Email the Editor    Email a Friend    Print this Page 

A shiny nickel to whoever can tell us just what Web 2.0 is.

Sure, it's a catchy tag, but what it means, exactly, is up for grabs. This year, we've had various people weigh in on Web 2.0: is it media-heavy, consumer-beloveds like Wikpedia, YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr, or mashups that combine enterprise apps with blogs and podcasts?

Whatever Web 2.0 is, it's everywhere. It's with good reason that Time magazine named "You" its person of this year. No-one knows who you are if you don't have a MySpace page, appear in a YouTube clip or post your photos on Flickr.

But, while businesses have the sinking feeling that blogging, wiki-ing, and MySpacing are the new must-have technologies (despite many Web 2.0 companies' low profiles and lack of conventional marketing), most are unsure of how to integrate them and are hanging back. Regardless, Oracle, NetSuite, and IBM are among the biggies to roll out new Web 2.0-centric apps this year-even if businesses probably aren't yet ready to embrace them.

Editorials and expertise

The real Web 2.0
Why bandwagon vendors like Oracle and Intel are ruining it for the rest of us

Text support: In conversation with Robert Scoble

Corporations enter a new frontier
Companies are increasingly turning to the blogsphere to drive traffic to their Web site - but they need to be careful about how they word things

Yahoo! is two
The portal is attempting to take us beyond search, but do they know what we're looking for?

AJAX in the enterprise?
Special report: Developers are using the combination of asynchronous JavaScript and XML to do some amazing things, but experts wonder whether it will bring value to corporate users. Google, IBM and some Canadian companies discuss the possibilities

Many companies still not ready to embrace Web 2.0 concepts
What might drive Web 2.0 in the enterprise space are mashup tools that bring together information from two or more applications

Web 2.0 In Action

Web 2.0 breeds go-to-market mavericks
They avoid advertising, public relations or working directly with IT departments. So how do these firms expect to sell their hosted software tools and increase market share? We ask three Canadian startups to discuss their strategy

Canadian political parties upgrade their portals
As the election draws closer, an Ottawa firm compares online campaigns here vs. those in the U.S. and U.K. Find out what the Liberals and Conservatives are doing to engage with voters

Blogger uses free Web tools to track political portal traffic
E-commerce expert says online campaigns often ignored in elections

In the news:

EMI Music Canada amps up online video transmissions
Streaming technology breaks down data into cacheable Web objects

Web content on trial
Blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools are great for collaboration, but they also pose legal risks. Two Canadians who face defamation charges explain why they think the laws need to change

Mediascrape unveils online TV news aggregator
Montreal company jockeys for position in market occupied by iTunes and YouTube

Comment: info@itbusiness.ca

share: