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Web 2.Whatever
CHARLESTON, SC, NOVEMBER 10—Just as you were just about to finally master the user’s manual for the Web, along comes Web 2.0. And it is already spawning Publishing 2.0. And perhaps Web 3.0.
Leave it to the Internet generation to create versions of the future—and unkindly leave the average publisher one version behind.
Speakers at the Charleston Conference here today outlined a future in which Web pages are continually updated and customized for individual users—often by users themselves. “Web 2.0 is about recognizing that e-content is no longer static, but in perpetual motion,” said Martin Marlow, vice president of sales and marketing at Atypon, a California company that provides software and Web hosting for journals. It is also about “collaboration and communication, enabling individuals to help each other to find, organize, and add value to content.”
A curent buzzword, Web 2.0 is a rather amorphous term that refers to a kind of second coming of the Web--this one replete with collaborative tools like social networking, wikis, and blogs. Examples of sites that embody Web 2.0 include craigslist, which creates online urban communities including classified ads; del.icio.us, which enables users to share their Web bookmarks; and threadless, which lets users share and find t-shirt designs.
Even for publishers of scholarly journals, Web 2.0 is casting a long shadow. For example, Atypon recently announced the addition of collaborative filtering to its electronic publishing platform for scholarly journals. Now, scientists and researchers will be able to do what Amazon.com users have done for a while--see a list of tailored article recommendations under the heading "Users who read this article also read..."
Even seemingly stodgy reference books can be transformed by Web 2.0. For example, consider the mammoth Birds of North America, an 18-volume, 18,000-page reference work published in 2002 by Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology.
Speaking at the Charleston Conference, Barry Bermudez, marketing manager for information science at the laboratory, displayed the online version of the tome, which can now include audio of birdsong and video of flight. Because ornithology is a worldwide science based on field observation, it is perfectly suited to contributions from marsh-stomping birders, and amateur photographers and videographers can submit content.
But a scholarly reference work does have to strike a balance between openness to user contributions and accuracy of content. "There is a fine line that has to be drawn," Bermudez said, noting the number of contributors who claimed to have seen an Ivory Billed Woodpecker. The species, long thought to be extinct, was rediscovered in 2004 in a remote nature reserve in Arkansas. Trained ornithologists do evaluate every amateur contribution to Birds of America, Bermudez said.
Perhaps not content with jazzy bird sites, Web specialists are already looking past Web 2.0 to what is controversially (an article on it was recently deleted from the Wikipedia) known as Web 3.0. In this version, the Web not only lets users share and receive information from other people, but knows what information they need and want almost before they do. A simple visit to a conference web site, for example, might let you download the date and time into your electronic calendar, map the address of the conference site, and communicate with other registrants.
For now, however, most pubishers will have enough on their e-plates just to catch up with Web 2.0 and Publishing 2.0.
Leave it to the Internet generation to create versions of the future—and unkindly leave the average publisher one version behind.
Speakers at the Charleston Conference here today outlined a future in which Web pages are continually updated and customized for individual users—often by users themselves. “Web 2.0 is about recognizing that e-content is no longer static, but in perpetual motion,” said Martin Marlow, vice president of sales and marketing at Atypon, a California company that provides software and Web hosting for journals. It is also about “collaboration and communication, enabling individuals to help each other to find, organize, and add value to content.”
A curent buzzword, Web 2.0 is a rather amorphous term that refers to a kind of second coming of the Web--this one replete with collaborative tools like social networking, wikis, and blogs. Examples of sites that embody Web 2.0 include craigslist, which creates online urban communities including classified ads; del.icio.us, which enables users to share their Web bookmarks; and threadless, which lets users share and find t-shirt designs.
Even for publishers of scholarly journals, Web 2.0 is casting a long shadow. For example, Atypon recently announced the addition of collaborative filtering to its electronic publishing platform for scholarly journals. Now, scientists and researchers will be able to do what Amazon.com users have done for a while--see a list of tailored article recommendations under the heading "Users who read this article also read..."
Even seemingly stodgy reference books can be transformed by Web 2.0. For example, consider the mammoth Birds of North America, an 18-volume, 18,000-page reference work published in 2002 by Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology.
Speaking at the Charleston Conference, Barry Bermudez, marketing manager for information science at the laboratory, displayed the online version of the tome, which can now include audio of birdsong and video of flight. Because ornithology is a worldwide science based on field observation, it is perfectly suited to contributions from marsh-stomping birders, and amateur photographers and videographers can submit content.
But a scholarly reference work does have to strike a balance between openness to user contributions and accuracy of content. "There is a fine line that has to be drawn," Bermudez said, noting the number of contributors who claimed to have seen an Ivory Billed Woodpecker. The species, long thought to be extinct, was rediscovered in 2004 in a remote nature reserve in Arkansas. Trained ornithologists do evaluate every amateur contribution to Birds of America, Bermudez said.
Perhaps not content with jazzy bird sites, Web specialists are already looking past Web 2.0 to what is controversially (an article on it was recently deleted from the Wikipedia) known as Web 3.0. In this version, the Web not only lets users share and receive information from other people, but knows what information they need and want almost before they do. A simple visit to a conference web site, for example, might let you download the date and time into your electronic calendar, map the address of the conference site, and communicate with other registrants.
For now, however, most pubishers will have enough on their e-plates just to catch up with Web 2.0 and Publishing 2.0.
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