Aggregator

(or news aggregator or feed reader)

An aggregator is a software or online service that uses a Web feed to retrieve syndicated Web content such as Weblogs, podcast, vlogs, and mainstream mass media Web sites, or in the case of a search aggregator, a customized set of search results.

Feed readers keep checking Web sites to see if they have been updated. If so, they display the title, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the new information. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feed reader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. You don't have to visit all the Web sites you are interested in: you just add the feeds of these Web sites to the feed reader.

AJAX

AJAX, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a Web development technique for creating interactive Web applications. The intent is to make Web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is intended to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.

Blog

(Weblog - usally shortened to blog)

Blog is an abbreviated version of Weblog, which is a term used to describe Web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal Web site featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles or other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of most early blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

Folksonomy

Folksonomy is used to categorize and retrieve Web pages, photographs, Web links and other Web content using open ended labels called tags. Typically, folksonomies are Internet-based, but their use may occur in other contexts as well. The process of folksonomic tagging is intended to make a body of information increasingly easier to search, discover, and navigate over time. A well-developed folksonomy is ideally accessible as a shared vocabulary that is both originated by, and familiar to, its primary users. Two widely cited examples of Web sites using folksonomic tagging are Flickr and del.icio.us.

Or more formal: A folksonomy is a user generated taxonomy and taxonomic classification is the act of placing an object or concept into a set or sets of categories, based on the properties of the object or concept.

Mash-up

The term mash-up refers to a new breed of Web-based applications to mix at least two different services from disparate and even competing, Web sites. A mash-up, for example, could overlay traffic data from one source on the Internet over maps from Yahoo, Microsoft, Google or any content provider.

Open source software

Open-source software refers to any computer software whose source code is available under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to study, change and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner.

Podcast

A podcast is a media file that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

Though podcasters' Web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital audio formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically, using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.

Podcasting's initial appeal was to allow individuals to distribute their own "radio shows," but the system quickly became used in a wide variety of other ways, including distribution of school lessons, official and unofficial audio tours of museums, conference meeting alerts and updates, and by police departments to distribute public safety messages.

RSS

RSS is a family of Web feed formats, specified in XML and used for Web syndication. RSS is used by (among other things) news Web sites, Weblogs and podcasting. RRS is alternately defined as Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication.

Social bookmarks

Social bookmarking is a Web-based service to share Internet bookmarks. The social bookmarking sites are a popular way to store, classify, share and search links through the practice of folksonomy techniques.

Since the classification and ranking of resources is a continuously evolving process, many social bookmarking services allow users to subscribe to Web feeds based on tags, or acollection of tag terms. This allows subscribers to become aware of new resources for a given topic, as they are noted, tagged and classified by other users.

Social software

Social software is a type of software or Web service that allows people to communicate and collaborate while using the application. E-mail, blogs, and even instant messaging are all examples of social software. Many advocates of using these tools believe that these create actual community, and have adopted the term "online communities" to describe the social structures that they claim result.

Tag

A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with a piece of information (like a picture, article, Web site, or video clip), thus describing the item. Typically, an item will have more than one tag associated with it.

Tags are chosen informally and personally by the author/creator or the consumer of the item - i.e. not as part of some formally defined classification scheme.

Web 2.0

O'Reilly defines Web 2.0 as "the Web as platform" that enables, among other things, the "harnessing [of] collective intelligence," the "architecture of participation," "rich user experiences" and "remixable data source[s]".In essence Web technology is shifting to an open source medium, which allows for user interaction that fosters online collaboration, communication, and community. With the transition to Web 2.0, the user has been repositioned to the centre.

That means that Web 2.0 refers to services available on the World Wide Web that let people collaborate, and share information online. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.

What kinds of things do Web 2.0 tools do?

• They allow non-Web designers to put their own content (writing, audio, video, etc.) online easier than ever before.
• They make content more portable than ever and easier to remix, mash together or reuse in a different context.
• They utilize this user-generated content and the economy of scale/ network multiplier effect created to draw valuable connections between related users and content.
• They make the discovery of new content more automated and relevant than ever before.
• They have the potential to exponentially increase the amount of information that any of us are able to access, store and recall.

Web 2.0 tools

Tool is used here as shorthand for a software application on your
computer, and also for applications that are Web-based.

Wherever Web tools are mentioned on the Conference materials, the terms Web application, method, technology or approach might have been more appropriate to use depending on the actual use of the tool. For example, instant messaging is an application, Yahoo Messenger is a tool. We have, however, decided to use one term to cover all the different applications, tools, methods, technology that we are referring to as Web 2.0 tools.

Web feed

Web feeds allow feed readers to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different sites. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. For most Web feeds RSS, RDF and XML formats are used.

In the typical scenario of using Web feeds, a content provider publishes a feed link on their site which end users can register with an feed reader.

The kinds of content delivered by a Web feed are typically HTML (Web page content) or links to Web pages and other digital media. Web feeds are operated by many news Web sites, Weblogs, schools, and podcasters.

Web syndication

Web syndication is a form of syndication where Web feeds make a portion of a Web site available to other sites or individual subscribers. This could be simply by licensing the content so that other people can use it; however, in general, Web syndication refers to making Web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary of the Web site's recently added content (for example, the latest news or forum posts).

Today many different types of content is syndicated on the Internet. Millions of online publishers including newspapers, commercial Web sites and blogs now publish their latest news headlines, product offers or blog postings in standard format news feed.

Although the format could be anything transported over HTTP, such as HTML or JavaScript, it is more commonly XML. The two main families of Web syndication formats are RSS and Atom.

Webcast

Webcasting is sending audio and/or video live over the Internet. In essence, Webcasting can be thought of as broadcasting over the Internet.A Webcast uses streaming media technology, technology that is used to distribute non-streaming media like radio and television over telecommunications networks, to take a single content source and distribute it to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. The ability to Webcast using cheap/accessible technology has allowed independent media to flourish.

Wiki

A wiki is a Web site that allows visitors to add, remove, edit and change content. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. The term wiki also can refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a site, or to certain specific wiki sites, like encyclopedias such as Wikipedia.

XML

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems, particularly systems connected via the Internet. XML is considered "general-purpose" because it enables anyone to originate and use a markup language for many types of applications and problem domains. Numerous formally defined markup languages are based on XML, such as RSS, MathML, GraphML, XHTML, Scalable Vector Graphics, MusicXML, and thousands of others.