3.1 Fill in the blanks in each of the following statements:
- Remixing content refers to (legally) taking someone else's existing content and adding to it or changing it in some way.
- The term Web 2.0 was coined by Dale Dougherty of O'Reilly Media in 2003.
- Tags are user-generated labels used to categorize content.
- The major Ajax technologies are XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, the DOM, XML, and the XMLHttpRequest object.
- Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are webtop applications that have responsiveness and functionality approaching that of desktop applications.
- Amazon's hardware and communications infrastructure web services are example of web-scale computing. They enable businesses to pay for only the processing or storage space needed during any given period.
- The increased value of a network as its number of users grows is referred to as network effects (an aspect of Metcalfe's Law).
- Two popular RIA frameworks are Adobe's Flex and Microsoft's Silverlight.
3.2 State whether each of the following is true or false. If false, explain why.
- Tagging is for personal organization of content only. False. User-generated tags are used by many websites to categorize content so that it is easily searchable by other users.
- The user is at the center of Web 2.0. True.
- Location-based services always use GPS. False. Location-based services often use GPS; however, they often use other information to determine your location, such as your IP address.
- Open source software is often called "free" because it does not cost money. False. Open Source software is free in terms of allowing access to the source code. It is not necessarily free of cost.
- Google's PageRank is determined by the number of page views a website receives. False. The PageRank algorithm considers the number of links into a web page and the quality of the linking sites (among other factors) to determine the importance of the page. Google search also considers all of the content on the page, its fonts, its headers and the content of neighboring pages.
3.3 Fill in the blanks in each of the following sentences:
- Perpetual beta is an example of an agile development process.
- The architecture of participation is a design that encourages user interaction and community contributions.
- Ruby on Rails was developed by David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals.
- Digital Rights Management systems add software to digital media to prevent piracy.
- Microformats are attempts at consistent naming conventions.
- Wikis rely on the wisdom of crowds.
3.4 State whether each of the following is true or false. If false, explain why.
- Advertising is the most common Web 2.0 monetization model. True.
- Collaborative filtering is used by search engines. False. Although users can influence search results for other websites by linking to them (increasing their PageRank score with Google for example), there isn't a direct method for users to "vote up" or remove sites in search results.
- XML is an executable language. False. XML is a data format.
- Most bloggers provide RSS feeds. False. According to a 2006 Pew Internet study only 18% of bloggers provide RSS feeds.
- Holding people's attention is difficult in today's society. True.
3.5 Define each of the following terms:
- collective intelligence - groups of people working together resulting in smart ideas
- folksonomy - classification of content based on tags
- permalink - a URL to a blog post that continues to work when the post is archived
- tag cloud - visual display of tags with larger text for more popular tags
- web service - software that lets new applications incorporate functionality from existing applications over the Internet
- monetization - making money from web traffic - usually via advertising
3.6 List some of the key factors that have attributed to the growth of Web 2.0.
- faster, cheaper hardware
- broadband Internet access
- open source software
- easy-to-employ models for revenue
3.7 Discuss some of the methods you can use to increase the findability of your website.
To increase the findability of your website you should have relevant high-quality content, proper metadata and keywords, and be linked to from other high-quality sites. You can also pay search engines to display your site at the top of search results for certain keywords and terms.
3.8 In Section 3.3 we discusses how many Web 2.0 sites are enabling discovery - helping you find new content you would not have otherwise sought out. Pick three Web 2.0 sites and describe how they are enabling you to discover new content through their sites.
Facebook - I can see websites, pictures, and videos friends have shared. Google+ - the "Sparks" feature allows me to see current articles and websites related to my interests. reddit - I can see a list of stories and articles from the Internet with the most popluar (as voted by users) on the top of the page.
3.9 Consider a picture of the Eiffel Tower. List 10 words you might use to tag this picture on a photosharing site such as Flickr so that others searching the site will find it.
Eiffel Tower, Tour Eiffel, architecture, Paris, France, Champ de Mars, Gustave Eiffel, travel, tourist, vacation
