Archive for the 'What is...? (Jargon Buster)' Category

I wrote about The World’s First Website a couple of weeks ago to share some of the research I’ve been doing on the history of the web for the book I am co-authoring, New Trends in International Public Relations.

My next batch of research takes me forward from 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee created the first website to 2004 and Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media, a leading computer book publisher, and internet thought-leader. O’Reilly coined the term “Web 2.0″ for the first Web 2.0 Conference.

The website for that milestone conference states “The Web 2.0 Conference is of, for and about the leading figures and companies driving innovation in the Internet economy. The conference will debut with the theme of “The Web as Platform,” exploring how the Web has developed into a robust platform for innovation across many media and devices - from mobile to television, telephone to search.”

O’Reilly’s article “What is Web 2.0?” offers a detailed analysis of the design concepts, technological infrastructure and online user-behaviour that make up Web 2.0. You can also read the original press coverage and presentation files from 2004 for an in-depth course on all the issues - see the Additional Resources section below.

For present purposes of this bite-sized history lesson - the phrase Web 2.0 is generally accepted to refer to online media and platforms that have the following characteristics:

• Content is user-generated - think of YouTube which provides the platform for you and me and the rest of the world to upload our own videos.

• Collaboration - users work together to produce the information on a site. The most famous is probably Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that anyone can write for or edit. There are also other sites such as Hotspotr, where anyone can upload information about cafes and other public places with WiFi access.

• Conversational - people can engage and discuss whatever issues take their fancy, from politics to gadgets to knitting. Think of blogs, forums, message boards, chat rooms

• Immediate - the applications are easy to use, easy to publish, easy to receive information from and also instantaneous, thanks to the RSS feed.

• Searchable - beyond Google and search-engine search, tagging allows users to assign keyword tags to content or data that they publish to make it more searchable and sortable. As more users use more common keyword tags, the database of knowledge grows even more - so to some extent, tagging also falls within “collaboration”

• Community - forums and blogs as well as social networks like Facebook bring people together online

• Open source - platforms like Facebook open up to developers so that a multitude of applications can be built around the core platform, faster and with more ingenuity than one central initiator might manage.

I’m sure you can think of other characteristics - please do add a comment or email me your examples!

So Web 2.0 is not really a new “version” of the web - there wasn’t a point where someone created a whole new software version of what’s online (like Microsoft issuing Windows Vista to replace XP). It’s more a state of mind or state of online interaction - and the phrase “Web 2.0″ is a useful short-hand to refer to the evolving way that the internet and online applications are being designed and used. You might just as easily refer to the “social media web” as social media tools - ie interactive online tools like blogging, podcasting, tagging, widgets etc - make up a large part of what is called Web 2.0.

Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know by adding a comment or sending me an email via the Contact link.

Additional Resources:

What I find interesting about articles and resources about the web or social media from a few years ago is that they take you back to the first time that concepts that we now take for granted hit the mainstream and it’s fascinating to see the commentators of that time analysing the impact that such technology would have and making predictions for the future. They say that a week is a long time in politics - on the internet, 3 years is like several hundred years: reading articles about social media from just a few years ago can be almost like reading the reports of people who were seeing the steam engine for the first time….

Web 2.0 Conference (2004) coverage - including articles on RSS, search, a look back Yahoo!’s first decade and the evolution of the web into interactive networks.

Web 2.0 Conference (2004) presentation files - including those from Technorati’s David Sifry on the State of the Blogosphere, Mary Meeker on the Internet in China and the founder and CEO of Craigs List.

While the majority of businesses and the mainstream are still wondering about dipping their toes into the Web 2.0 waters, the innovators and thought leaders will be looking beyond Web 2.0 when they gather for the 2007 Web 2.0 Conference on October 17-19 this year in San Francisco. The theme for this year is Discovering the Web’s Edge: “Surprising as it may seem, the Web has not infiltrated every industry–yet. So this year, we’ll delve into nascent innovation and attempt to parse the only-just-beginning-to-be-discovered territory at the edges of the Web. In 2007, we’ll slip past the mainstream and follow instead the road less traveled, the path taken by visionaries and those inspired by forces other than the tried and true. Who are the major players willing to take on new challenges, and the Davids that hold the promise of becoming Goliaths? What Web shortcomings still need to be overcome if we are to truly take the plunge into the next generation–and convince the next generation that we are listening? How can we respond positively to the cultural sea change the Web poses rather than being engulfed by it?”

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This post is part of my research project for the book New Trends in International Public Relations that I am co-authoring with business communications expert, Silvia Cambie. I am focusing on the social media aspects while she is working on the wider public relations issues.

You can find all my posts relating to this book project by clicking on the link in the sidebar New Trends in International PR under ZenGuide Projects.

If you have any comments or thoughts on any of the issues I’ve discussed in my posts, please do add a comment or email me. In particular, if you have any additional information or expertise that could add to the book, I would love to hear from you. Also, if you think that there are errors or inaccuracies in what I’ve said, I’d like to learn from you. I’ll credit you, of course, if your contribution is used directly in the book - you can check out my ongoing list of acknowledgements online. Please note that all contributions in respect of the book are subject to the terms set out in contributors release notice.

Photo: thanks to Mr Noded from flickr.com (CCL)

Flickr - notice the spelling (no “e”) - is a social networking site for photographs. You can sign up for a free account and upload your photos. Once you have an account, you get a dedicated webpage address for your photos eg http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourchosenflickrpagename. You can give that link to anyone so they can go to view your photos there.

Public/ private

You can display all or some only of your photos as public (for anyone and everyone to see) or private (which only your friends and family can see). In order to for friends and family to see your private photos, they will need to sign up for their own Flickr account as well - that’s a bit more cumbersome than allowing the whole world to see your pics but then if privacy is important to you, then it’s worth those extra couple of steps for your friends and family.

People viewing your pictures can leave comments for each photo. You can turn comments off if your prefer.

Groups

You can set up a group with your family and friends so you can all pool your photographs.

There are also different public groups on Flickr that you can join. eg if you have photos all about cars, you could pool your car pics into a car group which will have photos by other car enthusiasts. If there isn’t already a group for cars or whatever theme you are passionate about, you can always start one of your own.

People are also using groups in creative ways. Here are some groups to explore:

I love this one - Stick Figures in Peril: photos of those warning signs showing stick figures in all kinds of terrible situations. It makes a nervous person like me feel that the whole world is a minefield of terror…

This one is brilliantly creative - Tell a Story in Five Frames: use five photos in sequence to tell a story. I featured some good short photo stories on my arts blog, Fusion View, in the post “Micro Photo Stories”

This one is starkly hypnotic - Urban Explorers: the invitation to post your photos here says. “photos and stories about abandoned paper mills, condmened hospitals, decaying barns, etc… please do not post typical cty pictures here.”

Creative Commons Licence

For bloggers, Flickr is a great resource for free photos to illustrate your posts. In the “Search” section, choose “Advanced Search” and click on the option to Search within Creative Commons-licensed photos and type in the keyword you want.

Creative Commons Licensed photos are those that their creators have offered to the world to use for free by clicking on the relevant Creative Commons Licence option within Flickr. The only condition is that you credit the creator and link back to the Flickr page where you got the photo. Note that you should check if there are any restrictions in the Creative Commons Licence restricting commercial use or changes to the original photo.

Many ways to upload your photos

There are a number of ways to upload your photos. You can go to the Flickr upload page and upload it 6 photos at a time from there. Or you can download the Flickr Uploader onto your desktop and upload loads and loads of photos all in one go. Or you can even upload photos by email from your email account or your mobile phone - Flickr gives you a dedicated email address to email the pics to.

Tags

Tags are handy labels you can give to your photos so you can easily find them again. You can also search other people’s public photos by tags to see, say, all pics tagged with “car” or “Malaysia” etc.

Free versus Pro Accounts

The free account allows you to upload up to 200 photos. There is also a monthly upload limit (based on megabytes per month). And you can only create 3 “sets” or folders.

The Flickr Pro Account costs US$47.99 for two years (or US$24.95 for one year). There is no limit to the number of photos you can upload nor any monthly limit. You can also create as many folders as you like.

Conclusion

I like Flickr and use it now for all my private photographs. The interface is a little bit complex and takes a bit of exploration and getting into the mindset of the people who designed the site. But overall, I find it a quick and easy way to sort and store my photos and also to share photos with my internationally-based family - there’s nothing like getting an update from my cousin in Australia and being able to see her photos on Flickr within minutes of her uploading them!

You may have heard people say “Skype me” or “Are you on Skype?” and wondered what on earth that’s all about. Skype is the name of a company that provides a means for you to have voice conversations over the internet, using VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol - a technology that enables voice conversations to be transmitted over a data network using Internet Protocol). There are other companies that offer this service but Skype seems to have become one of the most well-known and well-used - particularly by solo professionals.

So what’s the big deal about Skype? Why not just use the good old-fashioned telephone?

Free voice calls over the internet

Skype - and other VOIP providers - offer free voice calls to other Skype users via your computer: the call is made from your computer and you need microphone and speakers plugged into your computer to use this service. You can also buy telephones that plug into your computer so you can maintain the familiar telephone interface and experience that you’re used to.

Low cost international telephone calls

The advantage of Skype, I think, is that you can also make cheap calls to landlines all over the world, using SkypeOut. You pay in some money to your SkypeOut account via your credit card and as you make calls, they take money out of your kitty and you will need to top it up from time to time. Calls to UK and USA landlines are currently 0.014p a minute - as are calls to Malaysia (where my parents live).

Call forwarding and voicemail for incoming calls

You can also use SkypeIn to get a regular telephone number which you can answer via your PC or forward to any other number eg your home or office landline or your mobile - and this comes with voicemail. You pay a sign up fee for this service and then pay for the cost of the forwarded call on a per minute basis as if it were a SkypeOut call. So for a small business or solo professional, this can be a useful feature if you want your clients to remember only one telephone number for you wherever you are. Having checked out other call-forwarding services in the UK, my view is that this is so far the most cost-effective for this kind of service.

Conference Calls

You can arrange conference calls with a number of callers - whether other Skype users or via landlines/ mobiles - using the control panel to initiate calls via your PC. This is handy for small businesses or solo professionals - but the sound quality is unfortunately not brilliant the more people you have on the call.

Text messaging

If you have SkypeOut credit, you can also use it to send text messages to any mobile phone anywhere in the world - I love this service because I can type my text message using your PC keyboard rather than fiddling with my mobile phone keys!

Chat

It’s also handy for text chatting with other Skype users - which is free as that is entirely handled over the internet, without interfacing with phones.

Practicalities

You will need a PC or laptop, of course. You will need a broadband connection - dial up connections are too slow for VOIP calls. You will need to go to the Skype website at www.skype.com and download the telephone software onto your PC or laptop - it’s an easy process and it’s free.

Even if your PC/ laptop comes with a built-in mike and speakers, it’s a good idea to get a headset mike - the sound quality deteriorates if you are using your speakers and mike on loudspeaker mode (due to feedback and echo from the loudspeaker mode). You can get headsets from around £15 in the UK, marked as Skype compatible.

You will need to download the Skype software onto your PC and/ or laptop (it’s free) and sign up to a Skype account online. Once you have the software, you can use it to access any number of accounts you / your family/ business partner may sign up on Skype - so each person can manage their own calls, rather like having separate online email accounts.

On your laptop, you can sign in to your Skype account anywhere you are in the world, via a hardwire connection or wi-fi. The same call rates as shown on their main website will apply - unlike using your mobile phone abroad, where call rates abroad are very high.

If you have a webcam, you can also make video calls - but note the issue with sound quality if your webcam works on a loudspeaker mode.

Overall View

The annoying thing about VOIP services is that you can only take advantage of free calls, generally, with other users on the same provider. Skype seems to have the advantage in that many people have signed up to it so it’s more likely that your friends, colleagues and business associates are also on Skype and you won’t have to sign up to loads of different providers in order to connect for free with different contacts.

The downside of Skype is that the quality of their voice service is sometimes unreliable - with echoing and intermittent sound break-up, especially on conference calls. So I wouldn’t rely on it entirely for all your business communication needs but it’s handy to have as a second line, for short conference calls and for use on your laptop if you travel a lot.

Overall, I use Skype regularly because I like the integrated PC and phone and messaging service - and also the cheap call rates, and many of my professional contacts as well as my friends and family use Skype.

Further resources:

Tech FAQ - what is VOIP?

Skype isn’t the only VOIP provider - you can check out other VOIP Providers (UK) here.

Twitter is the relatively new craze that lets you post mini-blog entries via your mobile phone or your PC. The length is limited to 140 characters and your entries appear on the twitter page online that you’ve signed up for. You can add your “friends” to your twitter circle - they have to be signed up to twitter first. You can also opt to receive your “friends” updates on your mobile phone or on the webpage only. You can set it so that only your “friends” see your posts or so that it is public and anyone can see them - or receive them on their phones.

It seems to have taken the world by storm and different groups of people are using it in different ways. The main excitement about it is that it is immediate and brief and you can send and receive texts via your mobile phone.

# The top tech and marketing experts and commentators like Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble, and others are using it mainly to exchange “hot off the press” information about breaking news and new products within their industries. By linking to blog posts where an issue is explored more deeply, their use of twitter gives their readers an early heads-up on issues which can be followed up by going along to the longer blog piece for more detail and analysis.

# News companies like the BBC are posting minute by minute updates of news flashes.

# Monster.com, the recruitment website, is using to send out instant messages about new jobs.

# Professionals and consultants are updating their “friends” about their business activities and also offering a glimpse into their personal activities. You might find a tech consultant texting to say he is working on a software issue, heading off to an IT conference, meeting others in his business for a drink, chilling out in front of a DVD.

# Ordinary folks are sharing glimpses into their lives eg working in their gardens, seeing their friends and keeping each other updated about their daily lives.

# It is also a lively community for exchanging ideas, raising queries, sharing advice. So far it seems to be mainly the tech types (as you might expect) but as it’s use spreads, there should be more non-tech participants finding uses for it to suit their particular interests. In particular, its potential in developing countries like Africa where there are a lot of mobile phones but problems with broadband/ landline communications could be potentially empowering.

For me, I have a public twitter page at www.twitter.com/fusionview - in the context of my arts and culture blog Fusion View. Anyone can see my “tweets” and those of my “friends” on that page. (I also have a private one for my family and personal friends - only they can see what I text on that account: usually to do with what I had for dinner and what I’m up to at the weekend, the sort of thing that’s fun for a personal circle to know but banal in the wider context!)

I think the value in Twitter for business use could be as a brief heads-up on breaking news either within their sector or within their organisation and it might be useful for a team working in different physical locations to keep each other updated on time-critical tasks. For personal use, it can be fun especially if you want to keep friends and family quickly updated while you’re travelling or on holiday. For organisations, it can be used for disseminating information, advice and news eg for those networked only via mobile phones in developing countries, or organising events within a short time-scale and in real time.

You can read my further thoughts on Twitter on my other blog, Fusion View:

Twittering Away

Fusion View Tweets on Twitter

Mind Map

Here are some other commentators on Twitter:

A list of ways to optimise Twitter - http://slackermanager.com/2007/03/the-several-habits-of-wildly-successful-twitter-users.html

Top Twitterers list - http://www.twitterholic.com/

Someone may have been hired via Twitter : Justin.tv sent out call for someone to help and got 100 responses in a few hours - http://www.mdoeff.com/blog/2007/03/27/was-someone-just-hired-on-twitter/

Why Twitter is so successful - http://millionsofus.com/blog/archives/188

A real time world map of who is twittering where - http://www.twittervision.com

Here is someone who’s not so keen on Twitter (who’s picked up my posts on it on my other blog Fusion View - small world!) - http://digital-nomads.blogspot.com/2007/03/tumblr-online-usalbility-or-just.html

Here is a quick tour of how to find your way round a blog. Most of you will be comfortable browsing through a blog but some may not know that there are useful tools in the sidebars to help you explore other parts of the blog beyond the front page and also that can take you to other interesting communities of blogs.

The content of blogs are laid out in reverse date order with the most recent post (or article) at the top of the main page.

Posts - the main posts are set out in the main body of a blog. There’ll be a heading or title and then you will be able to see who wrote them either just under that or at the end of the post. You’ll also usually be able to see the date and time when they were uploaded. You may sometimes see “permalink” at the bottom of the post - clicking on that takes you to the specific page of that particular post.

Comments - you can add your comment or response to a post by clicking on “Comments” at the bottom of that particular post. You’ll be taken to the permalink page ie the page of that particular post and there’ll be a box for you to write your comment. I find that some comments can be as interesting as the post itself, especially if there’s a good discussion going amongst the commenters.

Sidebar(s) - the sidebar is where you will find opportunities to explore other parts of the blog and also links to other websites. Sometimes, there’ll be additional information about what books the author is reading or what music they are listening to. Sometimes, there are interactive “widgets” ie little applications that allow you to leave voice messages or view photographs or see who else is browsing the blog at the same time etc.

Categories - these can be found on the sidebar. They collect together posts on the same theme. Sometimes, they are called labels or tags.

Archives - this section takes you to the archived posts, sorted by date. I like to look back at the very first few posts of a blog to see when the author started and what their hopes and objectives were when they first started out blogging.

Links - this section in the sidebar sets out links to other blogs or websites that the author likes. Sometimes, also called a “blogroll”.

Search - there’s usually a blank box for searching the blog. Just type in a keyword and click on “search” - it’ll bring up all the posts that contain those keywords.

Subscribe - this section tell you how you can subscribe to the blog. (See Keeping Track of the Blogs You Like for more details about subscribing to blogs)

Networks & Communities - this section is usually at the end of the sidebar and shows the communities and networks that the author is linked to. Clicking on the “badges” ie the small icons and pictures in that section can take you to those wider communities where you can find other blogs eg Britblogs is a directory of UK based blogs.

Further reading

Beginners Guide

Photo: thanks to nalilo at flickr.com

All blogs have feeds (also known as RSS feeds - or Really Simple Syndication feeds). These are, in essence, “signals” sent out to say when the blog has been updated. The signal “pings” (notifies) feed aggregators (sites that collect - or aggregate - feeds) when the blog owner posts something on the blog. As the blog owner, you can turn your feed off eg if you don’t want public sites to be notified of your update. The feed for a given site usually looks something like this: http://www.nameofblogsite.com/feed. The link to a blog’s feed is usually identified by a feed “chicklet” ie a small square-ish button with a stylised radio signal on it.

Subscribe in a reader

As a reader or visitor to a blog, you can grab the feed so that you can receive notifications of future updates on that blog. You can do this by “susbscribing” via a news or blog reader - I will talk about to use these “readers” in more detail in another post. Briefly, it is a site where you can read the blogs that you have subscribed to in one place. It looks similar to your email programme and you can usually arrange your subscriptions into folders under topics of your choice. You can also subscribe to feeds from newspapers or other news providers eg Reuters so you can read the news from the same place. I will be writing more about how to use a blog “reader” in another post.

As a blog owner, you can use your feed to offer email notifications to your visitors. You activate your feed in an email notification programme that generates a subscription form that you can put onto your blog. There are various email notification programmes, the most notable of which are Feedblitz and Feedburner and they offer free services as well as premium services (which have greater user flexibility). Your visitor can enter their email address into the form to receive an update in their Inbox whenever you update your blog. Feedburner also offers other useful tools for blog owners that can help publicise their blog, using the blog feed eg you can incorporate rolling headlines from your blog onto an email or onto other sites you own.

The feed can also be activated in various other ways to give the blog owner information about how many other blogs/ websites are linking to your blog. The more other blogs link to your blog, the greater your blog is deemed to be an authority. The principle grew out of the way that academics identify who among them is a great authority on a subject, reflecting the academic roots of the people who created the internet. The more an academic paper is cited by other academics, the greater it - and its writer - is held in esteem. A key site that helps bloggers identify who is linking to their blog and how many links they have is Technorati. As a blog owner, you should go to Technorati and “claim” your feed there.

Pic: thanks to joenickp.com

A podcast is an audio recording you can listen to on a portable MP3 player or iPod. It is usually in MP3 format and you can either listen to it online through your PC or download it onto your portable device and take it on the road with you.

It is relatively cheap and easy to create a podcast at home and many people are creating their own “radio” shows for podcasting over the internet. The major broadcast corporations such as the BBC and Radio Australia are also producing podcast versions of their usual broadcast programmes. (I will write about how to produce a podcast in a separate post)

I occasionally podcast interviews and discussions with a writing or cross-cultural theme on my blog, Fusion View. You can check them out by going to www.fusionview.co.uk and clicking on the category “Podcasts” in the sidebar. You can listen to them online via the embedded audio players on the relevant posts or you can download the audio file to listen to later.

A great way to explore podcasts is to download some podcast receiving software and then browse through their directories or search by keyword via their user panel. The software is free. The following are some providers:

• Juice
• iTunes
• Doppler

To start you off, the following are some interesting podcasts:

• All in the Mind, Radio National Australia - in depth discussions and interviews about psychology, mental health and consciousness
• Documentary Archive, BBC World Service - a wide range of documentaries about issues around the world.
• Flying Startups Podcast, from Steve Parks, author of How To Be an Entrepreneur - great tips for small businesses, whether you are just starting out or well on your way.
• Coffee Break Spanish - a fun series teaching Spanish in bite-sized chunks.

You can also explore podcast directories like Jellycast, Britcaster and PodcastAlley.

Photo: thanks to hawaii on flickr.com

“Blog” is short for “web-log” and started as a way to write a journal online. It looks like a website but uses a software platform that lets you upload your entries very easily. Publishing what you’ve written online is instantaneous and happens at the push of a button - literally.

Entries are called “posts” and they appear on the blog in reverse date order ie the newest post is at the top.

These days, many people use blogs to engage online with their friends or others who share their interests. Businesses engage with their customers by writing about what’s happening in their company or in their area of expertise. Visitors to the blog can add comments to a particular post or email the person blogging, the “blogger”. Other visitors may see the comments and add what they have to say as well.

The best way to find out what the world of blogging is all about is to visit some.

Here are a few to start you off with.

A Saville Row tailor uses his blog to talk about his passion for bespoke tailoring and to share some unique insights into the world of cuffs and lapels and hems. He also uses his blog to share his travel schedule so that his international clients know when he is visiting their part of the world and can book an appointment. His blog has been featured on the BBC and other traditional media. See http://www.englishcut.com/

A creative writing teacher and writer, Sharon Bakar, based in Malaysia, shares her book addiction and writes about the latest books and book news from Asia, the UK and US. Her readership is primarily Malaysian but she has been featured in the UK’s national paper, The Guardian. See http://thebookaholic.blogspot.com/

A photographer has been taking a photo at 11.47am every day since 2000. See http://eleven47.com/. It’s fab!

You can also visit my blog, of course, Fusion View, a cross-cultural view on writing, culture and the arts at http://www.fusionview.co.uk.

I will also be blogging about blogs that strike me as interesting, thought-provoking, fun, unusual, well-designed or has something that makes me want to say to my friends, “Hey, take a look at this!” - go to the category Blogs to Explore in the sidebar on the far right.

Or you can go to Google Blog Search at http://blogsearch.google.com/ - type in any topic or keyword and it will throw up all the blogs you can read on that subject.

Pic: thanks to beth.typepad.com