Web 2.0

Need For Feeds – Web Style

A while ago I got into the habit of reading posts from several blogs (like Lorelle on WordPress and Dave Seah blog) in an attempt to do these things:

1. Learn new things.
2. Waste time.

Now the only way reading people’s feeds can help me accomplish those goals is if they actually make posts on their blogs for me to read. Today, I looked at the ever-so-convenient Feeds menu in Opera, and saw not a single feed with new posts. I immediately thought to myself, “I am so bored, I need something to do.”

A minute later Opera refreshed the feeds, bringing in my daily dose of reading. What a relief that was!

The Beta Boost

With many of today’s sites, it is common to see a little Beta indicator by the logo. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon. Now although I don’t actively use (or proclaim use of, at least) any beta-version add-ons on this site, I though it would be funny to add beta somewhere here. Take a look at the header and see what I’ve done.

Flickr: The Perfect Web 2.0 Site

I started using Flickr last week, and I must say that it is very impressive. The site is smooth, simple and functional. Flickr follows many of the Web 2.0 themes, including tags and widgets of sorts.

Upon first seeing the site, I was impressed at the Web 2.0 feel of it. The navigation bar at the top of the pages are smart – they allow quick access to common features. Searching through the large community’s photos is easy too: you can search your photos, everyone’s photos, or Flickr groups from one search box.

I found that uploading photos is extremely easy with one of several Flickr Uploadr programs, which can be found for most of the popular operating systems. The Windows version is really a snap. You can drag pictures into the window or ad them with a browse dialog box. You can add tags to all the pictures you are uploading (although all of the pictures will share the same set of tags, which is not always desirable) and place them in a set before the upload process begins.

Flickr’s site has many tools for working with your photos, not all of which I have experimented with yet. A kind of useful one is the mapping, which lets you tag a photo with coordinates from a Yahoo-powered map. Privacy advocates should be careful and remember not to tag pictures with, say, the location of your house. I also like tagging, although thinking of the best ones (not just for photos, but also for blog posts and the like) can be challenging.

Flickr beats Kodak EasyShare Gallery (formerly Ofoto) hands down. Even though I have used Kodak’s service for a while, the features that Flickr give you are way more comprehensive, and experienced users will find much to like in the Web 2.0-oriented product.

Definition of Web 2.0?

9rules member Coputerjoe is trying to figure out what Web 2.0 really translates into. Many say that a Web 2.0 site is one that incorporates AJAX, but the best way to define it probably is one that sticks out from the crowd.

For Your AJAX Apps: Loading Icon Generator

Weblog Tools Collection came across this great Web 2.0 freebie, which lets you generate those throbber icons for your site. Big time saver, and produces nice-looking icons too.

How Opera Revolutionized the Internet

Ever since its young ages – way before Firefox was even a speck in someone’s mind – Opera was leading the pack with some of today’s most common features, like tabbed browsing and many more. Today, Opera is probably the leader of browsers in terms of power and sophistication: it includes an integrated mail client, a feed reader, phishing filter, widgets, and many other major and minor features that make your browsing experience better.

Until a short while ago, Opera was ad-laden until you paid for it (although the text ads option produced neater Google-powered ads). Not too long ago, as of version eight-point-something (I don’t remember the exact number right now), released September 20 (see Opera’s Milestones page), Opera became totally free.

Customization is priority number one: Any toolbar and button can be positioned virtually anywhere. For example, I like to have a new tab button directly to the left of the tabs, like Netscape 7.2 had. In Firefox, the only choice I have is on the far left of the toolbar above the tab bar, while in Opera, it can go anywhere I could possibly want. In the later versions, there is a feature called Widgets, which are essentially the same as anybody else’s implementation, except that they are part of Opera, not the OS.

Opera sets new standards for speed – even Firefox comes second to Opera. The page rendering speeds are simply blazing. When I left Netscape for Opera, this was one of my first observations. Pages render in seconds, not days, as in the case of Internet Explorer 6.

The integrated feed reader and  mail client are a bit different, but work pretty well. Upon viewing a feed’s URL, Opera will display the feeds contents all scrambled up, but will ask you in a polite dialog box whether you want to add it to your feeds. Reading feed messages is normal, but the message pane does not display images, like the readers in other apps do (I think).

The only way to really get a feel for Opera is to use it. It’s a bit different than other browsers, but once you get used to it, you will never want to use another browser, except for the times you visit a site nobody ever bothered to code properly. Go grab Opera now – it’s free!

My Views on AJAX

AJAX isn’t new, but I haven’t really gotten around to expressing my views on it. For those that aren’t in the geek circle, AJAX stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. It’s used to build whole web sites in some cases (Gmail and dozens of other Web 2.0 sites) or to add bits of instantly-accessible functionality (Quick reply in vBulletin or Quick Edit in Invision Power board, My Pages at PCWorld.com, for example). AJAX uses existing technologies and languages to help create enhanced user experiences.

I think that some AJAX sites are well designed, like my favorite, Gmail. It uses AJAX as the basic foundation for the whole thing, so it’s either AJAX or the standard HTML version. Other sites (or products in some cases) rely on AJAX for doing certain – albeit important, like editing records in a CRM system – tasks, but don’t use it as the actual page rendering mechanism. Using that system, the AJAX-based feature might not really work sometimes. I can’t really think of anything off-hand right now, but I remember it happening at least once.

So the next time you use a Web site or service that uses AJAX (whether you know it or not), think about how the site acts. Can you do certain things without leaving the page? Do certain features perform really quickly? Does the site have to load (with an obvious message saying it’s doing so) before you can use it? If so, it’s run on AJAX, and may (or may not) provide a better browsing experience.

Getting in to the Blogging Craze

I decided I’m going to start writing blog entries regularly now. I think I have lots of computer knowledge that serves little purpose just being stuck in my head. I’ll try to write an entry daily, and share my repository with the world.