Web 2.0 Blog

If you’re interested in optimizing your blog, you can make it much easier for search engines to crawl by adding a sitemap written on an XML page. The standard way of doing this involves creating a static XML page by taking a snapshot of your site at one time. However, the Google XML Sitemaps Generator for Wordpress will create an excellent quality sitemap for you which dynamically and automatically updates whenever new pages or posts are added to your blog.

Take a look at mine: http://www.adammoss.co.uk/sitemap.xml

It is downloadable as a simple plugin which just requires activation and submission from the Wordpress dashboard area. It results in a clean-looking, well presented and anchored list of your pages, with additional details of when it was last updated. Once installed you don’t need to do anything. It really is a must-have plugin for any serious blogger out there who wants respectable search rankings, so it comes highly recommended from me.

Download the plugin here: Download Plugin

One of the drawbacks of the current blogging platform is the fact that the content displayed on the page is static - it won’t update until you tell it to, by revisiting the page or refreshing the browser. Static content is also a feature of discussion boards and forums which is why it can be difficult to have flowing conversations, especially when posts are made simultaneously. ScribbleLive rewrites the ules of this publishing platform by offering its users the ability to view and manipulate live data over a network.

ScribbleLive was given special recognition at Canada’s Mesh Conference of the latest web technologies. Two advantages of this is the ability to transmit live data to viewers, with no reloading necessary. This type of communication could be ideal for broadcasting on a global scale, using a well designed platform to broadcast information. Conferences, demonstrations and up to the minute updates within communities would all be possible. Another advantage is the fact that it is written with Ajax, making it a perfect scrolling information service on mobile devices such as the iPhone.

The main requirement for this is participants however. There needs to be a decent community of users to be able to make this worthwhile, so it may take a while before this takes off and possibly replaces the standard blogging format. People can be aprehensive about changing from what they know, particularly when communities already exist.

I came across Feedreader the other day and was very impressed by the service it offered. It is basically what I expect the immediate future of RSS to offer in terms of Web 2.0/3.0 technologies. Instead of having the feed stored on a website, social bookmarking site or in your web browser, the content gets automatically delivered in an exceptionally user-friendly desktop new aggregator. I was staggered with how easy it was to use and how useful it is to have the web delivered to you in the most direct of circumstances.

Furthermore, the application is free and features two more features:

• Feedreader OEM - A fully customizable feed service including modifications to information collected and teh visual appearance of the software.
• Feedreader Connect - Allowing you to retrieve information articles from remote locations, including mobile phones. This information can even then be published throughout your local Intranet.

This type of simple and efficient information sharing is what will become standardized in future Web 2.0 devices in my opinion. When feeds were first introduced, they were pretty much as static as the website they were subscribing to. New ways of expanding and manipulating these feeds are becoming available and it should result in a much simpler service. Let’s face it, most Internet users wouldn’t be able to tell you what a feed is. By having information come straight to the desktop it detatches itself from association with website publishing and becomes merely a customized news service.

As Web 2.0 applications continue to dominate user’s time and investments in 2008, I’ve been doing some reading about Web 3.0 and what it holds in store for the future of web development and it seems there will be four very important milestones reached.

Portable Web
Traditional websites are designed with the intention of being viewed by users accessing them with desktop PCs and standard GUIs. With the evolution of Web 3.0, websites are no longer confined to the screens of a desktop computer but are also accessible via mobile devices such as mobile phones, iPods, Blackberry’s, IPTVs. This throws up a whole new set of questions regarding heuristics, accessibility and usability as users are not interfacing with the software and hardware in the way that all our previous rules were written to abide by.

Semantic Web & Web Services
This is the evolution of intelligent systems beyond the GU, that allow web services to share business logic, data and processes through a programmatic interface across a network. This results in multiple applications interfacing instead of the users. The ultimate goal of Semantic Web is to lessen the tedious work of users and encouraging systems to carry out tasks without the direction of humans. So instead of building web pages to be read by humans, Web services will allow different applications across different platforms to communicate with each other seamlessly.

Open Data
This is the idea of making the web completely integrated in an effort to encourage sharing between users and different applications. The intention would be to make code available via open source, making data portable between sites and making these sites accustomed to your browsing and sharing habits. Imagine being able to use the same login details for a host of your web applications. Google Mail, Yahoo Mail and Blogger are examples of cross-platform data sharing, allowing you to perform different tasks with the same unified account.

Customized Web
Web 2.0 applications are already becoming more customized and tailored to the individual user’s needs based on cookies and settings, and Web 3.0 aims to take this even further. We have already seen websites like Amazon adopting a recommendations engine, which generates thousands of additional sales. How about BBC’s new news site? You can choose which news you want to know about, and you can even have it delivered via RSS.

In my opinion the biggest development comes from the idea of mobile computing and Internet access as not only does it throw the traditional heuristics rulebook out the window, but due to its portability it could be always on, it is aware of its location and it offers instant ways of paying for items on the Internet.

The fact that you can call a number on a website and have credit added to your phone means there’s no reason why we can’t buy other things in the same way. Add to this the new ways that users will interface with these new devices and we could also have much more different ways of interacting with the web. With Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all driving mobile web systems we could be looking at portable Web 3.0 very soon.

Although syndication is most notably recalled for its powerful impact on the success of blogging technologies during the web 2.0 boom, it’s ability to inform users of new content on otherwise stand-alone sites is what is giving supporting sites a significant advantage. A content management system is useless if users are unaware that new content has been added, and often users won’t go looking for the information you’ve added. In my opinion, the days of static websites with non-interactive content are numbered.

Web 2.0 is changing the way websites are being created. A website I created recently called Mystical Art, was developed completely using blogging technologies, however it assumes the appearance of a normal website. Further styling of the sidebar of this site would make it indistinguishable from a traditionally built website. In addition to this it has an RSS feed so that potential users can stay automatically updated every time a new piece of art is added.

This shows that even non-blogs should be syndicating their content. Newspapers in the real world are published daily with new content. In order for this to be realized in web technology, they have made their corresponding websites rich with RSS feeds of the latest headlines. For example, check out The Independent or The Times. In most cases, the feeds can be published elsewhere meaning users needn’t even visit the company’s website. All top web browsers and next-gen operating systems are driving support for RSS, meaning it’s even easier for users to subscribe to feeds.

I fully expect RSS or a similar content delivery platform to become a standard feature of websites in the future as users become more accustomed to syndication feeds. But how soon will it happen, or will another technology be developed that can perform better functionality than RSS?