Ah… good ol’ Web 2.0. We’ve heard about it for a while (starting with the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004), but really, what is it?

Web 2.0 is not so much an advancement of technology (in fact, many of the fundamental technologies are fairly old - recognizable components of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) are over a decade old), but more a collection of Memes. I suppose, to put it simply, you could view Web 1.0 as mostly a “Read Only” Web (you surf around to other peoples pages and view them, or other people come to yours and view it), where as Web 2.0 is more of a “Read/Write” Web. A participatory culture, if you will where a person will go to someones site and add content to it (be it in the form of comments, videos, news submissions, or nearly anything else). Think Geocities vs. Blogger. There are a number of sites that epitomize this “Read/Write” web, and over the next few posts we’re going to take a look at some examples across different media formats.

First, let’s look at so called “Social News” sites. There are many out there, but the two biggest that I’m gonna focus on are Slashdot.org and Digg.com. They are similar, but different in some very important ways. Slashdot has been around for a while and they seem to have (in this writers opinion) a more erudite crowd (Caveat Emptor: there are trolls on both site in fair quantity). Digg is a younger site, and seems to have slightly younger users (not a knock either way, though). Both sites provide a stream of user submitted news (Digg is a bit more broad in terms of content, with Slashdot more focused on tech topics), both sites allow users to comment on each news article. They both offer social networking features (such as friends lists, and RSS feeds of just about everything). The major difference between the two is that Digg is quite democratic in how it decides which stories get to the front page, where as Slashdot stories are promoted via a number of editors. You’ll tend to find (again, in this writers opinion) that Slashdot tends to have a better “Signal to Noise Ratio“, where as Digg will often catch stories that would just slip through the cracks. However, there IS quite a bit of overlap between the two. There used to be a site that kept track of the various submissions and duplicates, but I won’t link to it because it’s since become a link farm.

Stay tuned next time when we delve into user created Video - all the world’s a stage, and all of us are the star!

-Note: I’m currently laid up with Back problems (we’ll find out for sure what’s going on Wednesday when I go see the results of my MRI), so I should be able to put aside a little more time to get articles up. Thanks for reading!

Tags: Web2.0, Digg, Slashdot, Social News, Narcipost, History

I put something up on Digg to get Mom and Dad some help after the house burned down. I figure it may get a couple of donations. If anyone has any questions, feel free to call (or post or what ever).

The link on Digg has most of the information.

read more | digg story

Microsoft launches Windows Live Writer, a new publishing tool for authoring rich blog posts on Windows Live Spaces, Wordpress, Typepad and other blogging services.

How many different languages can you say “Crap” in? I *JUST* move to Linux and Microsoft releases the best Blogging client I’ve yet come across. It supports all sorts of good stuff. Pics (either from file or URL), Maps (from the new, though somewhat cool Windows Live Map service) but to me the coolest part (apart from the interface which automatically shows what it looks like in your blog) is the fact that it AUTOMAGICLY figures out what the settings for my blog are. Yep. Just put in the blog URL (truevox.net), the username and password, and it figures it out for you! Frankly, I’m impressed. THIS is what other blogging clients need to figure out, it’s finally what a blog should be like.

Come on, Google, we need something like this!

EDIT: Though the screen cap above shows a map, I wasn’t able to upload it because Microsoft puts it into the blog as a standard pic hotmapped to their servers, and I don’t like to host pics on my servers ‘cuz I’m cheap and pay by the byte. But it DOES work (and well too!).

read more | digg story

And this time, it got enough diggs to make it to the front page! W00t! I am SO psyched about this. It might just get it the extra exposure it REALLY needs to go nova. Digg should provide plenty of eager beta testers, and honestly, the program runs great for where it is in it’s dev cycle.

Anyway, PLEASE DIGG IT!!! PLEASE! We need your support!

read more | digg story

UPDATE: There is another OFF centric story on Digg! Check it out:

Darknets are SO last century. Why not go Brightnet! Why break the law when you don’t have to. Hackers have found a way to share stuff without violating copyright.

read more | digg story

This is the COOLEST demonstration of how lax security is for many people. It’s a display at DEF CON that updates in real time as people check their email, or log into myspace (as you can see from the bottom of the pic) or what ever. If it’s not secured (I’d assume one way is to make sure you’re logging into an https:// secured site), then it should show up there.

Now tell me: How stupid would you feel appearing on that wall? I’m just supprised. It’s the biggest hacker convention around (or at least the most well known), these are the people who made the shirts that say “I read your email”, and STILL people log in unsecured. I’m just shocked.

If any of you out there ever go to DEF CON, and you have two computers, install Hamachi on both, leave one at home, turned on and connected to the internet, and take the other with you. You can then remote desktop into the one at home through Hamachi, and then surf securely knowing that everything going from you at DEF CON to your home is MASSIVLY encrypted.

For more information on security in general, may I suggest the ever popular podcast Security Now!

Thanks to ZDNet for the original pic, and the story.

And of course, feel free to Digg the Story