The evolution of the internet takes new turns every week. Few radical changes take hold though. Here are the big ones that have gained an immovable foothold - until the next Big Thing, that is.
Advertising
Web advertising has seen a dramatic shift in recent years. Where advertising was previously contract-based through large services like DoubleClick, new ad serving platforms from Google and Yahoo! allow many sites (especially smaller ones) to benefit from unobtrusive and relevant advertising, based on the site's content.
AJAX
A collection of technologies based on XHTML, JavaScript and Document Object Model (DOM) that allows users to manipulate the data on a website, without waiting for the instruction to go from the browser, to the server, and back again. This allows for more flexible user interfaces than typically HTML allows for. For an example of AJAX in action, check out Google's personalised home page at www.google.com.au/ig.
Google
A continually pioneering company in the Web 2.0 space. True to the philosophy of Web 2.0, Google adds, revises and develops technologies around existing content. Google started as a search-only service, using an innovative PageRank system that not only searches based on content, but how each page links to other pages. Recently, Google has branched out into other fields like mapping and email.
Perpetual beta
A theme for many Web services is the idea that software is ever evolving to meet the real-time demands of Web users. Rather than releasing scheduled software updates, Web services like Google will add features as they become available and adapt dynamically to its users' requirements, which are in turn de facto 'testers'.
Podcasting
Similar to text syndication, podcasting allows users to subscribe to audio-based content. While many podcasts are amateur productions, recent media publishers have started producing podcasts to as alternatives, replacements or supplements to traditional radio broadcasts.
Mashup
This concept originated from mixing different songs together, but can broadly apply to many Web services being mixed together to produce a new product. For example, a website could bring in feeds from Amazon, Google and news outlets to provide a daily, automated 'what's hot online' site.
RSS
An open XML-based format that lets websites provide a summary of content, like recent news updates, for users to subscribe to. Subscribers will then use an RSS aggregator (see PC Authority, October 2005, page 72) to receive the feed. Alternatively, browsers like Firefox support RSS feeds (called Live Bookmarks) directly.
Slashdot
Slashdot (http://slashdot.org) is a classic example of community generated content. The site owners rarely produce content, rather it's a selection of daily news stories linked elsewhere. The content is generated by the community, who discuss and debate the story at hand. Using a process of comment 'rankings', only insightful or interesting comments are given prominence, thus creating a self-regulating, community-based, content site.
Tagging
Rather than categorising content with predetermined labels, tagging allows users to assign their own categories. Popular photo sharing site Flickr (www.flickr.com) can apply many custom tags. This relevant, customisable metadata aids in searching and dynamically grouping content.
Viral marketing
With websites being socially linked and community-based, a product can achieve exponential growth in awareness that could not be achieved with traditional marketing and advertising. One example could be a small, humourous video advertisement that propagates itself through email and website recommendations to achieve rapid global proliferation.
Web 2.0
The traditional Web formula has been static Web pages, where users take a passive 'reading' role when accessing sites. Web 2.0 is a collection of services that allow, among many things, greater community participation, content syndication, advancements in Web-based user interfaces, and a new breed of Web services that create an entirely new application platform.
Wiki
A concept that epitomises the social nature of Web 2.0 is the wiki. Moving even further beyond user content like forums and photos, a wiki lets users create, edit and modify entire pages. While this sounds like a recipe for disaster, sites like Wikipedia.org prove that it's a powerful tool for generating large bodies of work quickly, with the added benefit of peer review to consistently improve it.