Web Development Live

They are also offering No-cost tools to assist webmasters and domain developers. Their most recent offering - Stomper Site Seer - is a web-based tool that you don’t have to pay for. It generates a lot of information about your site in one report.

Even if you don’t sign-up for Stompernet (and most people won’t) their free educational offerings are amazing. This is stuff that you’d pay a lot for elsewhere. By giving away some of their material they hope to get people to sign-up. I plan to stay a member.

One major component of Stompernet is SEO. They provide unsurpassed training to help you rank in Google. Using these techniques I have been able to consistently rank on the first page of Google for the term “Domain Parking.” There is also a lot of training on building Online storefronts using affiliate links or drop-shipping.

Some stompers have built multi-million dollar businesses from the techniques they learned (and others have struggled because of the sheer volume of information available). Faculty members include Jerry West, Howie Schwartz, Andy Jenkins, Andy Edmonds, Dan Thies, Brad Fallan, Dave Taylor, David Bullock, Don Crowther, Leslie Rhodie, Sherman Hu, Mike Stewart, Paul Colligan, and Ed Dale.

Stompernet includes professional coaching and face-to-face conferences several times a year (at no extra charge). The conferences usually last for three days on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The last few have been in Atlanta. I attended the last two and found them to be at least as valuable as T.R.A.F.F.I.C. or Domain Roundtable, but with a different emphasis. Many of the attendees are small business owners with mediocre domains. They learn from people like Brad Fallon, who makes millions every year with the site MyWeddingFavors.com.

The video that you view at the site has a playlist button that will allow you to view all other free videos, such as their Going Natural 3 - Video 1. This video will teach you how to design an AdWords campaign, using a real-world example that occurred when Google dropped an ecommerce site from their rankings.

When you finish reading this, go check out the video and try their tool on one of your developed or semi-developed domains. Stompernet will probably be closed again by the time the June NameMonetizer newsletter comes out, so I want DomainNameWire readers to at least have a chance at this training.

“One thing stood out,” Singh said. “There was no easy way to do file systems.” So Singh decided to create one, even though he worked for Google’s search team at the time and wasn’t part of the company’s Mac development efforts.

The reaction of his bosses to this use of company time? Go for it.

Singh’s project, which became the open-source file-system utility MacFUSE, is just one of the many employee-driven efforts that go on within the walls of the search-engine and text-advertising giant all the time.

Google calls it “20-percent time,” encouraging its engineers to pursue other Google-related interests for up to 20 percent of their work hours—even if that interest has little to do with their regular duties at the search and software company.

Efforts such as 20-percent projects by engineers like Singh are par for the course at Google, a company that sees encouraging employees to pursue subjects they find interesting as a critical part of its own development goals.

“A lot of things that happen at Google are based on empowering people to come up with ideas and pursue them if [those ideas are] good,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s director of product management.

Many 20-percent projects have wound up becoming major Google products: both Google News and Gmail, for instance, started that way. Among the Mac-specific efforts that began as 20-percent projects are Notifier, which offers Gmail and Google Calendar notifications, and the Google Mac Developer Playground, an online collection of open-source Mac projects created at Google.

The survey, conducted by US market research firm Evans Data Corp, ranked Microsoft’s MSN/Live developer package above other offerings from Google, Yahoo, Facebook and eBay according to user satisfaction.

However, Australian web developer and co-founder of the Web Directions conference John Allsopp told ZDNet.com.au on Wednesday that the survey “doesn’t say anything meaningful at all”.

Allsopp added that the nature of Web 2.0 development and its accompanying technologies isn’t suited to this type of assessment, as developers don’t tend to compartmentalise which programs they use to Web Development build applications.

“It’s a misleading thing,” he said. “Web 2.0 is all about mashing and mixing things up to create something new, and using a whole lot of different programs to do it.”

“One of the criticisms of a lot of these technologies is that they’re tied to a certain property, such as Facebook, meaning you have to use their platform to build applications for their site,” he said.

Stewart Smith, president of the Australian Linux Foundation, echoed Allsopp’s sentiments, saying many of the Web Development programs “really aren’t as open as they’d have you believe”.

“People who really care about writing their own applications won’t be doing it for someone else’s platform, they’ll be writing them for their own sites, using a variety of things,” he said.

Allsopp said technologies are “still in their infancy”, and for many large companies, such as Google and Microsoft, “it’s still a pretty novel way of doing things… to open up and let other people start building things for you”.

“A lot of companies are still coming to grips with that, but I think that, over the next year or two, all of these programs are going to Web Development become more sophisticated and usable,” he said.

If there is a clear trend at this show it is that the Web 2.0 is no longer about social networking, SaaS, Web communities, or rich internet applications, it’s about moving as many of the core business processes as you can to the platform of the Web. Or, perhaps better put: Web-enabled process outsourcing.

You only need to consider the number of products that are now moving way beyond SaaS, to application development, storage, interface design, and middleware…all delivered as a service over the Web. Indeed, there is not much you can’t do with the Web-born tools around today, inclusive of the new Google App Engine on-demand application development platform product just released. So, the trend is re-hosting of core enterprise applications, business processes, information, and much of the enterprise architecture we see today, so they are much more efficient, agile, and cost effective…in essence living up to the core objectives of SOA.

This week, at the show, Bungee Labs launches their platform-as-a-service offering providing application development capabilities and core connection service with Web-delivered resources and APIs. This is on top of the platform capabilities already available with Amazon and Salesforce.com.

Also, StrikeIron announced an on-demand Web services-enablement platform called IronCloud. Building on existing Web service marketplace capabilities, IronCloud streamlines the process of on-ramping enterprise data to the Web, using an on-demand platform that makes enterprise information available as managed and secure Web service APIs. In essence, providing a cost effective way of making critical business data available for mashups, SaaS, or other Web-born computing applications, including the emerging platforms I just mentioned.

So, let’s see. Now you can design, build, deploy, and test applications completely using on-demand platforms delivered over the Web. You can access information on-demand, and now you can even share your core enterprise data on-demand.

This goes to the whole WOA banter that’s been a large part of the SOA blogosphere for the last few weeks. We are now finding it easier and more cost effective to place much of our core business processes out on the Web, where there are many resources, information, and tools all available as a service, either free or at a low cost. Thus, you can get up-and-running faster, create automation solutions that are much more cost effective, and meet the needs of your business better than you could in the past. It’s a paradigm shift that’s hard to ignore.

Is South Korea a graveyard for overseas Internet companies? American Internet heavies such as Google, YouTube and MySpace, leaders of the so-called “web 2.0″ frenzy, face heavy odds in South Korea. Why is it that these companies boast astronomical numbers of subscribers and users in many other markets around the Web Development Tutorial world but find little luck here?

MySpace, the world’s largest online social network, launched a Korean service last week, but local portal and blog users have given the new service the cold shoulder. “I signed up out of curiosity, but I canceled my membership soon after because I found it un-user friendly,” a Korean blogger reported. Another blogger said, “MySpace isn’t new or interesting for Korean users who are already familiar with online communities like Cyworld.”

Google and YouTube are also having a hard time here. Since it launched its Korean-language service in 2006, Google, the Web Development Tutorial world’s top Internet search engine, has earned a mere 2 percent-range share of the local Internet portal market. YouTube launched a Korean-language service in January. But while the world’s largest video sharing website boasts about 30 million visitors per month in the U.S., in Korea it has only about one-tenth the number of users as PandoraTV, South Korea’s No. 1 video sharing website.

Experts say the foreign challengers have failed to understand the peculiarities of the South Korean market. Their quality suffers in comparison to local offerings in terms of Korean-language features, site design and sophistication of services, South Korean experts argue.

In addition, South Korean Internet users generally tend to be uninterested in services from abroad. AFP reported recently, “South Korea is one of the world’s most wired countries, with some 70 percent of homes having high-speed Internet access. But it has largely shunned popular overseas services.”

Since 2004, there has been no notable change in the rankings of the local portal market, where Naver tops the list. Cho Il-sang, CEO of MetriX, an online survey agency, said, “Overseas web service providers should be more sincere in approaching the Korean market, so that their participation in the Web Development Tutorial market can give a wholesome impetus to the development of the Korean Internet industry.”

SAN FRANCISCO Microsoft Corp.’s attempt to take over Yahoo Inc. has become so tortured it may help Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc. grow stronger, undermining Microsoft’s main reason for pursing the deal in the first place.”We find this to be a very advantageous situation for Google,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown said Thursday. “The longer this gets dragged out, the better for Google.”Yahoo signaled it is bracing for a protracted battle late Wednesday when an announcement and a media leak provided a glimpse at its labyrinthine search for alternatives to Microsoft’s bid of more than $40 billion.The options include an experimental advertising alliance with Google that could lead to a broader partnership and, according to published reports, a combination with the online operations of Time Warner Inc.’s AOL. Google also owns a 5 percent stake in AOL.As part of the AOL deal, Time Warner would get a roughly 20 percent stake in the merged entity in return for a substantial sum of cash that would help Yahoo buy back some of its stock at a price well above Microsoft’s offer, which was initially valued at $31 per share.”This is the first time that we have seen real feasible alternatives that could derail the Microsoft deal,” said analyst Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein %26 Co.Other analysts doubt Yahoo will succeed in thwarting Microsoft but believe it could force the world’s largest software maker to raise its offer as high as $35 per share, or about $50 billion.For its part, Microsoft has indicated that it may lower its offer if Yahoo doesn’t accept the current bid by April 26.But Microsoft made that threat before the details about Yahoo’s alternatives with Google and AOL emerged.Although Microsoft has plenty of money to up the ante on its own, the Redmond, Wash.-based company may draw upon another deep pocket - Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.Under this reported scenario, News Corp. would contribute the Internet’s top social network, MySpace.com, and some cash in a Yahoo takeover. The proposed deal would put three of the Web’s most popular sites - Yahoo, MySpace and Microsoft’s MSN - under the same umbrella.In another ironic twist, Google could benefit if Microsoft and News Corp. buy Yahoo because it already has a long-term contract to show ads on MySpace.Microsoft, Time Warner and News Corp. all declined to comment Thursday. A Yahoo representative didn’t respond to inquiries about the AOL deal. Google and Yahoo announced their advertising test Wednesday.Yahoo directors are expected to meet Friday to discuss the company’s options.Investors seemed to welcome the latest developments. Yahoo shares rose 82 cents to $28.59 while Microsoft shares gained 22 cents to close at $29.11. The stocks of Google and Time Warner also moved up, while News Corp.’s Class A shares dipped 5 cents to $18.89.The reported negotiations to bring together some of the world’s largest Web sites underscores the Internet’s maturation as a business sector. As consumers spend more time online, the smart money is following them - and now there’s a mad scramble to latch on to the prime properties in this promised land of future profit.”The most likely outcome here is that a few players will become more and more dominant on the Internet,” said James Owers, a Georgia State University professor specializing in media and corporate finance.The stakes are so high that News Corp. and AOL might decide to join forces if their latest negotiations with Microsoft and Yahoo don’t pan out, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet wrote in a Thursday note to investors.Google has emerged as the Internet’s most profitable company so far, primarily by showing relevant text-based ad links alongside the billions of search results that it churns out each month.Propelled by its success in search, Google built up a vast computer network that hosts a wide range of free services - many of which threaten to make Microsoft’s software less vital to consumers and businesses.Microsoft believes Yahoo’s franchise will give it more weapons to retaliate against Google and reverse the losses that have plagued its online division.But it’s looking less likely that Microsoft will be able to realize its goal of completing the Yahoo deal by the end of this year.If Yahoo continues to resist, Microsoft probably will have to take its bid directly to shareholders - an acrimonious process that is typically settled at the target company’s annual meeting. Yahoo doesn’t have to hold its annual meeting until July 12.And a deal done that late in the year isn’t likely to emerge from antitrust regulators’ purview until 2009, according to experts.Yahoo may be able to rally support from its shareholders by pointing to the possibility of a long-term partnership with Google, which some analysts believe could boost Yahoo’s cash flow by 25 percent to 35 percent.Google, too, could make more money from the alliance. But Lindsay doubts that’s the search leader’s main incentive for the tests.”Anything that Google can do to keep Yahoo from going to Microsoft is good for Google,” Lindsay said.If Yahoo turned over all its search-driven advertising to Google, it would face intense regulatory scrutiny that would be difficult to overcome, analysts predicted. Google controls 59 percent of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 22 percent and Microsoft at 10 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.For now, Yahoo is allowing Google to show advertising links alongside no more than 3 percent of its U.S. search results and only for two weeks.Microsoft already has signaled that it will strenuously object to antitrust regulators if Google sells search ads for Yahoo on a full-time basis. But a regulatory review might hurt Microsoft more than Google, Lindsay said, because it could mean waiting even longer to own Yahoo.If Microsoft is able to pull off the Yahoo takeover, melding the two organizations will be difficult, especially if the deal is hostile or includes a third party like News Corp.”The more complicated a deal gets, the more difficult it becomes to satisfy all parties,” Brown said. “And the more complicated the (post-deal) integration gets, the more it favors Google.”

SAN FRANCISCO Microsoft Corp.’s attempt to take over Yahoo Inc. has become so tortured it may help Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc. grow stronger, undermining Microsoft’s main reason for pursing the deal in the first place.”We find this to be a very advantageous situation for Google,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown said Thursday. “The longer this gets dragged out, the better for Google.”Yahoo signaled it is bracing for a protracted battle late Wednesday when an announcement and a media leak provided a glimpse at its labyrinthine search for alternatives to Microsoft’s bid of more than $40 billion.The options include an experimental advertising alliance with Google that could lead to a broader partnership and, according to published reports, a combination with the online operations of Time Warner Inc.’s AOL. Google also owns a 5 percent stake in AOL.As part of the AOL deal, Time Warner would get a roughly 20 percent stake in the merged entity in return for a substantial sum of cash that would help Yahoo buy back some of its stock at a price well above Microsoft’s offer, which was initially valued at $31 per share.”This is the first time that we have seen real feasible alternatives that could derail the Microsoft deal,” said analyst Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein %26 Co.Other analysts doubt Yahoo will succeed in thwarting Microsoft but believe it could force the world’s largest software maker to raise its offer as high as $35 per share, or about $50 billion.For its part, Microsoft has indicated that it may lower its offer if Yahoo doesn’t accept the current bid by April 26.But Microsoft made that threat before the details about Yahoo’s alternatives with Google and AOL emerged.Although Microsoft has plenty of money to up the ante on its own, the Redmond, Wash.-based company may draw upon another deep pocket - Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.Under this reported scenario, News Corp. would contribute the Internet’s top social network, MySpace.com, and some cash in a Yahoo takeover. The proposed deal would put three of the Web’s most popular sites - Yahoo, MySpace and Microsoft’s MSN - under the same umbrella.In another ironic twist, Google could benefit if Microsoft and News Corp. buy Yahoo because it already has a long-term contract to show ads on MySpace.Microsoft, Time Warner and News Corp. all declined to comment Thursday. A Yahoo representative didn’t respond to inquiries about the AOL deal. Google and Yahoo announced their advertising test Wednesday.Yahoo directors are expected to meet Friday to discuss the company’s options.Investors seemed to welcome the latest developments. Yahoo shares rose 82 cents to $28.59 while Microsoft shares gained 22 cents to close at $29.11. The stocks of Google and Time Warner also moved up, while News Corp.’s Class A shares dipped 5 cents to $18.89.The reported negotiations to bring together some of the world’s largest Web sites underscores the Internet’s maturation as a business sector. As consumers spend more time online, the smart money is following them - and now there’s a mad scramble to latch on to the prime properties in this promised land of future profit.”The most likely outcome here is that a few players will become more and more dominant on the Internet,” said James Owers, a Georgia State University professor specializing in media and corporate finance.The stakes are so high that News Corp. and AOL might decide to join forces if their latest negotiations with Microsoft and Yahoo don’t pan out, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet wrote in a Thursday note to investors.Google has emerged as the Internet’s most profitable company so far, primarily by showing relevant text-based ad links alongside the billions of search results that it churns out each month.Propelled by its success in search, Google built up a vast computer network that hosts a wide range of free services - many of which threaten to make Microsoft’s software less vital to consumers and businesses.Microsoft believes Yahoo’s franchise will give it more weapons to retaliate against Google and reverse the losses that have plagued its online division.But it’s looking less likely that Microsoft will be able to realize its goal of completing the Yahoo deal by the end of this year.If Yahoo continues to resist, Microsoft probably will have to take its bid directly to shareholders - an acrimonious process that is typically settled at the target company’s annual meeting. Yahoo doesn’t have to hold its annual meeting until July 12.And a deal done that late in the year isn’t likely to emerge from antitrust regulators’ purview until 2009, according to experts.Yahoo may be able to rally support from its shareholders by pointing to the possibility of a long-term partnership with Google, which some analysts believe could boost Yahoo’s cash flow by 25 percent to 35 percent.Google, too, could make more money from the alliance. But Lindsay doubts that’s the search leader’s main incentive for the tests.”Anything that Google can do to keep Yahoo from going to Microsoft is good for Google,” Lindsay said.If Yahoo turned over all its search-driven advertising to Google, it would face intense regulatory scrutiny that would be difficult to overcome, analysts predicted. Google controls 59 percent of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 22 percent and Microsoft at 10 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.For now, Yahoo is allowing Google to show advertising links alongside no more than 3 percent of its U.S. search results and only for two weeks.Microsoft already has signaled that it will strenuously object to antitrust regulators if Google sells search ads for Yahoo on a full-time basis. But a regulatory review might hurt Microsoft more than Google, Lindsay said, because it could mean waiting even longer to own Yahoo.If Microsoft is able to pull off the Yahoo takeover, melding the two organizations will be difficult, especially if the deal is hostile or includes a third party like News Corp.”The more complicated a deal gets, the more difficult it becomes to satisfy all parties,” Brown said. “And the more complicated the (post-deal) integration gets, the more it favors Google.”

WEB 2.0 is well established, and sites such as YouTube, Flickr,
Facebook and Digg have turned the internet from a static source of
information into a huge, interactive digital playground. But where
to next? What will the next stage of web culture - which some
people call Web 3.0 - be like?
The expectation seems to be that profound changes are on the
way. If Web 2.0 is about generating and sharing your own content,
Web 3.0 will make information less free.
Privacy fears, new forms of advertising, and restrictions
imposed by media companies will mean more digital walls, leading to
a web that’s safer but without its freewheeling edge.
One reason for this is a new realism about personal information.
Most users casually store personal information on the web - email
on webmail servers, photographs on Flickr, appointment calendars on
Google Calendar, travel plans on Dopplr, and so on.
This openness is one of the defining features of Web 2.0. But
software specialist Nat Torkington, of high-tech publishing house
O’Reilly Media, predicts a backlash.
He argues that one serious leak or theft of private data could
change opinions overnight.
“It could be a Three Mile Island of the net,” he says, referring
to the 1979 accident that turned the US public against nuclear
power.
If this happens, users will start to remove their personal
details from web services, Mr Torkington believes, or at least
impose restrictions on it.
“We’ll see a hybrid model, with software that communicates with
the web while storing private information on your own computer,” he
says. So you might use Gmail to sort through your mail but download
personal messages to a more private spot.
Regions of the web now devoted to the unhindered exchange of
information, such as YouTube and Facebook, may evolve into gated
communities where only select people have access to specific
data.
Another factor that will restrict web freedom is advertising.
According to Brian Davison, a computer scientist at Lehigh
University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the influence of advertising
will continue to grow. Desperate to be noticed by people whose
attention spans are a mouse-click long, advertisers will invent
ever-more devious strategies to suck the punters in.
A few tricks are around already.
Say you are trying to reach Microsoft.com but you accidentally
type Macrosoft.com. That will take you to a page for a company
whose name has nothing to do with “Macrosoft” - they’re just parked
in that domain to get more exposure. You can find something similar
at Mycrosoft.com.
Web advertising is evolving quickly. The next generation will
sneak into search results, Mr Davison says.
For example, a website that sells movie posters might worm its
way into the results for a movie review. The link might look
useful, but clicking through will bring up an advertisement. The
danger is that such activity will gum up search results, stopping
people from finding what they need.
Web advertising is likely to balloon from another direction,
too. “Blogvertising” is expected to take off in the next five years
and produce a stark change in the medium. Already, ads are showing
up on blogs.
Bloggers stand to gain more of the advertising share because
they can create custom content for their advertisers, and that is
leading to a new style of blog on which the line between editorial
and advertisement is blurred.
Federated Media, a pioneer in the business of bringing bloggers
and advertisers together, helped Samsung advertise its HD TVs by
creating a blog called Defining Moment. Sports bloggers contributed
their posts about the best moments in sports in exchange for ad
money. All advertising on the site was by Samsung.
Neil Chase, a former editor at The New York Times and now with
Federated Media, doesn’t see this blurring of ads and content as a
problem. He argues that readers are adept at figuring out the
difference between ads and editorial. Such a model may be making
good on the old web dream of free media sharing for all; bloggers
can make their writing available for free but still be compensated
for it. Music and video content could go the same way,
incorporating advertisements to support the creators.
But wall-to-wall ads are not the only way to support media on
the web, says Michael Geist at the University of Ottawa. He says
another system can work for music and video: a media-sharing tax
that makes it legal to download anything you like.
Canada already has a version of this - a levy on blank CDs and
DVDs that allows Canadians to share music files without being sued
for copyright infringement.
“The developments we’re seeing (with media sharing) aren’t going
away,” Dr Geist says. “As more companies succeed with open business
models that could be stifled by copyright laws, they’ll seek to
have their voices heard.”
When people raised on file-sharing become politicians, Dr Geist
believes, they will support legislation that encourages models of
open media sharing online. For now, though, the name of the game is
restricting access.
Technological improvements mean that more and more content can
be delivered on the web, but with increasing control exerted by the
entertainment companies.
One way this is happening is through services such as Watch Now,
from DVD-rental company Netflix. It allows subscribers to watch
movies online without having to wait for them to download, but the
movies can only be viewed on Windows Media Player, severely
limiting where and how you can watch them.
The Netflix model represents the next step in media restriction
- part of a new, closed era when more content than ever is
available on the net, but only in limited ways.
Enjoy Web 2.0 - while it lasts.
NEW SCIENTIST

WEB 2.0 is well established, and sites such as YouTube, Flickr,
Facebook and Digg have turned the internet from a static source of
information into a huge, interactive digital playground. But where
to next? What will the next stage of web culture - which some
people call Web 3.0 - be like?
The expectation seems to be that profound changes are on the
way. If Web 2.0 is about generating and sharing your own content,
Web 3.0 will make information less free.
Privacy fears, new forms of advertising, and restrictions
imposed by media companies will mean more digital walls, leading to
a web that’s safer but without its freewheeling edge.
One reason for this is a new realism about personal information.
Most users casually store personal information on the web - email
on webmail servers, photographs on Flickr, appointment calendars on
Google Calendar, travel plans on Dopplr, and so on.
This openness is one of the defining features of Web 2.0. But
software specialist Nat Torkington, of high-tech publishing house
O’Reilly Media, predicts a backlash.
He argues that one serious leak or theft of private data could
change opinions overnight.
“It could be a Three Mile Island of the net,” he says, referring
to the 1979 accident that turned the US public against nuclear
power.
If this happens, users will start to remove their personal
details from web services, Mr Torkington believes, or at least
impose restrictions on it.
“We’ll see a hybrid model, with software that communicates with
the web while storing private information on your own computer,” he
says. So you might use Gmail to sort through your mail but download
personal messages to a more private spot.
Regions of the web now devoted to the unhindered exchange of
information, such as YouTube and Facebook, may evolve into gated
communities where only select people have access to specific
data.
Another factor that will restrict web freedom is advertising.
According to Brian Davison, a computer scientist at Lehigh
University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the influence of advertising
will continue to grow. Desperate to be noticed by people whose
attention spans are a mouse-click long, advertisers will invent
ever-more devious strategies to suck the punters in.
A few tricks are around already.
Say you are trying to reach Microsoft.com but you accidentally
type Macrosoft.com. That will take you to a page for a company
whose name has nothing to do with “Macrosoft” - they’re just parked
in that domain to get more exposure. You can find something similar
at Mycrosoft.com.
Web advertising is evolving quickly. The next generation will
sneak into search results, Mr Davison says.
For example, a website that sells movie posters might worm its
way into the results for a movie review. The link might look
useful, but clicking through will bring up an advertisement. The
danger is that such activity will gum up search results, stopping
people from finding what they need.
Web advertising is likely to balloon from another direction,
too. “Blogvertising” is expected to take off in the next five years
and produce a stark change in the medium. Already, ads are showing
up on blogs.
Bloggers stand to gain more of the advertising share because
they can create custom content for their advertisers, and that is
leading to a new style of blog on which the line between editorial
and advertisement is blurred.
Federated Media, a pioneer in the business of bringing bloggers
and advertisers together, helped Samsung advertise its HD TVs by
creating a blog called Defining Moment. Sports bloggers contributed
their posts about the best moments in sports in exchange for ad
money. All advertising on the site was by Samsung.
Neil Chase, a former editor at The New York Times and now with
Federated Media, doesn’t see this blurring of ads and content as a
problem. He argues that readers are adept at figuring out the
difference between ads and editorial. Such a model may be making
good on the old web dream of free media sharing for all; bloggers
can make their writing available for free but still be compensated
for it. Music and video content could go the same way,
incorporating advertisements to support the creators.
But wall-to-wall ads are not the only way to support media on
the web, says Michael Geist at the University of Ottawa. He says
another system can work for music and video: a media-sharing tax
that makes it legal to download anything you like.
Canada already has a version of this - a levy on blank CDs and
DVDs that allows Canadians to share music files without being sued
for copyright infringement.
“The developments we’re seeing (with media sharing) aren’t going
away,” Dr Geist says. “As more companies succeed with open business
models that could be stifled by copyright laws, they’ll seek to
have their voices heard.”
When people raised on file-sharing become politicians, Dr Geist
believes, they will support legislation that encourages models of
open media sharing online. For now, though, the name of the game is
restricting access.
Technological improvements mean that more and more content can
be delivered on the web, but with increasing control exerted by the
entertainment companies.
One way this is happening is through services such as Watch Now,
from DVD-rental company Netflix. It allows subscribers to watch
movies online without having to wait for them to download, but the
movies can only be viewed on Windows Media Player, severely
limiting where and how you can watch them.
The Netflix model represents the next step in media restriction
- part of a new, closed era when more content than ever is
available on the net, but only in limited ways.
Enjoy Web 2.0 - while it lasts.
NEW SCIENTIST

WEB 2.0 is well established, and sites such as YouTube, Flickr,
Facebook and Digg have turned the internet from a static source of
information into a huge, interactive digital playground. But where
to next? What will the next stage of web culture - which some
people call Web 3.0 - be like?
The expectation seems to be that profound changes are on the
way. If Web 2.0 is about generating and sharing your own content,
Web 3.0 will make information less free.
Privacy fears, new forms of advertising, and restrictions
imposed by media companies will mean more digital walls, leading to
a web that’s safer but without its freewheeling edge.
One reason for this is a new realism about personal information.
Most users casually store personal information on the web - email
on webmail servers, photographs on Flickr, appointment calendars on
Google Calendar, travel plans on Dopplr, and so on.
This openness is one of the defining features of Web 2.0. But
software specialist Nat Torkington, of high-tech publishing house
O’Reilly Media, predicts a backlash.
He argues that one serious leak or theft of private data could
change opinions overnight.
“It could be a Three Mile Island of the net,” he says, referring
to the 1979 accident that turned the US public against nuclear
power.
If this happens, users will start to remove their personal
details from web services, Mr Torkington believes, or at least
impose restrictions on it.
“We’ll see a hybrid model, with software that communicates with
the web while storing private information on your own computer,” he
says. So you might use Gmail to sort through your mail but download
personal messages to a more private spot.
Regions of the web now devoted to the unhindered exchange of
information, such as YouTube and Facebook, may evolve into gated
communities where only select people have access to specific
data.
Another factor that will restrict web freedom is advertising.
According to Brian Davison, a computer scientist at Lehigh
University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the influence of advertising
will continue to grow. Desperate to be noticed by people whose
attention spans are a mouse-click long, advertisers will invent
ever-more devious strategies to suck the punters in.
A few tricks are around already.
Say you are trying to reach Microsoft.com but you accidentally
type Macrosoft.com. That will take you to a page for a company
whose name has nothing to do with “Macrosoft” - they’re just parked
in that domain to get more exposure. You can find something similar
at Mycrosoft.com.
Web advertising is evolving quickly. The next generation will
sneak into search results, Mr Davison says.
For example, a website that sells movie posters might worm its
way into the results for a movie review. The link might look
useful, but clicking through will bring up an advertisement. The
danger is that such activity will gum up search results, stopping
people from finding what they need.
Web advertising is likely to balloon from another direction,
too. “Blogvertising” is expected to take off in the next five years
and produce a stark change in the medium. Already, ads are showing
up on blogs.
Bloggers stand to gain more of the advertising share because
they can create custom content for their advertisers, and that is
leading to a new style of blog on which the line between editorial
and advertisement is blurred.
Federated Media, a pioneer in the business of bringing bloggers
and advertisers together, helped Samsung advertise its HD TVs by
creating a blog called Defining Moment. Sports bloggers contributed
their posts about the best moments in sports in exchange for ad
money. All advertising on the site was by Samsung.
Neil Chase, a former editor at The New York Times and now with
Federated Media, doesn’t see this blurring of ads and content as a
problem. He argues that readers are adept at figuring out the
difference between ads and editorial. Such a model may be making
good on the old web dream of free media sharing for all; bloggers
can make their writing available for free but still be compensated
for it. Music and video content could go the same way,
incorporating advertisements to support the creators.
But wall-to-wall ads are not the only way to support media on
the web, says Michael Geist at the University of Ottawa. He says
another system can work for music and video: a media-sharing tax
that makes it legal to download anything you like.
Canada already has a version of this - a levy on blank CDs and
DVDs that allows Canadians to share music files without being sued
for copyright infringement.
“The developments we’re seeing (with media sharing) aren’t going
away,” Dr Geist says. “As more companies succeed with open business
models that could be stifled by copyright laws, they’ll seek to
have their voices heard.”
When people raised on file-sharing become politicians, Dr Geist
believes, they will support legislation that encourages models of
open media sharing online. For now, though, the name of the game is
restricting access.
Technological improvements mean that more and more content can
be delivered on the web, but with increasing control exerted by the
entertainment companies.
One way this is happening is through services such as Watch Now,
from DVD-rental company Netflix. It allows subscribers to watch
movies online without having to wait for them to download, but the
movies can only be viewed on Windows Media Player, severely
limiting where and how you can watch them.
The Netflix model represents the next step in media restriction
- part of a new, closed era when more content than ever is
available on the net, but only in limited ways.
Enjoy Web 2.0 - while it lasts.
NEW SCIENTIST