Mick's World

Since the article on the New York Times about Web 3.0 there have been a number of related articles. After reading a few of them it seems that people are already shunning away from the phrase ‘Web 3.0′ as much as they are ‘Web 2.0′. There is a particularly good article on Wisdump on the matter.

So why all of the sudden are we moving on to Web 3.0 when Web 2.0 hasn’t quite reached it’s peak? In my opinion we don’t need to rush things, there’s plenty more to do within the Web 2.0 label, but that’s just my opinion. But why label it at all? Can’t we just create websites that do something without it being labeled 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc.

Does it really need a label?

Is it really necessary to give a style of website a label, before the label there were websites that were doing what the current phase of the Internet has to offer. There were blogs before they were called blogs and there was social networking before there was Web 2.0.

So why is it necessary to give it a label which causes such unnecessary hype? Is it some sort of refresher to wash the stale taste of the dot com bust out of peoples mouths? If so, is this what the Web 3.0 label is meant to do? Sure a lot of people are sick of hearing the word Web 2.0 and rightly so, it’s been used in the wrong contexts and has been affiliated too much with the marketing of websites as opposed to the features.

What’s in a name?

What exactly is Web 2.0 anyway? Mashups, Social Networking, Blogs, AJAX, REST, etc. Can’t they just be what they are without being put into a group which causes such a fuss both positively and negatively?

A good read is the Wikipedia entry on Web 2.0. It explains a lot and what exactly makes up the Web 2.0 label. In a part of the article it states that:

Given the lack of set standards as to what “Web 2.0″ actually means, implies, or requires, the term can mean radically different things to different people

So really the label Web 2.0 is just a mashup of technologies put into a convenient package with fancy labels and an extensive advertising campaign. Sounds like a chocolate bar.

What about the 3.0 name then? Well the Wikipedia entry for that has been removed, however there’s another article worth reading at Flopidesign named Goodbye Web 2.0 hello Web 3.0, which outlines what it’s all about.

There are already Web 2.0 apps that are heading in the direction of what is said to be Web 3.0, so how is it then decided that suddenly something is Web 3.0. In all fairness the 2.0 technologies were a fair bit different from what most of the Web 1.0 stuff was, it just took someone to dictate what it was going to be called.

Disposable Technology

A really good article about how a majority of Web 2.0 labeled sites are disposable by Mike Rundle explains that they are no more than, in his words, “flash-in-the-pan creations with no individual redeeming values”.

Since this is the case and there are so many sites that are basically clones of clones and have little long term future value, will this be the case with Web 3.0? Or will people learn from what’s happened with 2.0 and make it work better. Hell no. The 3.0 crap has already start and way to soon. There won’t be the end of 2.0 and start of 3.0, it’s going to be an overlap that get these labels all mixed up. We’ll end up with mashups of 2.0 and 3.0 mashups.

Version Naming

Why oh why do we even need a version on something like the Web? Is it because it’s now a platform? If this is the case why is it skipping to whole numbers? What’s the use of the ‘point oh’ then?

Imagine after the whole Web 3.0 thing happens, what will happen next? Web 3.1, Web ‘08, maybe even Web XP.

Now wouldn’t that be a buzzword and two thirds. I can only imagine what would happen with that. “Experience the Web today with Web XP”. Hmmm.

Well i guess we can only wait and see what’s next. Hopefully the labeling doesn’t get too out of control.

9 Minutes of Fame looks like an interesting concept. It allows you to submit your blog and for 9 minutes the content of your blog become the content of the 9 Minutes of Fame website.

This is a great way to get exposure to a blog and it also allows you to keep submitting your blog and it gets rated and can appear in the ‘Most Famous Blogs’ section.

One thing that i think is strange though is that they chose to use 9 minutes, rather than another value, say 5 minutes or 3 minutes, etc. This makes me think that they’re playing on the whole 9 thing that 9rules has going (9sponsors, 9charities). However i could be very wrong.

Another thing that’s odd is that every time i’ve visited the site, the counter is always on 0:00. Maybe every time i visit it’s in between blog submissions. Either way it’s a different way of getting your blog out to the masses.

I came across this site called mee-sir the other day. It’s an interesting way of finding recipes. I’ve seen other sites that allow you to click through lists of ingredients, however this one asks for the ingredients that you have and finds recipes based on those ingredients.

This would be very handy if you’re stuck for ideas and have some items that could be turned into a meal. I can also see this as being useful after a night out, when you can’t be bothered thinking about what to make and just need something to munch on.

Photosynth is a new technology that Microsoft is working on. You can try it out, however you need IE 6 or 7.

There are also some interesting videos demonstrating the technology in the videos section of the site.

A completely different way of looking at large amounts of photos at once from around the world, but also a way of viewing documents and other types of media in a quick and interactive way. I can see this being useful for many applications and very scalable. It would also make a very exciting desktop.

The downsides of Photosynth though would have to be the system requirements (for a web app) and the internet connection speeds. Although most people have decent computers and DSL/Cable the people that don’t will most likely miss out all together. Another negative is the fact that it only runs in IE and requires ActiveX.

Even though it’s still in development and it may be more widely usable when it’s complete, it still looks like an interesting new concept and fun way to look at large amounts of photos and other media.

After moving this site from blog.micksworld.com to micksworld.com i haven’t received much spam. Usually when i get an influx of traffic there are always a few spam comments that good ol’ Askimet sorts out for me.

In the last few days there has been none whatsoever. Perhaps due to the domain changing, within their database of domains to spam the old one doesn’t exist. Well it’s a 301 redirect to micksworld.com, so don’t spam bots like 301’s? That’s only going to last so long, however if that is the case it’s interesting.

So i started thinking that perhaps a spambot’s user agent could be detected and then given a 301 redirect. I had a look around and found some good info on Neutralizing the Spambot.

In particular the section describing how to detect the user agent and serve them another page. Well what about detecting the user agent and then giving them a 301 to another site? Or better still what about giving them a 301 back to your domain name which then detects the user agent and gives a 301 and so on, pushing them into a loop of redirection to ultimately timeout due to bad redirection.

Hey spambot, do you like apples? Well how do you like them apples?!

Here’s the code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BADUSERAGENT
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com [R=301,L]

Now obviously there is going to have to be some looking through logs to find user agents of these evil spam bots. The same could be applied with an IP of course. The only thing is that you don’t want to be doing this to normal users cause that wouldn’t be too much fun for them.

Another thing to note is that this is a down right dirty approach, but if you hate spammers then a man’s gotta do, right? Also this is going to send a number of requests to your server each time until it times out, but hopefully that will give those spambots the message.

Now to see how this goes in the wild. Next time the spambots come crawling out i’ll be adding them to the list of user agents in my devious loop of redirection. Until then, no spamburgers for me.