected, using the Tokyo Metro map. It’s totally unscientific and almost useless, but definitely fun to look at." [Download iA’s 2007 Web Trend Map in postcard format, DIN A4 and DIN A3]

The map is the part that got the most attention on the web. Still the article itself is good reading. The topics covered are the battle between the big players, trends, online advertising and digital identity.

Two things definitely worth looking at are the "Trend Blend 2007+" map and Dick Hardt's presentation on Digital Identity.

Last Friday Microsoft announced a new mashup tool called Popfly. With this tool it's possible to create web mashups by dragging and clicking. This online tool is simply amazing (see the screencast). For programmers it's almost scary how easy mashup applications are being created. This way even my mother-in-law can build a mashup (just kidding mom). 

Google collects not just the bits and bytes on the internet but it also  publishes a great deal of the data collected in the real world. This so called Geo data is used in applications as Google Earth, Maps and Sketchup.

Last Thursday Google organized the first Dutch Geo Developer Day. I attended this Geo Day together with 250 other "Geo Developers". During  this day we heard more about the new features in the Google Maps API. and other Geo applications.

What is Web 2.0? Is it the "read-write" web, the mash-ups or is it just a collection of fancy colored applications?

The name Web 2.0 is already two year old and is "invented" by O'Reilly Media. Just recently they (re)published a report where the Web 2.0 definitions are updated. The report  "Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices" describes 8 basic web 2.0 principles. It is written by John Musser, wellknown from his Programmable Web site.

Del.icio.us is a collection of bookmarks. My bookmarks but also the bookmarks from all other del.icio.us users. It's a social bookmarking site. I've been using del.icio.us for some time now and I love it. No need to synchronize my "Favorites" folders between computers and with tagging it's a lot easier to find my bookmarks back.

It still amazes me how few people around me are actually using this social web. Some of them are subscribed to my del.icio.us rss-feed while others have an account but don't use it.
Time to explain some of the features of this social web site.

I mentioned in my previous post "Google Office?" that Google was working on a webbased Office suite. Well they just made the next step ...

Digg is a news site where the news items (stories) are submitted and reviewed by users. Not an editor but the users decide which stories go to the frontpage. "Power to the people!" so to say Well the people from the digg community that is. Every "story" is submitted and voted on by the digg community.

User who find an item they like or "digg" submit the story by providing the webaddress (URL) a short title and a description. The story is stored in a holding bin until enough other users vote in its favor. Once that point is reached the story moves to the frontpage or a subsection.

Are people using it? Well here are some numbers; about 800k unique daily visitors, resulting in 9 million plus page views a day and growing.

Digg is "socialWare", its from people for people. You can choose to participate and "digg" some stories or just browse through it. One thing is for sure you stumble upon links to unique stories not easily found in another way.

Jesse James Garrett, the man behind the famous essay on AJAX, wrote an article Spinning the Web for DIGIT.

In this article he explains that the AJAX ripple and the Web 2.0 wave it created is not something that is driven by technology only. The technology was around but it's the understanding what the technology can do for us that causes the real spin.

He also mentiones one of my favorite online companies 37signals (the company behind BaseCamp, CampFire, BackPack etc etc). One of their remarkable marketing slogans "Our products do less than the competition.", how much more Zen can you get  
One other remarkable quote "Being small doesn’t mean we can’t have a big impact”.

A lot of people are saying that Web 2.0 is just a new marketing hype based on old technology. I still believe in the Web 2.0 wave but I see it more as a change in awareness. That is also the conclusion of the article "Web 2.0 is changing the way people think about the Internet".

Just a couple of months ago Google bought Writely, an online collaborative word processor. And now Google Labs is working on Google Spreadsheet!

Google Spreadsheet is still in a "Limited Test" state. Meaning you have to sign up and hope you are one of the happy few to try it out.
Already available is a small tour that describes the new features:

I first heard the word mashup at the MIX06 conference. Mashup (web application hybrid) as trend was mentioned at several sessions. These mashups use and combine webservices to create new applications. The programmableweb has a nice overview of some of these combinations in a matrix.
According to Wikipedia a mashup is also a musical genre. This genre uses parts of other songs to create new songs.

So basically combining stuff is not really new and if you look around you see it happening over and over again. Another good sample -and a very succesfull one- is the Senseo created by Philips and Douwe Egberts. But Nike and Apple take it to the next level.

At the Web 2.0 conference in 2005 Dick Hardt gave a presentation on Identity Management. It's interesting in several ways.

The subject itself, identity management is food for thought. Everybody want's it but nobody has the perfect solution ... The presentation gives a nice overview of where we are at the moment and speaker's view for the future.

Dick's presentation style is a different story. I downloaded the .wmv version so I could speed up the presentation to watch it at a comfortable 1.4 or 1.6 playing speed. I'm not sure where I read about this trick but it's a time saver that's for sure. 
Anyway I started to play the presentation but as soon as Dick started his presentation I had to set the play speed back to normal. The timing of this presentation is just unbelievable. I'm not going to explain in more detail just see it for yourself.

Mentioning Writely in my previous post reminded me of Backpack another great Web 2.0 application. It lets you put notes, files, photos or to-do lists online. You can even share it with others. But the best feature of this online application is it's ease of use.

Backpack has a lot of other features but you should really check it out for yourself. Signing up is free so play around and feel the experience.

Web 2.0 technology, "Next generation Internet", no matter how you put it it's something you can not deny.

With this technology new applications pop-up all around the web, made with Ajax, Atlas or Rails on Ruby. Some of the applications are already wellknown. Like GMail and Flickr.

One of the lesser known applications is Writely. Writely is an online text editor / word processor. I'm currently typing this message in it.

As you can see it has all the features you need to create or edit a document. But there is more. Document sharing, version tracking and blog posting are other options. I will try to post this message to my blog. Well see how far we get with it.

The image had to be resized a title added and it seems that the image is not uploaded just linked. Oh well, it's a start. But it has potential that's for sure ...