A revolution is under way. It is one of those times when technologies developed separately converge and congeal. From this emerges a new system that is better than the sum of its parts.
1. Web 2.0
There is currently a strong buzz about Web 2.0 – the next iteration of the Web. A good starting place to get a grasp of some of the related concepts is Tim O’Reilly’s article What Is Web 2.0.
The synergies of such new technologies is in a major state of flux and hence, I believe that the meaning of the term Web 2.0 will continue to evolve.
Web 2.0 has its own conference.
The 2005 conference is covered on O’Reilly’s website.
Robert Kaye also covers the Web 2.0 Conference on his blog.
You can read an article with some coverage on O’Reilly: Open source and the Web 2.0.
2. The Web OS
Now, what is interesting is that much of the technology implementation for synergy is quite new. Therefore, the very tools that we routinely use must sometimes be customized to take full advantage of the Web 2.0.
This begs the question of how to propagate technical requirements to an underlying platform to enhance the end-user’s experience with Web 2.0.
The first point of contact is the user’s browser. My weapon of choice in this area is Firefox and it should be yours too. Mozilla’s awesome open-source browser is highly customizable through a variety of extensions. A personal favourite is GreaseMonkey which allows you to install scripts that personalize the browsing experience of some sites, removing annoyances in some cases or enhancing functionality in others.
My view of the Web OS is that it must be a combination of the computer’s OS and the browser. The advantage with a browser like Firefox is that it is already cross-platform and standards-based. It is therefore a candidate of choice for basing any development of the Web 2.0 services.
Thanks to AJAX implementations, the end-user experience has improved on some sites like Google Maps. This bridges the perceived gap between the responsiveness of a Web application as compared to a desktop one.
Given Firefox and AJAX and great web services, there will be an increasing migration of desktop applications to remotely hosted locations on the web. Of course, not all applications can be hosted this way yet – desktop installed apps will still be around for a long time.
But assuming increased hosted services, it is a simple and logical step to envision that the computer OS can itself be tweaked for Web 2.0 usage. In other words, you could enhance existing Web support, but in addition, you could also strip an existing computer OS from any superfluous capabilities and code. You would then obtain a low-cost alternative to the bloated (and sometimes expensive) OSes currently available.
These WebOS 2.0 PC’s, being cheaper, could be used to power schools, especially in developing and third world countries and businesses alike.
Businesses would also benefit of broadband connections to leverage hosted services.
Although schools in poor areas may have broadband, they would still benefit of the network architecture: imagine just one server providing the necessary web services to a class of pupils. They could all be writing their assignment with a software like Writely.
The whole of the software service maintenance is outsourced – this is less costly in time and money for anyone using a PC with Web OS.
Of note recently is the announcement of the partnership between Google and Sun for cross-marketing of their services. This fuelled a lot of speculation about whether a Web version of StarOffice would be in the works. In addition, people have been talking about a possible Google browser and GoogleOS.
I envision the future Web O.S. to be a stripped down Linux distribution with subsequent enhancements. And the single distribution which is poised as the best contender has to be Mark Shuttleworth’s forever free Ubuntu Linux.
Based on the above, I don’t think Google is preparing a browser or O.S. Because both the browser (Firefox) and the Computer OS (Ubuntu Linux) already exist, it doesn’t seem to be a good strategy to me.
3. Ruby on Rails
I am quite fond of Matsumoto-san’s Ruby language and hence I founded a local Ruby user Group.
Ruby on Rails has made the development of new web services a disarmingly simple thing to do. The very implementation of the Rails framework enables you not to have to repeat yourself in your code. Actually, a lot of the code is automatically generated.
Thanks to David Heinemeier Hansson and thousand of other contributors, RoR is and will continue to be a driving force for evolving Web 2.0 because it’s now easy and fast to build new applications. It’s also worth mentioning that RoR now incorporates AJAX functionality by default.
An eye-opening tutorial is Curt Hibbs’ article on O’Reilly.
4. yubnub – The Command Line Interface of the Web OS
Another clever person going by the name of Jonathan Aquino has developed no less that the Command Line Interface of the Internet, yubnub.
Now, go to yubnub and input “gimyim countach” without the quotes to see what I mean. By the way, you now also know my favourite car. This command queries both Google and Yahoo for images, and the result is displayed in a split window in your browser of choice (which should be Firefox 
)
Jonathan has combined commands and web services, together with a social creative experience. Users from around the world can create their own new commands – reusing existing yubnub commands or not – and post them on the site.
Now, how long do you think it took him to build yubnub?
If you’ve read the information on his sites, you already know that it took him less than 24 hours. Why? Two reasons (actually three, but the main reason already opens the first phrase of this section):
In my opinion, Jonathan’s yubnub is a seminal contribution to the road towards Web 2.0.
5. YashNub
Coolness! I tried it. Love the name!
Jon Aquino (Victoria BC Canada)
http://jonathanaquino.com
After some tinkering with yubnub, I whipped up a small web form and a javascript kludge in an hour to build a personal tool for convenient and fast searches – YashNub. In turn, this enables me to grasp a subject really quickly and to write articles in a jiffy.
If you want to try a beta version, it’s here: YashNub.
Try it with “web 2.0″. Then check “With Images” and type “countach”.
I already want to build a Graphic User Interface for our Web 2.0 CLI.
It is clear to me that YashNub only exists because of a chain of contributions, with each group of contributors making the next step easier for the subsequent group:
1. Torvalds/Stallman…
2. Yukihiro Matsumoto…
3. David Heinemeier Hansson/O’Reilly/Curt Hibbs…)
4. Jonathan Aquino and the yubnub user community…)
5. Josh (with the help of many other contributors throughout the world who share their knowledge via the net).
Thanks to the people and organizations mentioned in the article. A special mention for O’Reilly who sponsors our local Linux User Group.
Throughout the research and writing of this article I used YashNub extensively.
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