Web 2.0 : What Is It?

The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the fall of 2001 marked a turning point for the web. Many people concluded that the web was overhyped, There is no clear definition of web 2.0. The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International (Web 2.0 conference ) held in San Francisco Oct 2004 but one thing is clear Web 2.0 marks a fundamental change in how we use the Internet. Web 1.0 Early Web development (retrospectively called as Web 1.0) Simply we can say these : ·  Static pages instead of dynamic user-generated content. ·  The use of framesets. ·  Proprietary HTML extensions such as the <blink> and <marquee> tags introduced during the first browser war. ·  Online guestbooks. ·  GIF buttons, typically 88x31 pixels in size promoting web browsers and other products. ·  HTML forms sent via email. A user would fill in a form, and upon clicking submit their email client would attempt to send an email containing the form's details Web 2.0 Network connectivity is the most fundamental principle for Web 2.0 to succeed. Any collaboration amongst users is not possible without being connected to each other. There are a plethora of web sites emphasizing the social aspects of Web 2.0 which was not prominent in Web 1.0. AJAX, CSS, RSS/Atom, Folksonomies, Blogs, Mashups and REST are some of the main technologies that enable the principles of Web 2.0. In the subsequent blog entries, (IMAGE) There is no clear-cut demarcation between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 technologies, hardware and applications. The distinction is, to a large extent, subjective. Here are a few characteristics often noted as descriptive of Web 2.0: blogging Ajax and other new technologies Google Base and other free Web services RSS-generated syndication social bookmarking mash-ups wikis and other collaborative applications dynamic as opposed to static site content interactive encyclopedias and dictionaries ease of data creation, modification or deletion by individual users advanced gaming.    “collection of technologies - be it VoIP, Digital Media, XML, RSS, Google Maps… whatever … that leverage the power of always on, high speed connections and treat broadband as a platform, and not just a pipe to connect.” That is easy (few minutes learning curve), quick (intuitive) and effective (presentable). Flickr, Wikipedia, MySpace, Writely, Del.icio.us and YouTube are some of the most common (and successful) websites showing Web 2.0 concepts. Most of these websites have gained popularity in past 1.5 years but it's hard to imagine life before them. Web 2.0 era is the rise of blogging. Personal home pages have been around since the early days of the web, and the personal diary and daily opinion column around much longer than that, & internet era software is that it is delivered as a service, not as a product. Netscape was the standard bearer for Web 1.0, Google is most certainly the standard bearer for Web 2.0,
Web 1.0   Web 2.0 DoubleClick --> Google AdSense Ofoto --> Flickr Akamai --> BitTorrent mp3.com --> Napster Britannica Online --> Wikipedia personal websites --> blogging evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB domain name speculation --> search engine optimization page views --> cost per click screen scraping --> web services publishing --> participation content management systems --> wikis directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy") stickiness --> syndication we believe to be the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies: Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them Trusting users as co-developers Harnessing collective intelligence Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service Software above the level of a single device Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models That is easy (few minutes learning curve), quick (intuitive) and effective (presentable). Flickr, Wikipedia, MySpace, Writely, Del.icio.us and YouTube are some of the most common (and successful) websites showing Web 2.0 concepts. Most of these websites have gained popularity in past 1.5 years but it's hard to imagine life before them. The idea of sharing information is being valued as much as the idea of proprietary information. Open source, which has been around for decades, is becoming a significant factor. And the web link is becoming a form of currency.   Web 2.0 vs Web 1.0   From Joe Drumgoole Web 1.0 was about reading, Web 2.0 is about writing Web 1.0 was about companies, Web 2.0 is about communities Web 1.0 was about client-server, Web 2.0 is about peer to peer Web 1.0 was about HTML, Web 2.0 is about XML Web 1.0 was about home pages, Web 2.0 is about blogs Web 1.0 was about portals, Web 2.0 is about RSS Web 1.0 was about taxonomy, Web 2.0 is about tags Web 1.0 was about wires, Web 2.0 is about wireless Web 1.0 was about owning, Web 2.0 is about sharing Web 1.0 was about IPOs, Web 2.0 is about trade sales Web 1.0 was about Netscape, Web 2.0 is about Google Web 1.0 was about web forms, Web 2.0 is about web applications Web 1.0 was about screen scraping, Web 2.0 is about APIs Web 1.0 was about dialup, Web 2.0 is about broadband Web 1.0 was about hardware costs, Web 2.0 is about bandwidth costs

40 Tips for Optimizing PHP performance

Reinhold Weber has written 40 Tips for Optimizing PHP performance. Many of them were new to me - e.g. $row['id'] is 7 times faster than $row[id]. I don’t know how he has measured these numbers, but the tips are good overall!

Here are the first 10 tips:

1. If a method can be static, declare it static. Speed improvement is by a factor of 4.
2. echo is faster than print.
3. Use echo’s multiple parameters instead of string concatenation.
4. Set the maxvalue for your for-loops before and not in the loop.
5. Unset your variables to free memory, especially large arrays.
6. Avoid magic like __get, __set, __autoload
7. require_once() is expensive
8. Use full paths in includes and requires, less time spent on resolving the OS paths.
9. If you need to find out the time when the script started executing, $_SERVER[’REQUEST_TIME’] is preferred to time()
10. See if you can use strncasecmp, strpbrk and stripos instead of regex

Read the full list of 40 tips here.

Read comments on the post as well, they too contain useful information.