Its hard to start a blog that talks about life on the web without using some “technical jargon” so I need to do some explaining of terminology up front….I promise it to be less than 10!
I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about language, terms and jargon. As if it’s hard to talk about any specific field of specialty without adding certain words that everyone agrees to be descriptive of something in some field. Even my partner today insisted that my language is a bit too complex for a web development proposal!
As it seems I need to learn how to simplify my language for this blog as well as my startup!
So here are some jargon/terms often used these days when people talk about the web:
- Web 2.0, 3.0…etc. This is a term widely used today by web enthusiasts to represent the current time-line in the evolution of the web. Websites like Facebook, LinkedIn and My Spaceare considered the stars of the Web 2.0 era. Web 1.0 is when it started 10 years ago, boomed, bubbled up and widely crashed in 2000, but Yahoo, Google, Amazon & eBay stayed and are amongst the leaders of the evolution of the web.
- Syndication/RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a technology that publishes information on the web, from one website into another or into your reader. So to get news from BBC Online, you subscribe to its feed, and it automatically feeds news items into your browser without having to go into the website it self. More on RSS on Wikipedia
- Aggregator/Feed Reader is a tool, web-based (Google Reader) or desktop-based (your browser) that reads multiple feeds for you to read and browse through. More on Aggregators on Wikipedia
- AJAX now someone is thinking now this is jargon indeed, why do I need to know this word?!!!! Well if you spend as little as 4 hours on the web daily, then this is important to you. This technology enables you to do stuff like save, edit, delete while still staying on the same page and while nothing is disappearing or getting refreshed! Yes real time change!
- Blogs: since you are reading this you know what a blog is, it’s short for a Web Log. What used to be “personal websites” in the Web 1.0 era is now transformed into Blogs. The evolution comes in being dynamic and more frequently updated. It can contain anything with a title and some paragraphs. What you are reading now is a blog post.
- Social Web: is any web experience you go through that enables you to socially interact and network with other people. The excitement of Social web is that it brings the value of the Internet in connecting people around the world bringing a sense of community. Examples are Facebook, LinkedIn and My Space.
So yes I kept it under 10! Please let me know if this post was helpful or if it was still too complex.
