The Web is changing

.. are you?

Being on the Internet for a lifetime (in Internet years I am a dinosaur) I have seen quite a lot things change. We were all drunk when the Internet was booming and then it turned out that it was a all a bubble. Since then all these revolutionary ideas are slowly getting along. Not every hype has become something mainstream, but there is more and more cash flowing across the Internet.

There is still a lot that needs to be improved, but surely and slowly we are progressing along the steady path of evolution.

But every now and then things are making a small jump forward when people think of new applications of usually existing technology. Everything seems to have been invented by now. You want some examples?

• Social bookmarking, like Delicious allow for storing your bookmarks centrally. Tag every interesting link for future reference. My delicious bookmarks can be found here.
• Centrally stored photos like Flickr.
• People merging applications like Google Maps with data from estate agencies so one can see where houses are for sale.
• Combining Amazon data about books to see if these are available at the local library.

These are all exponents of a new phenomenon: Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 isn't a 'thing', but a now way of approaching solutions. Solutions that not exactly solve existing problems, but instead raise inspiring new possibilities. The solutions are embracing technologies such as APIs, RSS, Folksonomies, and Social Networking. The combinations of these building blocks suddenly give developers a new way to approach hard problems with surprisingly effective results.

Results can be achieved with surprisingly little effort if you have a little skill.

This will again change the Internet landscape.