The Eye

A recent survey I saw somewhere online suggested that many people perceive web 2.0 as yet another marketing ploy.

Now, me, being one of the kings of anti-hype, would disagree. For one thing, no one company above another is pushing Web 2.0.

I suppose Google are to the front in some ways, but there are many Web 2.0 apps out there, such as Facebook, Twitter, Del.icio.us, and blogging itself.

I’m a big fan of open source software, and a big supporter of open standards too. SO, to that end, I’m pretty much anti-Microsoft who want to not only have all the market to themselves, which is kind of acceptable in terms of how large companies try to position themselves; but they also want to ride slipshod over most of the agreed standards, which ultimately forces everyone to use Microsoft products, which is not acceptable at all. No one company makes the best software for every use, and Microsoft are no exception.

Anyway, this isn’t really a Microsoft rant.

For me, there are two main advantages to online technologies.

Portability, and cross platform use.

I want to be able to access data on as many computers as possible. With just about all computers connected to the Internet these days, that is less and less of a problem. Also I can put files onto a USB stick or a CD. However, we come back to the open standards I mention above. For example OpenOffice will open many more file formats than Microsoft Office will. So, guess what? I use OpenOffice - not withstanding that it’s as capable as MS Office, and rather less expensive - free actually.

So that’s got around that issue, and as for portability OpenOffice runs just fine (ok, it runs faster too) on my Ubuntu machines as it does the Windows ones.

As does Firefox, and Thunderbird, my email client.

So now, I can grab a computer at a friends house, at a clients, or at an internet cafe, and I can blog, read/write/print documents, and communicate with my friends, family and colleagues.

At home we have a peer to peer network - so files aren’t stored on a central server, but with this kind of portability, I can be using my lappie or Kathy’s machine equally easily as my own main desktop.

OK, I can’t resist one more little dig, but no Microsoft product was used in the creation or transmission of this blog article.