Ajit Jaokar's Mobile Web 2.0 Blog: "Web 2.0, Blind Men and the Elephant"

"Perpetual beta" applies to data more than it applies to software

Mar. 3, 2006 12:15 PM

Since I have an interest in Mobile Web 2.0 (and by extension with Web 2.0 in general), I get some interesting reactions from people. Everyone has a view on Web 2.0 - it's almost getting to the stage that we can't discuss religion, politics AND Web 2.0! Anyway, here are two recent incidents...p>

A person who I met a few weeks ago insisted that web 2.0 is ‘community’. My point was – yes – it has some community features – but no it’s not ONLY about community. See my blog and Tim o Reilly’s original seven points and Dion Hinchcliffe’s post about thinking in web 2.0 to get an idea of how complex it really is. Somehow, many people want to take a one dimensional view when it comes to web 2.0 i.e. like the proverbial blind men – look at only one facet of web 2.0 and insist that it’s the whole.

Another example of this recently was someone who said that their software is in ‘perpetual beta’ – hence they believed they were using some features of web 2.0. (My feeling is they have too many bugs!) .. But .. more seriously .. perpetual beta applies to data more than it applies to software .. think indexing when you talk perpetual beta ..

There’s certainly a lot of confusion and many bandwagon seekers out there!

Image: http://www.wordfocus.com/word-act-blindmen.html

Published Mar. 3, 2006— Reads 25,040 — Feedback 1
Copyright © 2006 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

About Ajit Jaokar
Ajit Jaokar is the author of the book 'Mobile Web 2.0' and is also a member of the Web2.0 workgroup. Currently, he plays an advisory role to a number of mobile start-ups in the UK and Scandinavia. He also works with the government and trade missions of a number of countries including South Korea and Ireland. He is a regular speaker at SYS-CON events including AJAXWorld Conference & Expo.

Latest Cloud Developer Stories

Cloud Computing: Swisscom Floats Red Hat Cloud

By Maureen O'Gara

Swisscom, the Swiss telecom, is going into the cloud business. Its subsidiary Swisscom IT Services AG has signed up with Red Hat as a Certified Cloud Provider and launched a public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud targeting enterprise-class customers primarily in ...

Deltacloud Graduates to TLP

By Maureen O'Gara

Apache Deltacloud, the Red Hat-contributed ReSTful API that abstracts differences between clouds so services on any cloud can be managed – provided of course there’s a driver – has graduated from the Apache Foundation’s incubator and is now a full-fledged Top-Level Project (TLP)....

Oracle Wheels Out Its Big Data Appliance Ahead of Schedule

By Maureen O'Gara

In a surprise move on Tuesday, January 10, Oracle wheeled out its Big Data Appliance. That’s the one it said in October would be ready sometime in the first half. Only nobody believed it meant early in the first half. Heck, it’s not even clear anybody thought Oracle could make ...

Rackspace Acquires SharePoint911

By Elizabeth White

Rackspace Hosting, the service leader in cloud computing, on Thursday announced its acquisition of SharePoint911, an industry leader in SharePoint consulting, training, and "JumpStart" services within SharePoint. The unification of both companies provides capabilities to deliver ...

CloudLinux Releases Virtualized File System for Shared Hosters

By Glenn Rossman

CloudLinux, Inc., on Thursday released CafeFS 3, a virtualized file system for shared hosters that cages each customer within its own virtualized file system. CageFS becomes part of CloudLinux OS at no additional charge. CloudLinux OS, the only commercially-supported Linux OS m...