Web 2.0

What is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is letting go of control over someones data, it’s mixing the global with the local. Web 2.0 is about new ways of searching and accessing Web content. Web 2.0 is also a platform not just for developers to create web applications like Gmail and Flickr but also to build on for educators, media, politics, community, for virtually everyone.

How has Web 2.0 evolved?
The traditional World Wide Web, also known as Web 1.0, is a Read-or-Write Web. In particular, authors of web pages write down what they want to share and then publish it online. Web readers can watch these web pages and subjectively comprehend the meanings. Unless writers willingly release their contact information in their authored web pages, the link between writers and readers is generally disconnected on Web 1.0. By leaving public contact information, however, writers have to disclose their private identities (such as emails, phone numbers, or mailing addresses). In short, Web 1.0 connects people to a public, shared environment — World Wide Web. But Web 1.0 essential does not facilitate direct communication between web readers and writers.
The second stage of web evolution is Web 2.0. Though its definition is still vague, Web 2.0 is a Read/Write Web. At Web 2.0, not only writers but also readers can both read and write to a same web space. This advance allows establishing friendly social communication among web users without obligated disclosure of private identities. Hence it significantly increases the participating interest of web users. Normal web readers (not necessarily being a standard web author simultaneously) then have a handy way of telling their viewpoints without the need of disclosing who they are. The link between web readers and writers becomes generally connected, though many of the specific connections are still anonymous. Whether there is default direction communication between web readers and writers is a fundamental distinction between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. In short, Web 2.0 not only connects individual users to the Web, but also connects these individual uses together. It fixes the previous disconnection between web readers and writers.

Benefits & drawbacks of Web 2.0:
The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies has created opportunities for the visualisation of much information on the web. For example, a dashboard showing the current state of a business can summarise a great deal of information on a single page and highlight areas of interest or concern.

Unfortunately, the way this information is presented may mean that it is difficult, or impossible, for people with various forms of disability to access it. For example,lines on a graph can be distinguished by colour but should also be distinguished by the type of line (dashed, dotted, thickened etc) or by the tick marks along the line (crosses, boxes, circles etc). Areas in a pie chart should be distinguished by a pattern as well as the colour. Furthermore the designer should consider how to use the power of Web 2.0 to improve the accessibility. In this case the slice of the pie could be highlighted when the legend is chosen and vice versa. This information would not be accessible to the color blind.

Sources Used:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=5
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/04/web_accessibility/

Web 2.0 tools I'm using:
1. Blogger
2. Facebook
3. Youtube
4. Firefox
5. Gmail
6. Igoogle
7. Picassa
8. Google Talk