AppForge CEO Gary Warren says it's time to draw the curtain on the mobile Web browser era--and none too soon.
By Gary Warren
Published: January 10, 2007, 4:00 AM PST
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of this demise are not greatly exaggerated: the mobile Web browser is dead.
After years of hype and frustrated users, many question if it was ever alive. We beg to differ with industry experts who argue that improvements--such as better device form factors, network reliability and connection speed--will give new life to the mobile Web browser. The reality is that trying to use a mobile Web browser, regardless of the device, is like using tin cans to communicate--it just doesn't work. Mobile browsers are slow, clumsy and dependent on connectivity.
Uncompromised mobility requires a mobile experience that rivals the speed, power and ease of use of a computer; it can't work with mobile Web browsers and other mobile gimmicks. It means being able to tap the widest-available set of development resources to put applications and data on the widest array of devices, regardless of language and platform.
Even in 2007, networks and connectivity are likely to remain intermittent and unreliable. The only humane thing to do is to put the mobile Web browser out of its misery by harnessing the power of rich applications.
The only humane thing to do is to put the mobile Web browser out of its misery by harnessing the power of rich applications.
It's said you can never be too thin or too rich. In the world of mobile wireless, for forms-based applications, "rich client" is in but "thin client" is out. A thin client is minimal. A thin client demands a continuous high-bandwidth server connection. In the wireless spectrum, bandwidth is lacking and is unlikely to improve in the near future. While some may say 3G is the solution to this problem, adoption in the U.S. has been much slower than the rest of the world, and will likely continue to lag.
Last year, businesses built up their mobile work forces only to find that the mobile Web browser limited, rather than enhanced, enterprise productivity. While device access, performance and overall functionality have improved, few enterprises have been able to harness the power available for uncompromised mobility.
Businesses are planning to increase their use of mobile devices for applications well beyond e-mail, including field force and sales force automation, remote monitoring, customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning, and more. Yet, many will fail because of the complexity, labor and expense of developing their own enterprise mobile applications.
One common mistake organizations make is assuming that users will always have to be connected. The safest investment that organizations can make in mobile-application development is to create rich on-device applications that take into consideration the greatest range of device variables for today and tomorrow, and support connected and disconnected states.
Rich applications address the best elements of traditional and distributed computing models, and will enable the Web to evolve beyond the page-based structure found in today's browser model--and mobile applications to evolve beyond the confines of the browser.
The possibilities really are endless and, suddenly, device diversity is no longer a challenge.
Many organizations are already realizing the potential of rich on-device applications to solve the mobility conundrum. Hospitals are using applications to provide critical patient information to doctors while on rounds or on the golf course. Insurance companies are enabling their agents to process claims from the road, eliminating paperwork and improving customer service.
This year, I expect to see commercial banks and credit card companies increase their mobile offerings to include such applications as those allowing customers to check balances and search for transactions, as well as using a mobile "wallet" for payment from a credit card account.
These are not the unfulfilled promises of yesterday's mobile solutions. These are the realities of today's uncompromised mobility solutions made possible with rich applications and mobile-application development platforms.
And the mobile Web browser? Unnecessary. Enterprises can reach their customers through mobile applications into which only data is downloaded. It's easy. It's fast. It leaves the heavy Web graphics and images where they belong--on the Web page, not the device.
miércoles, 10 de enero de 2007
Visa, Nokia turn cell phones into credit cards
Credit card giant launches global system to turn mobile phones into wallets in a deal with the world's top handset maker.
By Reuters
Published: January 10, 2007, 4:57 AM PST
Visa, the credit card giant, has launched a global system to turn mobile phones into wallets for millions of customers in a deal with the world's top handset producer, Nokia.
Consumers will be able to pay for groceries and other purchases by swiping a phone over a reader that electronically communicates with a microchip on the phone. Phone owners confirm the purchase with the push of a button and the deal is complete.
The platform is the result of many years of trials worldwide and will enable contact-free payments, remote payments, person-to-person payments, and mobile coupons.
Consumers will also be able manage their accounts and funds from their mobile devices, Visa announced Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. IBM helped create the mobile payment system.
The wireless standard that will link mobile phones with payment systems in stores and elsewhere will be the near field communication (NFC) chip, which will be hidden under the phone cover and makes contact when swiped over a reader.
special coverage Gaga for gadgets
Join the gear-loving masses. Click here for photos, videosand more from CES 2007.
NFC technology, developed by former Philips chip unit NXP and Sony, is already widely used in public transport access cards.
Visa, which is the world's biggest credit card payment system, said its cards and payment systems currently generate more than $4 trillion in sales volume globally each year. In October, Visa announced plans to restructure its global operations and create a new publicly traded company called Visa Inc.
The initial version of the mobile payment platform, which launched on Monday, offers contactless mobile payment, personalization over mobile telephony networks, coupons and direct marketing. Subsequent versions of the platform, to be made available later in the year, will include remote payment--also using mobile telephony networks--and person-to-person payment.
Until now, mobile payment systems have been restricted to trials.
In October, Japan's leading credit card company, JCB, started Europe's first mobile phone credit payment trial with Nokia and Dutch telecom operator KPN in seven stores in the Netherlands and among 100 card holders. Other mobile phone payment trials in Germany and Finland have enabled consumers to pay for public transport.
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
By Reuters
Published: January 10, 2007, 4:57 AM PST
Visa, the credit card giant, has launched a global system to turn mobile phones into wallets for millions of customers in a deal with the world's top handset producer, Nokia.
Consumers will be able to pay for groceries and other purchases by swiping a phone over a reader that electronically communicates with a microchip on the phone. Phone owners confirm the purchase with the push of a button and the deal is complete.
The platform is the result of many years of trials worldwide and will enable contact-free payments, remote payments, person-to-person payments, and mobile coupons.
Consumers will also be able manage their accounts and funds from their mobile devices, Visa announced Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. IBM helped create the mobile payment system.
The wireless standard that will link mobile phones with payment systems in stores and elsewhere will be the near field communication (NFC) chip, which will be hidden under the phone cover and makes contact when swiped over a reader.
special coverage Gaga for gadgets
Join the gear-loving masses. Click here for photos, videosand more from CES 2007.
NFC technology, developed by former Philips chip unit NXP and Sony, is already widely used in public transport access cards.
Visa, which is the world's biggest credit card payment system, said its cards and payment systems currently generate more than $4 trillion in sales volume globally each year. In October, Visa announced plans to restructure its global operations and create a new publicly traded company called Visa Inc.
The initial version of the mobile payment platform, which launched on Monday, offers contactless mobile payment, personalization over mobile telephony networks, coupons and direct marketing. Subsequent versions of the platform, to be made available later in the year, will include remote payment--also using mobile telephony networks--and person-to-person payment.
Until now, mobile payment systems have been restricted to trials.
In October, Japan's leading credit card company, JCB, started Europe's first mobile phone credit payment trial with Nokia and Dutch telecom operator KPN in seven stores in the Netherlands and among 100 card holders. Other mobile phone payment trials in Germany and Finland have enabled consumers to pay for public transport.
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
EBay Pressured to Move on Skype
Analysts worry that the online auctioneer is moving too slowly on its multibillion-dollar investment. Will more content allay their concerns?
by Olga Kharif
When eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman acquired Skype in fall 2005, she said, "by combining the two leading e-commerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with [Skype], we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net." The deal, valued at $2.6 billion in cash and stock, plus an extra $1.5 billion in additional payments through 2009 if certain performance targets are met, set Wall Street tongues wagging.
Among the hoped-for gains: added business lines, new buyers and sellers to the auction site, and a jump-start for growth. But more than a year after the deal was struck, many analysts question whether eBay (EBAY) has done all it can to harness Skype and its technology. Some investors concur, as evidenced by the 20% decline in eBay's share price since September, 2005.
Some of the slump is due to concerns that eBay's core auctions business, accounting for 66% of sales, is slowing as e-commerce and online search competitors muscle their way onto eBay turf. Still, "strategic questions remain about Skype," says Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil—Media Metrics. "It's still unclear how it benefits the core eBay platform. And monetization [on eBay's investment] has been slower to occur than we had hoped."
Slow Mover
Analysts including Paul Keung, who covers eBay for CIBC World Markets, speculate that Skype didn't reach its first set of performance-based goals, resulting in missed payments, or so-called earn-outs. A recent management shuffle sent Skype President Alex Kazim back to an executive post at eBay after only six months. Skype declined to comment on earn-outs and claims Kazim left because his new responsibilities made for a long commute.
Sure, there's been movement in the right direction. The Web-calling outfit is expected to book $195 million in sales in 2006, three times the 2005 figure; in December, Skype introduced a subscription-based calling plan, and it's expected to announce other service fees and more paid service plans later this month.
The problem, say many on Wall Street, is the lack of a broader vision for Skype. "This is probably enough to offset regulation fees," Michael Arden, an analyst with consultancy ABI Research, says of the new fees. What's lacking is greater and speedier integration with other eBay properties and a grand, sweeping plan hinted at by Whitman and others at eBay back in 2005.
Skype's Potential
The company says big changes are on the way and that more of that vision will come to the fore. "We are working on developing new e-commerce- and content-oriented, and advertising-related revenue streams," says Don Albert, vice-president and general manager of Skype North America. For now, most of the company's sales derive from telecom services like SkypeOut, which allows for calls from PCs to phones. "Over time, we see these [other revenue streams] accounting for the larger share of Skype's revenues," Albert says.
Consider the potential in online search ad revenues. Since last August, Skype has been working with search heavyweight Google (GOOG) to enable so-called click-to-call ads, which let the user place a call to a desired number directly from a list of ads that appear next to search results. The new feature, due to be in place in late 2007, could let eBay offer a completely new category of listings—and maybe even to share in online advertising dollars collected by Google.
The company is also toying with the idea of offering contextual advertising as part of its new text chat and Skypecast feature, allowing dozens of users to join regular live conversations on various topics, or even virtual concerts, where members sing and play music instruments for each other. It's easy to imagine how a weekly chat on gadgets might feature ads for the latest phones from the likes of Motorola (MOT) or Nokia (NOK), which announced on Jan. 8 that it will integrate Skype into its new tablet PC. For now, Skypecast use is still limited.
by Olga Kharif
When eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman acquired Skype in fall 2005, she said, "by combining the two leading e-commerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with [Skype], we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net." The deal, valued at $2.6 billion in cash and stock, plus an extra $1.5 billion in additional payments through 2009 if certain performance targets are met, set Wall Street tongues wagging.
Among the hoped-for gains: added business lines, new buyers and sellers to the auction site, and a jump-start for growth. But more than a year after the deal was struck, many analysts question whether eBay (EBAY) has done all it can to harness Skype and its technology. Some investors concur, as evidenced by the 20% decline in eBay's share price since September, 2005.
Some of the slump is due to concerns that eBay's core auctions business, accounting for 66% of sales, is slowing as e-commerce and online search competitors muscle their way onto eBay turf. Still, "strategic questions remain about Skype," says Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil—Media Metrics. "It's still unclear how it benefits the core eBay platform. And monetization [on eBay's investment] has been slower to occur than we had hoped."
Slow Mover
Analysts including Paul Keung, who covers eBay for CIBC World Markets, speculate that Skype didn't reach its first set of performance-based goals, resulting in missed payments, or so-called earn-outs. A recent management shuffle sent Skype President Alex Kazim back to an executive post at eBay after only six months. Skype declined to comment on earn-outs and claims Kazim left because his new responsibilities made for a long commute.
Sure, there's been movement in the right direction. The Web-calling outfit is expected to book $195 million in sales in 2006, three times the 2005 figure; in December, Skype introduced a subscription-based calling plan, and it's expected to announce other service fees and more paid service plans later this month.
The problem, say many on Wall Street, is the lack of a broader vision for Skype. "This is probably enough to offset regulation fees," Michael Arden, an analyst with consultancy ABI Research, says of the new fees. What's lacking is greater and speedier integration with other eBay properties and a grand, sweeping plan hinted at by Whitman and others at eBay back in 2005.
Skype's Potential
The company says big changes are on the way and that more of that vision will come to the fore. "We are working on developing new e-commerce- and content-oriented, and advertising-related revenue streams," says Don Albert, vice-president and general manager of Skype North America. For now, most of the company's sales derive from telecom services like SkypeOut, which allows for calls from PCs to phones. "Over time, we see these [other revenue streams] accounting for the larger share of Skype's revenues," Albert says.
Consider the potential in online search ad revenues. Since last August, Skype has been working with search heavyweight Google (GOOG) to enable so-called click-to-call ads, which let the user place a call to a desired number directly from a list of ads that appear next to search results. The new feature, due to be in place in late 2007, could let eBay offer a completely new category of listings—and maybe even to share in online advertising dollars collected by Google.
The company is also toying with the idea of offering contextual advertising as part of its new text chat and Skypecast feature, allowing dozens of users to join regular live conversations on various topics, or even virtual concerts, where members sing and play music instruments for each other. It's easy to imagine how a weekly chat on gadgets might feature ads for the latest phones from the likes of Motorola (MOT) or Nokia (NOK), which announced on Jan. 8 that it will integrate Skype into its new tablet PC. For now, Skypecast use is still limited.
Iphone by Apple
By Pete Mortensen
SAN FRANCISCO -- With a wave of his hand, Apple CEO Steve Jobs changed the mobile phone landscape.
Tuesday at the Macworld conference here, the company introduced the iPhone, a buttonless, black-and-chrome handheld combining a mobile phone, a wide-screen video iPod and a palm-top computer. The present Mac faithful roared in appreciation.
"Today we're introducing three revolutionary products," Jobs said moments before unveiling the device. "A new iPod, a phone and an internet communicator. These are not three separate devices -- we call it the iPhone."
The announcement follows months of intense speculation and marks a shift of gravity for the company away from its Mac line of personal computers to a broader range of consumer electronics. This shift has been under way ever since it unveiled the iPod in October 2001, and was formally acknowledged Tuesday with a corporate rechristening. Apple Computer Inc. is now just plain Apple Inc.
Apple shares shot up nearly 8 percent Tuesday to $92, while its new rival, Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, tumbled by about the same margin.
The iPhone will be available in June exclusively from Cingular Wireless, at a price of $500 for a 4-GB model and $600 for an 8-GB model with a two-year service contract. That tops the cost of any other phone currently on the market, which Jobs attributed to the iPhone's iPod abilities.
The device runs a cut-down version of Apple's Mac OS X operating system, including the Safari web browser, widgets and full e-mail. Instead of physical hardware controls, the device's face is covered with a large LCD touch screen that adapts its interface based on the application.
Jobs showed how to flip between e-mail, web browsing, audio and video functions -- all with a few gestures of his fingertips through a new interface technology called "multi-touch."
Though Apple wouldn't let conference attendees use prototype iPhones, a crowd of hundreds gathered at the company's booth just to see a reprise of Jobs' presentation by an Apple employee.
Jobs said "making calls is the killer app" for mobile technology, pointing to phones that don't sync well with address books on people's computers. The iPhone syncs with iTunes for the many types of data it uses to reduce the challenge of such tasks.
"I think it's like the MP3 player scene before Apple," said Chris Markesky of San Francisco. "This is more accessible and usable for my mom and my wife. Most people type in the numbers for every call -- they don't keep numbers on the phone."
Jobs said Apple will shoot for 1 percent of the worldwide market share for mobile phones -- approximately 10 million units, equivalent to roughly a sixth of Cingular's current subscriber base of 58 million.
Some were disappointed by the company's tie-up with Cingular. Nery Rivas of Los Angeles said he was hoping the phone would work with T-Mobile and other carriers.
Others, many of them Cingular subscribers, were unrestrained in their praise of the iPhone.
"This is what I hope for as far as what a phone should be," said Ken Zinn of Los Angeles as he walked toward Apple's exhibition booth for a closer look. "I'm going to go wait in a line."
SAN FRANCISCO -- With a wave of his hand, Apple CEO Steve Jobs changed the mobile phone landscape.
Tuesday at the Macworld conference here, the company introduced the iPhone, a buttonless, black-and-chrome handheld combining a mobile phone, a wide-screen video iPod and a palm-top computer. The present Mac faithful roared in appreciation.
"Today we're introducing three revolutionary products," Jobs said moments before unveiling the device. "A new iPod, a phone and an internet communicator. These are not three separate devices -- we call it the iPhone."
The announcement follows months of intense speculation and marks a shift of gravity for the company away from its Mac line of personal computers to a broader range of consumer electronics. This shift has been under way ever since it unveiled the iPod in October 2001, and was formally acknowledged Tuesday with a corporate rechristening. Apple Computer Inc. is now just plain Apple Inc.
Apple shares shot up nearly 8 percent Tuesday to $92, while its new rival, Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, tumbled by about the same margin.
The iPhone will be available in June exclusively from Cingular Wireless, at a price of $500 for a 4-GB model and $600 for an 8-GB model with a two-year service contract. That tops the cost of any other phone currently on the market, which Jobs attributed to the iPhone's iPod abilities.
The device runs a cut-down version of Apple's Mac OS X operating system, including the Safari web browser, widgets and full e-mail. Instead of physical hardware controls, the device's face is covered with a large LCD touch screen that adapts its interface based on the application.
Jobs showed how to flip between e-mail, web browsing, audio and video functions -- all with a few gestures of his fingertips through a new interface technology called "multi-touch."
Though Apple wouldn't let conference attendees use prototype iPhones, a crowd of hundreds gathered at the company's booth just to see a reprise of Jobs' presentation by an Apple employee.
Jobs said "making calls is the killer app" for mobile technology, pointing to phones that don't sync well with address books on people's computers. The iPhone syncs with iTunes for the many types of data it uses to reduce the challenge of such tasks.
"I think it's like the MP3 player scene before Apple," said Chris Markesky of San Francisco. "This is more accessible and usable for my mom and my wife. Most people type in the numbers for every call -- they don't keep numbers on the phone."
Jobs said Apple will shoot for 1 percent of the worldwide market share for mobile phones -- approximately 10 million units, equivalent to roughly a sixth of Cingular's current subscriber base of 58 million.
Some were disappointed by the company's tie-up with Cingular. Nery Rivas of Los Angeles said he was hoping the phone would work with T-Mobile and other carriers.
Others, many of them Cingular subscribers, were unrestrained in their praise of the iPhone.
"This is what I hope for as far as what a phone should be," said Ken Zinn of Los Angeles as he walked toward Apple's exhibition booth for a closer look. "I'm going to go wait in a line."
Y ahora Web 3.0
EL CIBERESPACIO SE MODERNIZA
Mientras algunos estudiosos definieron la Web 2.0 como aquella que nació a comienzos de siglo con la efervescencia punto com y la interactividad como sustento, algunos ya acuñan el término 3.0 para la próxima y que según muchos ya está en desarrollo. Una en que los sitios, los vínculos, los medios y las bases de datos, son “más inteligentes” y capaces de trasmitir automáticamente más significados que los actuales.
Victoria Shannon
Justo cuando las ideas sobre la Web 2.0 comienzan a incorporarse a la corriente, el grupo de cerebros tras la World Wide Web ha comenzado a trabajar en lo que podría terminar llamándose Web 3.0. “En 20 años más miraremos hacia atrás y diremos que éste fue el período embrionario”, dijo Tim Berners-Lee, quien estableció el lenguaje de programación de la web, en 1989, con colegas del CERN, el instituto de ciencias europeo. “La web se hará más revolucionaria”, dijo a los delegados, en la apertura de la XV Conferencia anual de la World Wide Web.
Aunque Berners-Lee es reacio a emplear el término Web 2.0 (un modismo de Silicon Valley para describir a la Internet desde la irrupción de los punto com a inicios de siglo), dice que ve un nivel de vigor nuevo en la red. Para muchos en el mundo de la tecnología, Web 2.0 significa una Internet que es aún más interactiva, personalizada, social y mediáticamente intensiva (por no mencionar lucrativa) que la de hace una década. Es un cambio visible en bases de datos mediales de múltiples niveles, como Google Maps, programas de software que operan al interior de los browsers de Web como el amistoso procesador de palabras Writely, foros comunitarios de alto volumen como MySpace y las así llamadas herramientas sociales de búsqueda como Yahoo Answers.
Pero los especialistas en softwares, los ejecutivos tecnológicos y los emprendedores que asisten a la conferencia de Edimburgo, buscan más allá de eso, centrándose en otra (aunque menos amistosa hacia el usuario) consecuencia: la web semántica, otra creación de Berners-Lee. En esta versión de la web, los sitios, los vínculos, los medios y las bases de datos, son “más inteligentes” y capaces de trasmitir automáticamente más significados que los actuales. Por ejemplo, dijo Berners-Lee, un portal que anuncie una conferencia incorporaría también una cantidad de información relacionada. Un usuario podría pulsar un vínculo y transferir inmediatamente la hora y la fecha de la conferencia a su calendario electrónico. La ubicación (dirección, latitud, longitud, hasta quizás la altura) podría ser enviada a su equipo GPS y los nombres y biografías de los otros invitados podría mandarse a un listado de mensajes instantáneo. En otras palabras, el lenguaje de acceso de cada página web podría ser referido a otras innumerables bases de datos, una vez que los diseñadores se pongan de acuerdo en un conjunto común de definiciones.
Adoptar los componentes
Muchos de esos fundamentos han sido establecidos durante los últimos años por el World Wide Web Consortium, un grupo técnico de estándares y políticas dirigido por Berners-Lee. Ahora corresponde hacer el esfuerzo de activar a los diseñadores de web para que adopten los componentes y los lleven a softwares, servicios y sitios, dijo Nigel Shadbolt, profesor de inteligencia artificial en la universidad de Southhampton, Inglaterra. “Hay un lugar obvio para la web semántica en las ciencias de la vida, en la medicina, en la investigación industrial”, dijo Shadbolt, y allí es donde mayoritariamente se concentra hoy. “Estamos buscando comunidades de usuarios de información para mostrarles los beneficios”, dijo.
Agregó que la gran pregunta es si luego pasará a los negocios y a los consumidores. Una consecuencia de una Internet abierta y difusa, resaltó, es que pueden surgir resultados inesperados de lugares imprevistos. Por ejemplo, algunos experimentos tempranos en “semanticismo”, que ponen de relieve nuevas relaciones en los actuales datos de web, han provenido de Flickr, una sitio de intercambio fotográfico regulado por sus propios miembros, y de FOAF (por “amigo de un amigo”), un proyecto de investigación para describir los diversos vínculos entre las personas. Ambos añaden “significado” donde tal contexto no existía antes, simplemente por la vía de cambiar la programación subyacente para reflejar vínculos entre las bases de datos, dijo Shadbolt.
Web semántica
Patrick Sheehan, socio de 3i Investments, compañía de capital de riesgo basada en Londres, dijo que las inversiones están empezando a seguir el período de “cielo despejado” de los grandes sueños de la web semántica. Este año, su compañía financió los primeros pasos de dos empresas de este tipo, ambas en Gran Bretaña. “Ahora se puede decir web semántica sin recibir de vuelta una mirada totalmente inexpresiva”, dijo Sheehan, agregando haber visto “varias, si no cientos” de propuestas. “La tecnología todavía proviene en su mayor parte de las universidades. Pero estas compañías son reales, resuelven problemas: no están haciendo sólo investigación”. Garlik, basada en Richmond, Inglaterra, que cuenta como presidente a Mike Harris, el ejecutivo jefe del banco en línea Egg, aspira a usar la programación semántica para administrar información personal en línea.
No es que todos coincidan, pero Berners-Lee, cuyo trabajo en CERN se inspiró en un deseo de compartir trabajos de investigación entre los físicos, ve sólo dos versiones distintivas de su web: la web de los documentos, que surgió en la década de 1990, y la web de los datos, que será el resultado de los lenguajes de programación semántica. “La gente sigue preguntando qué es la Web 3.0. Creo que la web semántica será profunda. Con el tiempo, será tan obvia como obvia nos parece hoy la web”, dijo Berners-Lee.
© International Herald Tribune
(The New York Times Syndicate)
Mientras algunos estudiosos definieron la Web 2.0 como aquella que nació a comienzos de siglo con la efervescencia punto com y la interactividad como sustento, algunos ya acuñan el término 3.0 para la próxima y que según muchos ya está en desarrollo. Una en que los sitios, los vínculos, los medios y las bases de datos, son “más inteligentes” y capaces de trasmitir automáticamente más significados que los actuales.
Victoria Shannon
Justo cuando las ideas sobre la Web 2.0 comienzan a incorporarse a la corriente, el grupo de cerebros tras la World Wide Web ha comenzado a trabajar en lo que podría terminar llamándose Web 3.0. “En 20 años más miraremos hacia atrás y diremos que éste fue el período embrionario”, dijo Tim Berners-Lee, quien estableció el lenguaje de programación de la web, en 1989, con colegas del CERN, el instituto de ciencias europeo. “La web se hará más revolucionaria”, dijo a los delegados, en la apertura de la XV Conferencia anual de la World Wide Web.
Aunque Berners-Lee es reacio a emplear el término Web 2.0 (un modismo de Silicon Valley para describir a la Internet desde la irrupción de los punto com a inicios de siglo), dice que ve un nivel de vigor nuevo en la red. Para muchos en el mundo de la tecnología, Web 2.0 significa una Internet que es aún más interactiva, personalizada, social y mediáticamente intensiva (por no mencionar lucrativa) que la de hace una década. Es un cambio visible en bases de datos mediales de múltiples niveles, como Google Maps, programas de software que operan al interior de los browsers de Web como el amistoso procesador de palabras Writely, foros comunitarios de alto volumen como MySpace y las así llamadas herramientas sociales de búsqueda como Yahoo Answers.
Pero los especialistas en softwares, los ejecutivos tecnológicos y los emprendedores que asisten a la conferencia de Edimburgo, buscan más allá de eso, centrándose en otra (aunque menos amistosa hacia el usuario) consecuencia: la web semántica, otra creación de Berners-Lee. En esta versión de la web, los sitios, los vínculos, los medios y las bases de datos, son “más inteligentes” y capaces de trasmitir automáticamente más significados que los actuales. Por ejemplo, dijo Berners-Lee, un portal que anuncie una conferencia incorporaría también una cantidad de información relacionada. Un usuario podría pulsar un vínculo y transferir inmediatamente la hora y la fecha de la conferencia a su calendario electrónico. La ubicación (dirección, latitud, longitud, hasta quizás la altura) podría ser enviada a su equipo GPS y los nombres y biografías de los otros invitados podría mandarse a un listado de mensajes instantáneo. En otras palabras, el lenguaje de acceso de cada página web podría ser referido a otras innumerables bases de datos, una vez que los diseñadores se pongan de acuerdo en un conjunto común de definiciones.
Adoptar los componentes
Muchos de esos fundamentos han sido establecidos durante los últimos años por el World Wide Web Consortium, un grupo técnico de estándares y políticas dirigido por Berners-Lee. Ahora corresponde hacer el esfuerzo de activar a los diseñadores de web para que adopten los componentes y los lleven a softwares, servicios y sitios, dijo Nigel Shadbolt, profesor de inteligencia artificial en la universidad de Southhampton, Inglaterra. “Hay un lugar obvio para la web semántica en las ciencias de la vida, en la medicina, en la investigación industrial”, dijo Shadbolt, y allí es donde mayoritariamente se concentra hoy. “Estamos buscando comunidades de usuarios de información para mostrarles los beneficios”, dijo.
Agregó que la gran pregunta es si luego pasará a los negocios y a los consumidores. Una consecuencia de una Internet abierta y difusa, resaltó, es que pueden surgir resultados inesperados de lugares imprevistos. Por ejemplo, algunos experimentos tempranos en “semanticismo”, que ponen de relieve nuevas relaciones en los actuales datos de web, han provenido de Flickr, una sitio de intercambio fotográfico regulado por sus propios miembros, y de FOAF (por “amigo de un amigo”), un proyecto de investigación para describir los diversos vínculos entre las personas. Ambos añaden “significado” donde tal contexto no existía antes, simplemente por la vía de cambiar la programación subyacente para reflejar vínculos entre las bases de datos, dijo Shadbolt.
Web semántica
Patrick Sheehan, socio de 3i Investments, compañía de capital de riesgo basada en Londres, dijo que las inversiones están empezando a seguir el período de “cielo despejado” de los grandes sueños de la web semántica. Este año, su compañía financió los primeros pasos de dos empresas de este tipo, ambas en Gran Bretaña. “Ahora se puede decir web semántica sin recibir de vuelta una mirada totalmente inexpresiva”, dijo Sheehan, agregando haber visto “varias, si no cientos” de propuestas. “La tecnología todavía proviene en su mayor parte de las universidades. Pero estas compañías son reales, resuelven problemas: no están haciendo sólo investigación”. Garlik, basada en Richmond, Inglaterra, que cuenta como presidente a Mike Harris, el ejecutivo jefe del banco en línea Egg, aspira a usar la programación semántica para administrar información personal en línea.
No es que todos coincidan, pero Berners-Lee, cuyo trabajo en CERN se inspiró en un deseo de compartir trabajos de investigación entre los físicos, ve sólo dos versiones distintivas de su web: la web de los documentos, que surgió en la década de 1990, y la web de los datos, que será el resultado de los lenguajes de programación semántica. “La gente sigue preguntando qué es la Web 3.0. Creo que la web semántica será profunda. Con el tiempo, será tan obvia como obvia nos parece hoy la web”, dijo Berners-Lee.
© International Herald Tribune
(The New York Times Syndicate)
Historia de Flickr
Wikipedia (inglés):
Flickr was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver, Canada-based company founded in 2002. Ludicorp launched Flickr in February 2004. The service emerged out of tools originally created for Ludicorp's Game Neverending, a web-based massively multiplayer online game. Flickr proved a more feasible project and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved.
Early incarnations of Flickr focused on a multiuser chat room called FlickrLive with real-time photo exchange capabilities. There was also an emphasis on collecting images found on the web rather than photographs taken by users. The successive evolutions focused more on the uploading and filing backend for individual users and the chat room was buried in the site map. It was eventually dropped as Flickr's back end systems evolved away from the Game Neverending's codebase.
Some of the key features of Flickr not initially present were tags, interestingness, marking photos as favorites, and group photo pools.
In March 2005, Yahoo! Inc. acquired Ludicorp and Flickr. During the week of June 28 all content was migrated from servers in Canada to servers in the United States, resulting in all data being subject to United States federal law.[1]
On May 16, 2006 Flickr updated its services from Beta to "Gamma" along with a design and structural overhaul. According to the site's FAQ, the term "Gamma", rarely used in software development, is intended to be tongue-in-cheek to indicate that the service is always being tested by its users, and is in a state of perpetual improvement[2]. For all intents and purposes, the current service is considered a stable release.
On December 29th, 2006 the upload limits on free accounts were increased to 100Mb a month (from 20Mb) and removed from Pro Accounts, permitting unlimited uploads for holders of these accounts (up from 2Gb per month).
Flickr was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver, Canada-based company founded in 2002. Ludicorp launched Flickr in February 2004. The service emerged out of tools originally created for Ludicorp's Game Neverending, a web-based massively multiplayer online game. Flickr proved a more feasible project and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved.
Early incarnations of Flickr focused on a multiuser chat room called FlickrLive with real-time photo exchange capabilities. There was also an emphasis on collecting images found on the web rather than photographs taken by users. The successive evolutions focused more on the uploading and filing backend for individual users and the chat room was buried in the site map. It was eventually dropped as Flickr's back end systems evolved away from the Game Neverending's codebase.
Some of the key features of Flickr not initially present were tags, interestingness, marking photos as favorites, and group photo pools.
In March 2005, Yahoo! Inc. acquired Ludicorp and Flickr. During the week of June 28 all content was migrated from servers in Canada to servers in the United States, resulting in all data being subject to United States federal law.[1]
On May 16, 2006 Flickr updated its services from Beta to "Gamma" along with a design and structural overhaul. According to the site's FAQ, the term "Gamma", rarely used in software development, is intended to be tongue-in-cheek to indicate that the service is always being tested by its users, and is in a state of perpetual improvement[2]. For all intents and purposes, the current service is considered a stable release.
On December 29th, 2006 the upload limits on free accounts were increased to 100Mb a month (from 20Mb) and removed from Pro Accounts, permitting unlimited uploads for holders of these accounts (up from 2Gb per month).
Are You Ready for Web 2.0?
By Ryan Singel
SAN FRANCISCO
No one may be able to agree on what Web 2.0 means, but the idea of a new, more collaborative internet is creating buzz reminiscent of the go-go days of the late 1990s.Excitment over emerging new publishing theories -- and the whiff of a resurgence of startup financings -- this week drew throngs of geeks paying $2,800 a head to the sold-out Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Eight hundred people jostled in the doorways of early workshops devoted to tagging, innovations in search and raising venture capital.Web 2.0, according to conference sponsor Tim O'Reilly, is an "architecture of participation" -- a constellation made up of links between web applications that rival desktop applications, the blog publishing revolution and self-service advertising. This architecture is based on social software where users generate content, rather than simply consume it, and on open programming interfaces that let developers add to a web service or get at data. It is an arena where the web rather than the desktop is the dominant platform, and organization appears spontaneously through the actions of the group, for example, in the creation of folksonomies created through tagging.The theory has been percolating for some time. But it intensified last week when O'Reilly published an essay on the topic, as well as a graphic outlining the key categories of this new medium.Ross Mayfield, the CEO of SocialText, a company that sells collaborative wiki software to enterprises and that is hosting the Web 2.0 wiki, had a simpler definition for conference goers."Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people," Mayfield said.The day was not without skeptics.In a freewheeling conversation with Web 2.0 conference organizer John Battelle, InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller, who recently purchased Ask.com, dismissed the idea that citizens with blogs and video editing software were major threats to the entertainment industry."There is not that much talent in the world," Diller said. "There are very few people in very few closets in very few rooms that are really talented and can't get out.""People with talent and expertise at making entertainment products are not going to be displaced by 1,800 people coming up with their videos that they think are going to have an appeal."That clear-headed observation didn't set well with some, including media critic Jeff Jarvis, who promptly blogged the talk and labeled Diller with the deadly moniker, "Web 1.0."By whatever the theory, Web 2.0 is shaking up the status quo in web publishing, and feeding a surge of dealmaking.Small Web 2.0 companies are already being snapped up by internet giants.Google acquired Dodgeball, a mobile phone social networking application, and recruited one of the princes of mash-ups, Paul Rademacher of Housingmaps.com, from his job at DreamWorks Animation SKG.Yahoo snapped up Flickr, a community photo sharing application that relies heavily on tagging, and on Tuesday, bought Upcoming.org, an user-driven events tracking service.Wednesday afternoon's LaunchPad presentation, featuring 13 companies giving six minute pitches, drew throngs, including venture capitalists smelling money to be made from the cleverness of young programmers, and representatives from internet giants trying to determine whether their business models were as doomed as bloggers have prophesied.The crowd was so large that hotel staff had to break down the partitions separating three conference rooms to accommodate everyone.The presentations included a demo of the well publicized, but as yet unreleased, Flock browser, that aims to make Firefox into a two-way communication tool.Ian McCarthy of Orb showed the crowd how his software would let them stream media from their desktop using any web-enabled device, without having to worry about the format or bit rate of their movies or music.Zvents.com unveiled its event finder (which currently covers only the San Francisco Bay Area) and claimed it was far better than the service Yahoo had purchased the day before.Rollyo, short for roll your own search engine, officially launched at the demo, unveiling a service that lets users build their own specific search engines for travel or politics using Yahoo's search API.Longtime RSS player Pub Sub unveiled its initiative, Structured Blogging, to help bring the fabled Semantic Web into being.Structured Blogging allows bloggers to easily add structured meta-data to blog posts, such as movie reviews or event listings, so they can be easily found, read and syndicated by other sites.The ad-hoc XML (no standards body has yet decided on what elements should be in such data) would make possible a search for book or product reviews that only returned real reviews, instead of the current jumbled listing of commerce sites and spammers that search engines currently provide.But the crowd reserved its largest applause and its gasps of envy for Zimbra, a company which debuted its open-source enterprise software in early September.The software, called a collaboration suite, performs the same server based calendaring and e-mail of Microsoft's Exchange Server.Zimbra CEO Satish Dharmaraj wowed the crowd with his demo of his Ajax-powered web client, which would display the calendar when mousing over a date mentioned in an e-mail and call a number through Skype when clicking on a phone number in a message.Zimbra already has devotees working on the code and translating the interface into Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.Dharmaraj knows he's facing a tough battle taking on a flagship Microsoft product, but thinks that Web 2.0-style collaboration and the efforts of the open source community might be his savior."I would not like to take on the big boy by myself," Dharmaraj told Wired News. "I would love to take Microsoft on with IBM and Google and Apple on my side."
SAN FRANCISCO
No one may be able to agree on what Web 2.0 means, but the idea of a new, more collaborative internet is creating buzz reminiscent of the go-go days of the late 1990s.Excitment over emerging new publishing theories -- and the whiff of a resurgence of startup financings -- this week drew throngs of geeks paying $2,800 a head to the sold-out Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Eight hundred people jostled in the doorways of early workshops devoted to tagging, innovations in search and raising venture capital.Web 2.0, according to conference sponsor Tim O'Reilly, is an "architecture of participation" -- a constellation made up of links between web applications that rival desktop applications, the blog publishing revolution and self-service advertising. This architecture is based on social software where users generate content, rather than simply consume it, and on open programming interfaces that let developers add to a web service or get at data. It is an arena where the web rather than the desktop is the dominant platform, and organization appears spontaneously through the actions of the group, for example, in the creation of folksonomies created through tagging.The theory has been percolating for some time. But it intensified last week when O'Reilly published an essay on the topic, as well as a graphic outlining the key categories of this new medium.Ross Mayfield, the CEO of SocialText, a company that sells collaborative wiki software to enterprises and that is hosting the Web 2.0 wiki, had a simpler definition for conference goers."Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people," Mayfield said.The day was not without skeptics.In a freewheeling conversation with Web 2.0 conference organizer John Battelle, InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller, who recently purchased Ask.com, dismissed the idea that citizens with blogs and video editing software were major threats to the entertainment industry."There is not that much talent in the world," Diller said. "There are very few people in very few closets in very few rooms that are really talented and can't get out.""People with talent and expertise at making entertainment products are not going to be displaced by 1,800 people coming up with their videos that they think are going to have an appeal."That clear-headed observation didn't set well with some, including media critic Jeff Jarvis, who promptly blogged the talk and labeled Diller with the deadly moniker, "Web 1.0."By whatever the theory, Web 2.0 is shaking up the status quo in web publishing, and feeding a surge of dealmaking.Small Web 2.0 companies are already being snapped up by internet giants.Google acquired Dodgeball, a mobile phone social networking application, and recruited one of the princes of mash-ups, Paul Rademacher of Housingmaps.com, from his job at DreamWorks Animation SKG.Yahoo snapped up Flickr, a community photo sharing application that relies heavily on tagging, and on Tuesday, bought Upcoming.org, an user-driven events tracking service.Wednesday afternoon's LaunchPad presentation, featuring 13 companies giving six minute pitches, drew throngs, including venture capitalists smelling money to be made from the cleverness of young programmers, and representatives from internet giants trying to determine whether their business models were as doomed as bloggers have prophesied.The crowd was so large that hotel staff had to break down the partitions separating three conference rooms to accommodate everyone.The presentations included a demo of the well publicized, but as yet unreleased, Flock browser, that aims to make Firefox into a two-way communication tool.Ian McCarthy of Orb showed the crowd how his software would let them stream media from their desktop using any web-enabled device, without having to worry about the format or bit rate of their movies or music.Zvents.com unveiled its event finder (which currently covers only the San Francisco Bay Area) and claimed it was far better than the service Yahoo had purchased the day before.Rollyo, short for roll your own search engine, officially launched at the demo, unveiling a service that lets users build their own specific search engines for travel or politics using Yahoo's search API.Longtime RSS player Pub Sub unveiled its initiative, Structured Blogging, to help bring the fabled Semantic Web into being.Structured Blogging allows bloggers to easily add structured meta-data to blog posts, such as movie reviews or event listings, so they can be easily found, read and syndicated by other sites.The ad-hoc XML (no standards body has yet decided on what elements should be in such data) would make possible a search for book or product reviews that only returned real reviews, instead of the current jumbled listing of commerce sites and spammers that search engines currently provide.But the crowd reserved its largest applause and its gasps of envy for Zimbra, a company which debuted its open-source enterprise software in early September.The software, called a collaboration suite, performs the same server based calendaring and e-mail of Microsoft's Exchange Server.Zimbra CEO Satish Dharmaraj wowed the crowd with his demo of his Ajax-powered web client, which would display the calendar when mousing over a date mentioned in an e-mail and call a number through Skype when clicking on a phone number in a message.Zimbra already has devotees working on the code and translating the interface into Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.Dharmaraj knows he's facing a tough battle taking on a flagship Microsoft product, but thinks that Web 2.0-style collaboration and the efforts of the open source community might be his savior."I would not like to take on the big boy by myself," Dharmaraj told Wired News. "I would love to take Microsoft on with IBM and Google and Apple on my side."
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