Sunday, April 27, 2008

What does Web 2.0 mean to us? (part. 2)

Continued from part. 1 …..

The Enterprise Mashups technology is already on the roll, John Musser from ProgrammableWeb has given an example while at the Web 2.0 Expo: “Car maker Audi used to collect data manually from 20 sources, including its inventory system and competitors' Web sites, to do competitive analyses. Developers at the company used a data mashup tool from Kapow Technologies that now automates the process, and it took only four days to build.” And yes, for you who’re familiar with SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) programming might see the resemblance of this mashups ways to combine cluttered datas into one useful database.

You may think that these enterprise technology that use Web 2.0 platform will never make it into our exclusive world of mobile life? Then things are about to change dramatically, because IBM is intended to do so. Aside from the big blue company (IBM’s nickname) plans to support Lotus Note in iPhone new firmware 2.0, they’re also going to take advantage of Safari’s full (mobile) web browser. Still at the last Web 2.0 Expo, Rod Smith, an IBM vice president for emerging Internet technologies showed a mashup on an iPhone that displays property foreclosures in the U.S. by zip code. Along with their for-sale prices, which it uses APIs from StrikeIron, Trulia and Google Maps, and took three weeks to create!

Of course, the exciting new abilities from Web 2.0 platform come with a new challenge in its own security problems. Jacob West, manager of the security research group at Fortify said during a talk at the Web 2.0 Expo: "Security was a challenge to begin with, but if anything it's getting harder in the Web 2.0 world”. He pointed out the big culprit is JavaScript, a major component of Ajax, the Web 2.0 technology used to build richly interactive sites. West continued to explain that there’s “…one particular Ajax-specific problem called JavaScript hijacking. With it, a Web browser that picks up malicious JavaScript code from a Web site can be instructed, in effect, to send confidential information with an attacker.”

The more concerning matter for end-users is likely not only those hackers inside the net, but rather the stability of using of the web services on the net. You must’ve at least experience a down-time while using Gmail or other web services when you needed them most, this can cause a stressful condition. Especially because not only you don’t know when the service is going to up & running again; but also you can’t access it when the internet connection is offline, or when the data transfer dropped to 2G/EDGE instead of the 3G you’re needed. (like what I’ve discussed at previous topic: “Do we really need 3G?” here at PA)

Then a good news came again from IBM; "We interviewed Web 2.0 companies and they told us unanimously that they are designing their applications to tolerate server failures…” said Gregg McKnight, CTO of IBM's modular systems group. Because in the renowned Web 2.0 world, if an IP address drops out; they just kill the server and move to another one.

IBM is not the only who is touting to expand the Web 2.0 native capabilities, Adobe & Google have also demonstrated offline access technology. Adobe with their AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), and Google with their Google Gears (to be used in Google Docs). Basically they’re brewing web applications that can interact directly with user’s desktop, so in the end you can use the web services even you’re offline from the internet. "You really have full control over the file system," as what Ryan Stewart, Adobe platform evangelist boasted while demonstrating Adobe AIR in Web 2.0 Expo. More details are available on Google Gears which features a local server cache for application resources, the SQLite database for data storage, and the ability to make Web applications more responsive through the WorkerPool capability.

So, all in all Web 2.0 platform is a promising technology we’ll be using daily in our mobile life. Everybody is already heading into that direction, and many software & web developers are throwing their supports too. And how about Palm? I really hope Palm is not neglecting this phenomenon web platform in front of their very eyes, and join in the band wagon by putting supported Web 2.0 platform into their next gen of ‘Blazer’ web browser. I would also love it if I’m able to download BitTorrent files in Palm Nova OS, while on the go.

To answer the first mentioned subject of these long editorials, I’m going to quote the fine line from Rafe Needleman's (Webware) blog: “Web 2.0: it's what you want it to be.”!!!

Sources and references are taken from:

* Note: Hear the PAPodCast 111 if you're more interested in listening the previous post (by Tyler Faux)


[blogged with my Treo 750v]

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