The Impending Birth of Web 3.0

So, did you even know that Web2.0 is already here? You probably use it every day. But now, researchers are looking beyond 2.0 into the next next generation of the web: 3.0.

Web 2.0 is really a concept in web design that uses existing technology. Google and Amazon are probably the most well-known examples. In fact, Web2.0 is a term that has already been copyrighted by the O-Reilly network. Web2.0 basically means the "read/write" web. Basically, Web1.0 sites are sites that are read only. You go there, read what they have to offer, maybe do a search to get there, and then move on.

Web2.0 means that you the user can contribute to the content of the site. Or, the site keep information for you that you can come back and edit. Wikipedia and Writely are two examples of this. Well, Writely is now a part of Google. Like everything will be someday.

This is also the point to why Google and Microsoft are going head to head. Google is spearheading the movement to take applications off of the desktop and put them online, where they can be accessed by today's mobile generation, and collaborated on by multiple people simultaneously. Microsoft, of course, doesn't like this.

And now, Google is once again jumping into the ring with Web3.0, or the semantic web. The basic goal for this is smart searches that mimic artificial intelligence. Many people feel that AI won't ever exist - but that's not the point. Web3.0 will just appear to look like AI.

It goes like this. If you want to search for a vacation spot, you have to do some vague searches that gives you a long list of results to search through. The goal for Web3.0 is to let you give a very specific, long search command that would return the specific results for you. For example, you could tell a vacation search all the details that you want for your vacation - spotless rooms, first week of July, secluded beach, Caribbean, kid friendly, etc, etc - and you would get back a vacation package that matched your request exactly. Because the search engine would know the difference between spotless and really clean, for example, when it searches through customer reviews of popular vacation destinations.

This is all really far off in the future, but it's starting to be the direction that research money is being filtered. Should be interesting. This article in the New York Times has some more information on Web3.0.

And, can I say how much I LOVE the new Firefox2.0 spell checker? It makes doing blog posts soooo much easier.....