This Web 2.0 awareness test is a humourous take on the hype surrounding the proliferation of web 2.0 applications. Its also a slightly scary example of how easy it is to fetch information about a user with javascript.
Part disturbing, part humour, this is a built-overnight, fun “Web 2.0 Awareness Test” based on a combination of CSS and Javascript which allows a site to programmatically determine if a link has been visited before.
I scored a measly 2%! Ah but of course I would on my work laptop, I’ve got real work to do. Can’t be sitting around all day digg’ing… Even on my personal computer I only manage a measly 18%, but then I look at the list of sites the score is based on and I’m not seeing many familiar names.
While there are a growing number of browser-based web 2.0 applications that I use, I seem to leaning more towards the webified desktop applications that are providing a flexible layer between the user and the online services they use regularily. For example, the Flock browser brings together a number of online services including social bookmarking, online photo storage, news aggregation, blogging and more; services that ‘web 2.0 aware’ folk are using everyday (and in some case all day). Windows Live Writer has been mentioned by Geoff and is another desktop app I’ll be trying out in the coming weeks. Konfabulator gives me funkier way to keep track of my Jira issues, weather conditions and visits to my personal website.
None of this is particularily new. Tools like Serious Samurize have provided similar, but less web-centric services to the desktop. What is new is the growing number of web 2.0 applications that are giving savvy internet users (aka flaky weirdos) a way to make their online world truly portable, and the desktop applications allowing them to shape it to their needs.
Ebrahim Ezzy said (much more elequantly than I could):
As the Web becomes increasingly interconnected and applications continue to blur the distinction between the desktop and web, we should expect to see more applications that allow Web/desktop synchronization.
Cheers to that.
3 Comments
This is right on the money. My view is that there is a major shift underway - from the website(s) you go to with the multiple accounts that you have to manage, to an environment where you are the centre of your web universe. Browsers like Flock are the starting point for this - bringing together the various services you interact with on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully Microsoft will become aware of this to and start to offer this kind of user-centric service in IE. If they don’t the 10s of millions of users that are using social networking services, Web2.0 services and actually interact with the web (as distinct from just searching and finding) will be moving away to other browsers or interfaces which enable them to bring their various accounts/services together.
Whoever comes up with a user-centred interface that enables you to bring together all your stuff (delicious, email, yahoo photos, youtube, flickr, second life, work stuff) will be on a winner. It’ll be the next killer app.
It lied! It gave me 0% and so I checked the websites it listed and I know I have visited at least 3 of them on this computer - so perhaps they didn’t lay cookies or whatever they are suposed to do
Ha - if they were really Web 2.0 they wouldn’t visit those sites, they would read them via an aggregator.
Plus, some they don’t have the address of some sites correct. http://www.del.icio.us/ doesn’t even resolve, and people use digg.com & wikipedia.org, not the “www” versions of those site.
One Trackback/Pingback
[…] Miles wrote recently about his use of webified desktop applications. For those people interested in this area it would pay to checkout Microsoft Max. Max is a combination of a photo management/sharing program and a newsreader. […]
Post a Comment