Web 3.0

When Tim O'Reilly coined the term web 2.0, He wouldn't have expected that it would be such a huge hit. It has made easy for people to name next revolution in web services. As it is easy, people have coined the term web 3.0 little early. The first revolution 2.0 has established itself as user friendly. 2.0 platform is the gift for internet users who wanted to tell their side of the story.

Here come 3.0, which is more helpful for business users. It is expected to change the landscape of Internet services to corporates. The big daddy of Internet, Google, is leading from the front. With this technology, Google plans to enter Microsoft’s arena. (time for counter attack!!).

Web 3.0 is the technology to blur the gap between online and offline. It helps users to work on online application while they are offline. Google has released beta developer version. General users have to wait for few more months.
I hope this technology grows as big as web 3.0. If it is able to reduce the little gap between offline and online, it will definitely be a next big revolution on Internet. It will act as a platform for further innovative developments, so that one-day; users should think twice to answer whether they are working online or offline.

Gmail and Yahoo in Windows

Microsoft recently released latest version of windows live. Windows live basic release was way back in 2005. For every release there were few new additional features. This time, the number of new features had increased compared to older ones.
Most of them are common upgrades a) New Hotmail b) Messenger with video chat c) Blog space d) Photo and video uploads e) security control

Apart from above, Microsoft has introduced something called 'Mail'.
'Mail' works same as Microsoft Outlook. It has similar layout and some additional features. It allows users to open messenger and chat from inbox.
It has a useful feature for people maintaining multiple email accounts. Multiple e-mail accounts can be accessed from single place. It can combine multiple email accounts like hotmail with gmail and yahoo accounts.

At last, Windows live offers few services that google was offering, right from gmail chat to blog space. It will be interesting to see Microsoft pushing further for web presence in coming days. It has to come out with innovative offerings to push through Google.
If by any chance you visit live.com, you will get an idea about the difference between the two. live.com is very similar to google in look and feel, but when you search for word 'Microsoft', live.com throws only half the pages what google shows…..

Visit http://get.live.com to register for Windows live.

Videowiki

After writing about level-2 of social networking, I came across a website, which we can say as level-2 of wiki. This website allows group of users to create a video together. Different users can contribute content for a single video clip. Users have an option to add video clips, photos or music. It is similar to wiki. Wiki allows different users to add photos & text content and this website allows users to add richer media like videos & music. Visit www.kaltura.com to experience yourself.

If you are interested to know about innovative internet companies, check techcrunch40.com. It has listed down 40 most innovative internet companies. ..

Virtual World

Second life is the buzzing word in social networking nowadays. Second life.com is considered to be level-2 of social networking. Second life virtual world has its own currency called 'linden dollars' and boosts own economy.
Users called residents here can do a list of activities that are close to real world's. Residents of second life can make friends, spend/earn money, build/buy/sell house etc.
To make friends users can interact with other residents. To earn money users can dance in the streets. Generous residents who pass by may lend some linden dollars. Other good option is to have linden dollars in wallet before entering second life, which users can get by exchanging real dollars.

Once users have linden dollars to spend, they can search for the beautiful city/locality and purchase virtual land. If users are creative enough, they can start creating 3D houses themselves or else can search for a good reputed builder who will do the work. There are builders who have offices in second life claiming experience in creating 3D houses. Every owner will get the copyrights of the house.
If users feel lonely at house, they can go to the nearby disco, make some friends and invite them to house.

Residents are even allowed to do business, starting from chain of virtual shopping malls to investment firms that invests in second life businesses. To help upcoming virtual/imaginary businessman, Cnet news.com reporter has written a book titled 'The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second life'. Successful business can fetch real dollars too. Because Linden dollars earned in second life can be exchanged with real dollars. Recently second life announced its first millionaire. Millionaire in real dollars, who owns assets in second life virtual world that are worth million US dollars.

Interestingly, CNN has opened a hub in second life that rolls out a second life news report containing internal news for residents. Millions of second life residents are attracting advertisers too.
We have to wait and see whether second life will sustain its growth or ends just like another gaming/fun virtual world.

Doc(t)uments

Are you searching for free documents related to business, technology, education, legal etc.... Visit www.docstoc.com a community based website that has lots of user generated documents that can be accessed for free.

Social networthing

Social networking market is buzzing with new companies registering everyday. Currently there are hundreds of networking sites available. Ranging from sites for general public to sites specific to mothers and aged people. Myspace is the leader with 75% to 80% market share. In september Myspace attracted more than 60 million visitors. Facebook is the second with 10% market share.



Revenue of social networking companies is growing with the increase in number of visitors. Overall, Revenue of social networking sites is expected to reach $965 million by the end of 2007 and is estimated to touch $2.4 billion by 2012. Companies like google and News Corp have sensed the opportunity early in the market and have acquired companies like youtube and Myspace. Corporations and venture capitalists who dont want to miss out opportunity of investing in next Google or Microsoft are currently investing heavily in social networking companies that own sites or develop technologies useful to these sites.



Individual investors are waiting for the opportunity. Their turn is expected to come in next couple of months. Social networking companies are about to hit the stock market in near future. A segment of investors are having second thoughts to invest in these companies as they fear a bubble similar to dot com bubble few years ago.

One of the intial players in social networking space known as classmates.com has filed for an IPO. Observers of socialnetworking market are keenly waiting for its listing. Results of Classmates IPO will serve as a barometer to estimate worth of social networking companies.



In India, online population is currently believed to be 38 million and is estimated to reach 100 million by 2008. Social networking site 'Orkut' is estimated to have around six million users in India according some analysts.





Note: All figures quoted here are from IT news websites.

Colourful Email

Want to add some colour to the emails, use incredimail . It helps to send emails with beautiful backgrounds, animations and 3D effects. IncrediMail Ltd offers all these for free. Just download executable file from www.incredimail.com website and start sending colourful mails...happy emailing.

World of next generation technologies

World of next generation technologies

By next generation, I mean innovative technologies build on existing technological platforms .
world wide web is making way to web 2.0, application buying is moving to application hosting, storage is getting virtualised, skype has entered mobile phones, real estate is virtualised, online news has moved to RSS, banking has gone mobile, TV is now IPTV, inbox has become xobni and the list is endless as the new ones join the list at the thought of the second.

Going into details, nowadays every other web article you come across talks about web 2.0. The term which was coined by Tim O'Reilly, publisher of computer books in one of their web conferences.
Web 2.0 is the next stage of web, in the sense web 1.0 is used as a platform to develop web 2.0 technologies.
web 2.0 consists of weblogs, blogs, RSS, social networking, wikis, podcasts.
Tim O'Reilly differentiates between web 1.0 and web 2.0 as

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

Next comes Application hosting, popularly known as SaaS, Software as a Service.
Saas is a concept wherein companies/individuals can rent software instead of buying the package.It reduces lot of overheads for a company. Brought in to mainstream by salesforce.com, is now gaining momentum and has travelled from compaines to indiviuals at very fast pace. Now even google is providing office suite as a Saas. Just go to google documents and use the word or excel. No need to buy an office suite package and go through the headache of installing and running on your systems.

World of Virtualisation. Virtualisation is in high demand with data centers and servers. Virtualisation is a framework of dividing the hardware resources into multiple environments. for example, you can take five hard disks and make to look like one by virtualisation or take one hard disk and make to look like five by virtualisation. It reduces number of datacenters used by effeciently utilising the available space.
It is also used in personal computers, either from client side or from server side. currently it is coming from server side and in near term it will be available at the client side (at affordable price). Client side means virtualisation on your desktop harddrive. It will help us to run more than one environments(logins) on same desktop. one for father, one for brother, one for sister ... looks same as different logins on a computer that exist on currently but there is no guest business here. All logins are seperate from each other. each user is an admin but only for his login. If one login gets virus it will not affect files of other logins because technically each login is a sytem by its own. i.e virtualisation.

Skype, yes the VOIP provider. By using skype software you can make calls through internet. free of cost for calling other computer user and for landlines and mobile numbers with small amount of fee. It has appeared here because it is going mobile. All these days service providers in some way or other halted Skype from going mobile. No servie provider was ready to partner with Skype. All were afraid of Skype eating up their international calls revenue if it comes mobile. But as the saying goes no one can stop from rolling. Hutchison 3 Group has tied up with Skype and will provide the opportunity for customers to use skype on Hutchison's 3 network.

Do you believe in second life? Half a million people in this world are already enjoying it. Welcome to the world of virtual real estate. You can buy or rent property, build beautiful house, well layed roads, get to know neighbours, and the list continues...all you need is Linden dollars. Do you want to own a flat in beautiful place with swaying palm trees then just visit secondlife.com.

Innovation is happening every day, every minute. Product life cycle for each technology is getting shortened. Its very hard to be in sync with innovation happening in IT industry. But..But few products will never go off come whatever, they are like cockroaches that can sustain all the turbulent weathers to keep on living and the best example is SPAM.

slide.com

Google's office suit is a good idea to use to acess your files from anywhere. It reduces all the headache associated with data storing, retrieving, sending as an attachment etc.. I have started to use google word and excel. Enter the data on the excel sheet and it will get automatically saved. I find google word and excel really useful. Recently google has introduced powerpoint to its free online office suit. .Good to have applications of regular use free of cost. But apart from these office related applications, there is a website called slide.com that helps in presenting yourself in creative manner. It helps to prepare beautiful slides of your pictures or add colours to your video. It has links with myspace, orkut and other social networking sites that makes easier to upload the slides/presentations created by you. I created one my myself in just four steps that you can see below... Next time you upload pics of your trip in orkut make sure to use slide.com to make pics look more beautiful.

Check out my Slide Show!

Welcome, Bienvenue, Celebramos, Willkommen, Benvenuto