The Goldfish Chronicles

I’ve not been paying that much attention to the Web 2.0 articles, blogs and general conversations. On the programming side it’s appeared to be a philosophy that the AJAX design style has found a partner in, so mostly when I have seen it, it’s been in the context of going AJAX. However, summary articles like Dion Hinchcliffe’s are the perfect thing for those of us not riding the leading edge on this one.

It provides a list of the best Web 2.0 software, and I decided to take a gander. As I read down the list I started to notice something; none of these seem like pieces of software that I can download and install on my web server. Not even if I paid, I suspect. Hmm, methinks, this Web 2.0 isn’t just a “Dump the OS apps for your browser” pattern, it appears to be a subscription pattern too. Increasingly life is about subscription patterns, maybe because products are just not viable anymore, or maybe because there’s so much more money in a subscription and so everyone heads that way.

So, realising that I am apparantly oblivious of Web 2.0, I went hunting for a definition. Tim O’Reilly’s article appears like it’s the definitive guide. Credit to Dion, it was 3 clicks from his site and the first 3 clicks I took.

The first part of Tim’s summary diagram is: “The Web as Platform”. So I am getting the general picture; good to know. The next part: “You control your own data”. Okay, well that’s not fitting with the subscription model in my mind; subscription models seem to tend towards lock-in, and I definitely don’t control the data if it’s not on my own servers. Number three is: “Services not packaged software”. Okay, well this is saying subscriptions again. It continues with things that largely in my mind equate to ‘being open’ and ‘encouraging community’; but it’s still a subscription model that I don’t get to control the data for.

So where are the open-source Web 2.0 products that I can install and offer as services to the family?

—-

Addendum: To explain the title; Cable companies, phone companies have turned the word ’subscription model’ into a curse in my mind. Lots of money for very little value - however owning the local lines means they get local monopolies. The Web 2.0’s don’t get to own the local lines, but they do get to own the local lines for my data (ie the server it’s on). Would be interesting to look at each one of Dion’s services in each category and see if I can migrate between them easily.

Addendum 2: The O’Reilly article is actually a direct link from Dion’s blog.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 at 8:45 am and is filed under Family etc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.