In the past few days I temporarily put aside the never-ending day-to-day work and attended the Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2008 with free Expo Hall Pass. The pass allowed attendees access to Keynote Sessions, the Expo Hall and Sponsored Sessions. Even though it doesn't provide access to Technical Sessions, it allowed the attendees to gain insight to more than an overview of the Web 2.0 technologies.
Some people tagged the static web pages that people browsed as Web 1.0. It was comprised of static pages linked together. There may be forms to be filled out that get sent to the server, but it lacked real-time interaction or feedback to the users.
In contrast, Web 2.0 is highly interactive. The users don't just browse the web pages anymore, they interact, or even create the web contents. A few examples of Web 2.0 include online maps and social networking sites.
Tim O'Reilly praised Sun Microsystems's vision "Network is the Computer" from a decade ago as foresightful. Sun's vision of being able to do anything or run any applications over the network has already become a reality years ago. Today, Jonathan Schwartz (and also other speakers) talked about a different concept, "Data is the Currency". For a detailed transcript of the interview of Jonathan Schwartz at Friday's Keynote session, please look at this unofficial page.
There are a few buzz words that have been mentioned again and again during this event. For someone who is not yet an expert of Web 2.0 technology, "mashup" was the word of the day for me.
According to wikipedia, "a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source".
On the Expo floor, Microsoft was demonstrating their popfly application. In the demo, it was used to mashup flickr pictures with "beach' keywords and google maps to create a new application that can display pictures taken on beaches around the world shown on google maps.
Another mashup example was demonstrated in a Sponsored session where a social networking site was mashed up with product review site so that the user can request user reviews of cameras from their contacts who were known to be camera users or photo lovers. The reviews get posted to the product review site for all to view, but they also represent more trustworthy opinions for the particular user who requested the reviews.
Friday's keynotes also included a hilarious session from Fake Steve Jobs where he talked about how he became the Fake Steve Jobs and did his job to make fun of the famous. He was funny in a goofy sort of way. The session was a success. It helped the audience to get energized again after 2 days of dry technical sessions. For the video of this session, please check this out.
