“Real Web 2.0: Bookmarks? Tagging? Delicious!”
Subtitle: Learn how real-world developers and users gain value from a classic Web 2.0 site
Synopsis: In this article, you'll learn how to work with del.icio.us, one of the classic Web 2.0 sites, using Web XML feeds and JSON, in Python and ECMAScript. When you think of Web 2.0 technology, you might think of the latest Ajax tricks, but that is just a small part of the picture. More fundamental concerns are open data, simple APIs, and features that encourage users to form social networks. These are also what make Web 2.0 a compelling problem for Web architects. This column will look more than skin deep at important real-world Web 2.0 sites and demonstrate how Web architects can incorporate the best from the Web into their own Web sites.
This is the first installment of a new column, Real Web 2.0. Of course "Web 2.0" is a hype term, and as has been argued to sheer tedium, it doesn't offer anything but the most incremental advances, but in keeping with my tendency of mildness towards buzzwords I think that anything that helps focus Web developers on collaborative features of Web sites is a good thing. And that's what this column is about. It's not about the Miss AJAX pageant, but rather about open data for users and developers. From the article:
The substance of an effective Web 2.0 site, and the points of interest for Web architects (as opposed to, say, Web designers), lie in how readily real developers and users can take advantage of open data features. From widgets that users can use to customize their bits of territory on a social site to mashups that developers can use to create offspring from Web 2.0 parents, there are ways to understand what leads to success for such sites, and how you can emulate such success in your own work. This column, Real Web 2.0, will cut through the hype to focus on the most valuable features of actual sites from the perspective of the Web architect. In this first installment, I'll begin with one of the ancestors of the genre, del.icio.us.
And I still don't want that that monkey-ass Web 1.0. Anyway, as usual, there's lots of code here. Python, Amara, ECMAScript, JSON, and more. That will be the recipe (mixing up the ingredients a bit each time) as I journey along the poster child sites for open data.