light weight models and Cost-effective scalability

The last of Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 patterns is. This pattern is about leveraging the power of your web application to create a service which does more with less instead of getting too big too quickly. There are many techniques a service creator can use to achieve the aim of “doing more with less”.

These techniques included;
• Using a small development team
• Outsource in fracture and expertise wherever possible and practical
• Release functionality in increments
• Scale with demand
• Scale Pricing and revenue models
• Use open source services where possible.

My favorite example of a web 2.0 application which demonstrates how to successfully follow this pattern is Digg. Digg is a web application where users can “Discover and share content from anywhere on the internet” (What is Digg).



Kevin Rose started digg in 2004 at a cost of $2000 and hosted this service on a single server costing $99.00 a month. Whilst the development of the digg service has not been without problems, the number of users assessing this services grew with over 37 millions registered users buy 2009.

References


Tim O’Reilly - http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=4

What is dig - http://about.digg.com/about

Leveraging the long tail

The 7th pattern of web 2.0 applications, and the topic of this blog post, is leveraging the long tail. Tim O’reilly describes this pattern is about how making use of the internet allows a web 2.0 service or application which does not appeal to the masses but instead appeals to a small minority of people.

One a service is online, their user or customer base is no longer limited by geographical location as a web service can be accessed from anywhere in the world. This means that while the particular product or service being offered my only appeal to a small percentage of the total number of internet users (almost 2 billion on June 30 2010 – Internet world stats), their product will still appeal to a large number of people.

As well as the increased market size, there are other factors which allow web 2.0 applications to leverage the long tail. Some of these factors include

• 24/7 availability
• Cheap to update
• Cheap to run

These factors combine to make running a website a lot cheaper than running a conventional store for example.

The web application I have chose to explore as an example of this web pattern is the iTunes store. The iTunes store is an online store for many different types of digital entertainment include songs, movies and TV shows. iTunes is able to leverage the long tail by providing a much greater range in their catalogue compared to a physical store. Whilst a physical store is required to stock all the products they hope to sell, iTunes provides digitally download copies when a purchase is made. They are also able to provide these downloads to users all over the globe at any time of the day or night.

As a result of these advantages, iTunes is able to maintain an ever expanding catalogue with over 12 million songs in February 2010 (iTunes Store tops 10 Billion Songs Sold. This large catalogue has allowed apple to take of the web 2.0 platform to leverage the long tail


References

Internet world stats – www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

iTunes Store Tops 10 Billion Songs Sold
-http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/02/25itunes.html

Perpetual Beta

Running an application as a web service allows software developers to change the development life cycle they follow. The 6th web 2.0 Pattern, Perpetual Beta, deals with this change and its effects for users.

Software developed for using the traditional development life cycle, such as Microsoft Windows or Adobe PhotoShop, are developed and deployed on the system of the user who is running the software. In contrast, Web 2.0 applications run on the server which the developers control. Compared to the traditional method of deploying software on users’ systems, new Web 2.0 methods of providing users with software have several advantages for developers.

When traditional software has been developed, users will install the software on their device. When this software needs to be updated, the developer can provide the users with the update but has no means of ensuring that the user applies or installs these updates. Google has developed many applications which fit under the perpetual beta banner. As an example, today I will examine Google Docs.

The large majority of Google products and services, as shown on their product listing page, fit the model of the perpetual beta. Google docs is a office suite of applications (similar to Microsoft office) accessed on the cloud. This service is designed to allow users to share files: the documents are stored online, and this enables any user to view the most recent version of the document. This Web 2.0 application is also a good example of the perpetual beta model.



As a regular user of the google docs service, I have received the benefits of the self-updating application, as new improvements are installed without my having any imput from myself. I was not presented with an option to download or install the new version, only a small text notification box briefly explaining the changes that had been implemented in the new version, There was also a bright red link, which took the user to a page with details about the new features.

Software above the level of a single device

More and more everyday users are accessing services and their data from multiple devices. Tim O’reilly’s What is web2.0 blog post discusses how uses are no longer restricted to using the PC platform. An individual user is likely to have a regular computer as well as a portable device. This had created the need for a new category of web applications and has lead to the development of applications which use the 5th Web 2.0 pattern. This software allows users access to services above the level of a single device.

The presence of multiple devices in the life of a user has lead to the requirement for users to be able to access their data from any of their devices at any time. Previously, users had to manually put a copy of each file they required onto each of their devices. Web 2.0 applications such as Windows Live Mesh and Dropbox use a web platform to automate this process. In this blog post, I am going focus on the approach Microsoft took with their live mesh product.

Window Live Mesh is provided to users free of charge as part of the Microsoft live suite of applications and integrates with Microsoft sky drive. Live Mesh provides users with several features, the most important of which include:

• Data synchronisation between devices;
• Program settings synchronisation;
• Data accessibility from any internet connected devices
• Remote access to your devices; and
• Offsite backup

To use the Live Mesh service a user must register for a windows live account and install the Live Mesh software on each device they would like to sync to. They can then select folders and sync these folders to each of their computers. Live Mesh also provides its users with a web desktop which they can sync 5GB of files to. This provides users with offsite storage and the ability to access their personal files from any one of their computers. From this web desktop, a user can also remotely connect to and control their computers.

The limitation of Windows Live Mesh is that it currently only supports syncing between Windows PCs and Apple OSX based machines. Mobile devices such as android based devices and iPhones cannot currently be synced to Windows Live Mesh. Drop Box however does not support all these features but does support more devices than Windows Live Mesh.


References


Tim O'Reilly - What is web 2.0, http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=4

Rich User Experience - Gmail

As Internet connections speeds continue to improve, the experience for users accessing a range of services have evolved to take advantage of these improvements. This has lead to the 4^th Web 2.0 pattern, Rich user Experience.

As explained by Tim O’rilley, creating a rich user experience is the process of combining the best elements to a desktop application and the online experience. This process creates a richer and more compelling experience for the users and assists in the transition from the desktop to an online model.

To explain this pattern, I have used google email service, gmail. With the gmail service, google created an online interface which allowed users to access their email. Google had taken an already existing service and developed a rich user interface with in web application.

Google have evolved this interface over the years they have been over several years and it now includes many features. These Features include,

·      Simple way to send and receive emails

·      Displaying documents received

·      Instant messages facility

·      Contact management system

·      Calendar

·      Task list

All of these services can be accessed from within the one user interface.

There are many other services such as Yahoo and Windows Live Mail which may offer more sophisticated appearing interfaces than the service offered by Google but, Gmail has new some web 2.0 technologies behind it.

The Ajax programming used in gmail allows the software to refresh the inbox and display any new messages without requiring the users to refresh the entire page. The use of these web 2.0 technologies to create a rich user experience has allowed Google to develop a product with many competitive advantages over competing products on the market.

References

Tim O’rilley http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=5

Innovation in Assembly – Fring

Web 2.0 applications are no longer a single interface through which their users can interact with core application functions. The application is now built as a platform with application programming interface which allow access the data and services they provide. This business plan allows the application to harness the collecting intelligence of the developer community to improve their application. To keep it simple, the API allows developers to access the data the have and the services they offer in their own applications.

Many web 2.0 applications are now becoming a collection of third party applications which have been put together to provide a new service to users.

(How fringe works)

Fring is a tool for mobile devices which takes advantage of the Application program interface tool available in many online social network tools. Fring is a free tool which focus on providing their users with a way to communicate directly with another friend. Users can make free video or voice calls as well as send instant messages to their friends




Fring however understands that some of your friends may already be fairly established and happily using their current social network tool. Fring accommodates for this by using fring add-ons. These add-ons allow fring users to access other social networks and take advantage of the features they offer. For example, a user can set up a MSN messenger account and use this account through the fring application and keep in contact with their friends who are on msn messenger. For more information about the different add-ons offered by fring, Visit http://www.fring.com/fring_is/fringadd-ons/

Data, the next intel inside – ThinkUp

Rather than proving users with the ability to preform a specific function, many web 2.0 applications focus on and obtain their value through the use of data. This data focus is the second web 2.0 pattern data, the next intel inside as explained by Tim O’Reilly.

Several years ago Intel launched a marketing campaign Intel Inside.



This Marketing complain aimed to encourage consumers to user to purchase a computer with an Intel inside sticker. This sticker showed that the computer was running on an intel chip as ability to provide users with the ability to run the largest range of software and applications. In the web 2.0 era, the data which your platform is based upon is most important part of the platform.

Thinkup app is a web 2.0 application which takes a different approach to data. Most web 2.0 applications which have a data focus, collect the data and use it for their own benefit. Facebook has a lot of information which uses have provided about themselves. Facebook is then able to target advertising to their users based on this information. Amazon uses purchase history from about their users to make suggestions for further purchases. These are two examples of web 2.0 applications which use the data they collect fro their own benefit.



Thinkup take a different approach to data. The purpose of thinkup is to allow the users to get insights from their social media networks. It collects information from these networks and stores the information in a database, which the user had control. The user can archive their data as well as reform functions on it.

Thinkup allows the users to gain insight in their social network information which they would not otherwise be able to. This information can include people who respond or follow them. The information they obtain can included a stream of photos, links or comments. The posts can be sorted based on location as well as many other statistics.

Harnessing the collective Intelligence using Ubidesk

The concept that “two minds are better than one” has been around for a long time. The basic idea is that when two or more people work together or collaborate on a particular task, they produce a better result than what any one of them would have been able to produce individually. With the emerging popularity of web 2.0 applications, the way that collaboration can occur is changing.

Tim O’Reilly explains the process of harnessing collective intelligence as the process of having users generate the content. This web 2.0 pattern has been implemented by many different applications. Some applications, such as Wikipedia, are public applications, which can be used by anyone able to access the Internet. Others applications are designed to assist small groups of users to collaborate together, and they restrict access to authorised users only.

Gone are the days where the most effective method for working collectively on a document was through the exchange of emails between members of a project team. Under that system everyone was required to make their changes to the document and then email the modified document to the other team members. The difficulty that situation creates is that there are many different versions of the document and it can be a time consuming task to draw all the contributions together. It would be easier to have all group members access a single version of the document, make their changes, and save them for the next person. This process of harnessing the collective intelligence is the focus of many web 2.0 applications. Some of these applications even allow multiple people to work on the one document simultaneously.

While there are now many applications providing this service, Google docs being one of the most common, I have chosen to analyse Ubidesk because it has specific features which distinguish it from other collaboration services. The basis of this service is to reward users with the tools they need, in this case, the ability for multiple users to work on a single document at a time. Ubidesk goes beyond this basic service and offers several other features targeted at business project teams.

The time line feature offered in Ubidesk is a great tool. It enables project teams to break their project down into milestones. Further, dates can be set for these milestones, which provide the project team a visual illustration of whether they are on target to have the project completed on time. When a project team works together on multiple projects, they often have different roles for each project. Ubidesk accommodates this by allowing the security settings for the project members to be set differently for each project.

This is just two of the extra features Ubidesk offers. They list 10 extra features on their website. These features demonstrate how Ubidesk has extended its functionality to provide for an improved collaboration experience.

References

O’reilly Radar, Harnessing Collective Intelligence - Posted 10 November 2006

Wikipedia

Google Docs

Ubidesk