If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past few months, you have undoubtedly heard of Twitter. I like to think of Twitter as asynchronous instant messaging where you publicly post what you are doing at any given time. Other Twitter users can then follow your activities, track you as a friend or favorite, and even reply to your “tweets”. Want to find out more? Check out this 12-Minute Definitive Guide to Twitter.
Letterpop is an amazing AJAX/Web 2.0 online newsletter creator. You can choose from a number of templates and upload your own images and photos. One of the nicer features is that you do not need to create an account to create a basic newsletter, so it’s really easy to give this app a no strings attached test drive.
Jared Spool discusses Web 2.0: The Power Behind the Hype.
Web 2.0 isn’t a ‘thing’, but a collection of approaches, which are all converging on the development world at a rapid pace. These approaches, including APIs, RSS, Folksonomies, and Social Networking, suddenly give application developers a new way to approach hard problems with surprisingly effective results.
Ellyssa Kroski has written one of the best articles I have read regarding Folksonomies and User-Based Tagging. This complete look at the topic is an excellent read if you are interested in folksonomies or are integrating tags into your next web application.
Breaking the Web Wide Open is an important story that explains the dangers of creating “walled gardens” while creating your web projects. The story began as the team at AlwaysOn was invited to give feedback to Yahoo! on their Y!360 project.
The del.icio.us blog has an interesting take on the debate as to what is web 2.0? They have analyzed all pages that have been tagged with the term web2.0 and then tallied all of the other tags that are used in conjunction web.2.0. The results are interesting but not surprising!
Mark Boulton offers his opinion on what design means in terms of Web 2.0. Turning the corner: Designing for Web 2.0 he suggests that design will be much more than simply aesthetics. Good design will incorporate user experience, usability, information architecture, accessibility and of course aesthetics.
Google Labs is offering a Sneak Peek of Google Spreadsheets. The new web-based spreadsheet offers basic features like formatting, sorting and formulas. It will allow you to import existing spreadsheets in CSV and XLS format and also outputs in these formats as well (gee I wonder if they will Save as PDF?) The killer feature with this application is the ability to collaboratively edit a spreadsheet online. An invitiation must be sent to your team members so your spreadsheet remains private. If you’re interested in trying out Google Spreadsheets, head on over to the site and request an invitation!
Wink is a new breed of search engine and public bookmarking site that gives you the most relevant and interesting results as found by people! Wink uses Google powered search and applies Wink’s PeopleRank technology to deliver sites that people think are the best for your search. PeopleRank is a feature similar to Digg, where users of Wink can give each link a “Wink” to indicate that the site is good. Wink also makes extensive use of tagging to help find related links.
I saw a fantastic live demo of YackPack yesterday at SXSW. The site offers a web-based voice messaging service that is totally cool, and extremely practical for communicating ideas across groups. You can think of it as similar to email expect instead of using text, you use your voice, which adds emotion to your conversational threads. The most interesting aspect of this site is from the user interface standpoint. The IA is fantastic and very visual and makes sending and recieving voice messages from within groups is very impressive.
