Unleashing Web 2.0: From Concepts to Creativity

by Gottfried Vossen, Stephan Hagemann

Overview

The emergence of Web 2.0 is provoking challenging questions for developers: What products and services can our company provide to customers and employees using Rich Internet Applications, mash-ups, Web feeds or Ajax? Which business models are appropriate and how do we implement them? What are best practices and how do we apply them?

If you need answers to these and related questions, you need Unleashing Web 2.0—a comprehensive and reliable resource that guides you into the emerging and unstructured landscape that is Web 2.0.

Gottfried Vossen is a professor of Information Systems and Computer Science at the University of Muenster in Germany. He is the European Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Information Systems—An International Journal. Stephan Hagemann is a PhD. Student in Gottfried’s research group focused on Web technologies.

• Presents a complete view of Web 2.0 including services and technologies
• Discusses potential new products and services and the technology and programming ability needed to realize them
• Offers ‘how to’ basics presenting development frameworks and best practices
• Compares and contrasts Web 2.0 with the Semantic Web

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780123740342
Publisher:	Elsevier Science
Publication date:	08/06/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Gottfried Vossen is Professor of Computer Science and a Director of the Institür für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Universität Münster (Department of Information Systems, University of Muenster, Germany). His research in the area of object-based database systems has dealt primarily with models for data and objects, database languages, transaction processing, integration with scientific applications, XML and its applications, and workflow management.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: A Brief History of the Web; Chapter 2: A Review of the Technological Stream; Chapter 3: Enabling Techniques and Technologies; Chapter 4: Sample Frameworks for Web Application Development; Chapter 5: Impacts of the Next Generation of the Web; Chapter 6: The Semantic Web and Web 2.0

Editorial Reviews

"The most exciting aspect of this current era of the Web, which has come to be known as Web 2.0, is that everything is read/write. Whether it's people communicating and sharing content with each other on social network sites like YouTube and Facebook, or computers talking to each using web services, or people personalizing their news using RSS and blogs, Web 2.0 is a two-way experience - it's no longer a one-way, broadcast model as it was in the Dot Com era of the Web. Dr. Gottfried Vossen and Stephen Hagemann have very clearly explained this transition to the new read/write era of the Web, and they paint a picture of how it might progress to the next stage via Semantic Web and other technologies. This book will help you understand the ongoing evolution of the Web, and push you to create applications that take advantage of the read/write Web." —Richard MacManus, Editor, Read/WriteWeb (http://www.readwriteweb.com)

From the Publisher

Web 2.0: Everyone's talking about it, and there's no shortage of books about the individual ground-level technologies involved. What's been missing, big time, is perspective. What is Web 2.0 turning out to be? What might you want to do with Web technologies? Which Web 2.0 business models make sense? How do the technologies work, how do they fit together, how do you choose among them? If you're among the many technical and business professionals desperately looking for real insight and context on Web 2.0, you've just found it.

The authors' opening "how we got here" chapter is superb, even if you've lived through much of the Internet revolution yourself. (Along with reminding you of some once-hot trends and technologies you might've forgotten, this mini-history nicely frames what's actually new about Web 2.0, and what isn't.)

Next, they take a high-level look at Web 2.0's "technical mechanisms": relevant APIs, Web procedure calls, tagging, and web development frameworks, including Ruby on Rails, AjaxTK, and OpenLaszlo. With that in hand, they turn to the implications of Web 2.0 technology for users and businesses, focusing on three key megatrends. The first: "data ownership" (who owns your blog entry, and who can monetize it?). The second: "software as a service" (covered here from both the provider's and consumer's perspective). The third, and perhaps most important: the socialization and co-creation of content, including social networks and social software.

Finally, they check in on the "Semantic Web," first envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee in 2001, and since then growing with less publicity than Web 2.0. According to the authors, there are many potential synergies between Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web's "new form of web content that is meaningful to computers." As the two grow together, we may see an even more remarkable "Web 3.0." Read this book, and you'll be ready. Bill Camarda, from the November 2007 Read Only