Presently we are living in the age of Information and communication technology. ICT is changing our life rapidly. The way of acquiring, storing, handling, disseminating information is totally changed. The most important factor in this is the ease of accessing information. The basic aim of all these development is how easily one can get the required information. Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 or semantic web are the names associated with these development and are in vogue now a day's.
"What do people mean when they talk about the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0?" is a query we receive repeatedly, and probably has as many answers as the number of people out there using the term. However, since talk about the Web 3.0 has surfaced in the last year or so, a whole new level of confusion seems to have set in. In an effort to help people understand the ideas behind buzzwords like Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, let's go through what exactly these terms mean, and how they apply to your daily life.
Web 1.0 is a general reference to the World Wide Web during its first few years of operation. The term is mostly used to contrast the earlier days of the Web before blogs, wikis, social networking sites and Web-based applications became commonplace. Web 1.0 is a retronym which refers to the state of the World Wide Web,and any website design style used before the advent of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. It is the general term that has been created to describe the Web before the "bursting of the Dot-com bubble" in 2001, which is seen by many as a turning point for the internet. Web 1.0 is same as world wide. World Wide Web is a system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a markup language called HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.
There are several applications called Web browsers that make it easy to access the World Wide Web; Two of the most popular being Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
The first implementation of the web represents the Web 1.0, which, according to Berners-Lee, could be considered the "read-only web." In other words, the early web allowed us to search for information and read it. There was very little in the way of user interaction or content contribution. However, this is exactly what most website owners wanted: Their goal for a website was to establish an online presence and make their information available to anyone at any time. Alan Cox called this "brick-and-mortar thinking applied to the web," and the web as a whole hasn't moved much beyond this stage yet.
To take an example from above, Personal web pages were common in Web 1.0, and these consisted of mainly static pages hosted on free hosting services such as Geocities. Nowadays, dynamically generated blogs and social networking profiles, such as Myspace and Facebook, are more popular, allowing for readers to comment on posts in a way that was not available during Web 1.0.
Web 1.0 design elements
Some typical design elements of a Web 1.0 site include:
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
The term "Web 2.0" is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them.
The term Web 2.0 was first coined and conceptualised by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty in 2004 to describe the terms and business models that survived the technology sector market crash in the 1990s. The companies and services that survived were collaborative, interactive, and dynamic and the line between the creation and consumption of content in these environments was blurred. Web 2.0 is an umbrella term for the second wave of the World Wide Web. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but rather to cumulative changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web.
People talk a lot about Web 2.0. What is this Web 2.0? Is it a revolutionary web? Is it another technology 'bubble'? Is it hype? Many associate it with terms such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, social web, etc. and assert that Web 2.0 is a place where everyone can add or edit information. It is a web where digital tools allow users to create, change and publish dynamic content. Tim Berners-Lee claims that Web 2.0 is not different from Web 1.0 as the goal of Web 1.0 was to connect people. He adds that Web 2.0 is only jargon and nobody really knows what it means.
Road to Web 2.0
Bandwidth and power, faster in most cases than the T1 lines in the enterprise, cable and DSL hookups have extended high-speed connections to individuals and small businesses. Browsing Web pages full of images and video as well as downloading multimedia files have become routine.
In addition, entry level computers became powerful enough to execute scripts in an HTML page without noticeable delays. Combined with refinements in Web programming, the Web has become a transparent extension of an individual's PC just as local area networks (LANs) extended the user's computing resources inside the enterprise in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the mid-1990s, the Web began (Web 1.0) as a repository of information and static content. Within a couple years, a huge amount of content was dynamic, returning custom results to users. By the turn of the century, the Web became much more interactive (call it Web 1.5), allowing users to play, stop, rewind and fast forward through audio and video content. Web 2.0 makes Web-based applications feel like and run as smoothly as local applications.
Characteristics
Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive facilities of "Web 1.0" to provide "Network as platform" computing, allowing users to run software-applications entirely through a browser. Users can own the data on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data. These sites may have an "Architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it.
The concept of Web-as-participation-platform captures many of these characteristics. Bart Decrem, a founder and former CEO of Flock, calls Web 2.0 the "participatory Web" and regards the Web-as-information-source as Web 1.0.
The impossibility of excluding group-members who don't contribute to the provision of goods from sharing profits gives rise to the possibility that rational members will prefer to withhold their contribution of effort and free-ride on the contribution of others. This requires what is sometimes called Radical Trust by the management of the website. According to Best, the characteristics of Web 2.0 are: rich user experience, user participation, dynamic content, metadata, web standards and scalability. Further characteristics, such as openness, freedom and collective intelligence by way of user participation, can also be viewed as essential attributes of Web 2.0.
Ex:Flickr, a Web 2.0 web site that allows its users to upload and share photos
Technological Issues
Web 2.0 is not a specific technology; rather, it refers to two major paradigm shifts. The one most often touted is "user-generated content," which relates more to individuals. The second, which is equally significant, but more related to business, is "cloud computing."
1. User-generated content
User-generated content, comprised of blogs, wikis and social networking sites, such as MySpace and Friendster, let everyone have their say on anything and publish it to the world at large. As Web applications become more sophisticated, people can easily develop elaborate personal Web pages, create a blog, and upload their own opinions, audio and video. Users are augmenting the news by reporting current events sometimes faster and with details often overlooked or ignored by the professional news media.
Although millions of opinions and videos, often very amateurish only add to our information overload, a significant advantage to user-generated content is that truly talented authors, artists, musicians and moviemakers can gain an audience much more easily than they could in the past. Word-of-mouth via the Internet is worth a fortune in promotion. Web 2.0 is leveling the playing field in all arenas just as the PC leveled the playing field in business.
2. Cloud Computing
In cloud computing, also called "thin client computing," data and applications are stored on Web servers, and a user has access from any computer via a Web browser. Many believe that cloud computing will eventually supplant locally installed office and other applications and that turning the Web into a gigantic application server is the ultimate manifestation of web 2.0.
In time, this could have significant impact on the type of personal computers users choose. As more software is executed from scripts embedded in Web pages, the CPU chips and operating systems become less relevant. Browsers interpret scripts the same regardless of the hardware and software environment they reside in.
In 2007, Google combined several of its office applications into Standard and Premium Editions, the latter a paid service with tech support. Because of Google's influence, this was a watershed event for cloud computing.
Web 2.0 and Library 2.0
The question which inevitably arises for us is: how does this concept of Web 2.0 relate to the library world? Notess claims that for some the term Library 2.0 means the incorporation of blogs, wikis, instant messaging, RSS, and social networking into library services. For others it suggests involving users through interactive and collaborative activities such as adding tags, contributing comments and rating different library items. Maness asserts that Library 2.0 is a user-centered virtual community, and Farkas says that Library 2.0 improves services to the users. Abram portrays the image of the new librarian, Librarian 2.0. These librarians understand the power of Web 2.0 opportunities, and investigate and ultimately adopt their tools. They use non-traditional cataloguing and classification and recognise the idea of the 'long tail'. Librarians 2.0 connect users to experts' discussions and to communities of practice; they develop social networks and encourage users to develop content and metadata. Librarians 2.0 understand the 'wisdom of crowds' and the new roles of the blogosphere and wikisphere. Maness adds that Librarian 2.0 acts as a facilitator.
Web 2.0 is becoming an important and central topic in our information world, and more and more libraries worldwide are using its different applications. Some libraries use blogs which serve as excellent sources of information; a place where librarians can express their opinions on issues at hand. Furthermore, libraries' blogs can market the libraries to a variety of potential users. In addition, librarians can use wikis or YouTube for the purpose of library instruction. They can also use wikis as a platform for book recommendations, cataloguing and tagging, all created by library users. Even OCLC has recently created a WorldCat application in Facebook (the most popular social network) where the user can search WorldCat databases, without entering the OCLC site.
Web 3.0
Web 3.0 is a loose reference to the Semantic Web, in which all data resources on the Web are tagged with labels that describe their content and meaning. Semantic web is the name used for Web 3.0. Semantic web is a collaboration of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and others to provide a standard for defining data on the Web. The Semantic Web uses XML tags that conform to Resource Description Framework and Web Ontology Language formats. The goal of the Semantic Web is to identify Web-based data so that searches can be more effective. As information on the Web grows, search engines routinely return thousands of results when, very often, only a handful truly qualify as meaningful for the query presented. Wading through countless results has turned people into research analysts whether they were ready for the task or not.
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee is credited with the invention of the World Wide Web, when in 1980 he a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. In 1994 he founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Berners-Lee is also the motivation behind the idea of a Semantic Web where the idea was to turn the Web into a single repository of information instead of a vast collection of Web sites and pages.
At its core, the semantic web comprises a set of design principles,collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies. Some elements of the semantic web are expressed as prospective future possibilities that are yet to be implemented or realized. Other elements of the semantic web are expressed in formal specifications. Some of these include Resource Description Framework(RDF), a variety of data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML,N3, Turtle,N-Triples), and notations such as RDF Schema (RDFS) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL), all of which are intended to provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain.
Semantic Web technologies are popular in areas such as research and life sciences where it can help researchers by aggregating data on different medicines and illnesses that have multiple names in different parts of the world. On the Web, Twine is offering a knowledge networking application has been built with Semantic Web technologies. The Joost online television service also uses Semantic technology on the backend. Here Semantic technology is used to help Joost users understand the relationships between pieces of content, enabling them to find the types of content they want most. Oracle offers a Semantic Web view of its Oracle Technology Network, called the OTN Semantic Web to name a few of those companies who are implementing Semantic Web technologies.
Difference between web 2.0 and web 3.0
Today people may talk about the World Wide Web, Web 2.0 or the Semantic Web. There are a lot of misconceptions about their similarities and differences, and also where the technologies inherent to each overlap, if they overlap at all. The biggest misconception is that the terms Semantic Web and Web 2.0 mean the same thing.
Web 2.0 is all about people. It's a social thing. The second generation of the World Wide Web is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online. Where the Web contains static HTML pages, Web 2.0 is dynamic, in that it serves applications to users and offers open communications with an emphasis on Web-based communities.
Web 2.0, because it focuses on people and communications, encompasses a large number of technologies and standards, like AJAX, Ruby, XHTML, SOAP and many more. Here the technology is less important to people - they don't care about the standards and technologies running these applications, they just want the end result, which is social interaction in an attractive and easy-to-use application.
Where Web 2.0 is focused on people, the Semantic Web is focused on machines. The Web requires a human operator, using computer systems to perform the tasks required to find, search and aggregate its information. It's impossible for a computer to do these tasks without human guidance because Web pages are specifically designed for human readers. The Semantic Web is a project that aims to change that by presenting Web page data in such a way that it is understood by computers, enabling machines to do the searching, aggregating and combining of the Web's information - without a human operator.
Conclusion
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He created it as an interface for the Internet and a way for people to share information with one another. After the development of WWW, drastic changes in web technology appeared. These technologies made it very easy to interact with the world of information, but the main thing is that how the library and information professionals use these technologies to fulfill there user's requirement. In order to use these applications library and information professionals need to have a good knowledge of ICT. It is important that novice librarians and information professionals recognise these applications and be able to apply them properly in their libraries and information centers in order to show their readers and users that they are still relevant and up to date in this changing, dynamic information world.
