Web 2.0 and Beyond-Participation Culture on the Web

Author(s):  
August-Wilhelm Scheer

The emergence of what we call today the World Wide Web, the WWW, or simply the Web, dates back to 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee proposed a hypertext system to manage information overload at CERN, Switzerland (Berners-Lee, 1989). This article outlines how his approaches evolved into the Web that drives today’s information society and explores its full potentials still ahead. The formerly known wide-area hypertext information retrieval initiative quickly gained momentum due to the fast adoption of graphical browser programs and standardization activities of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In the beginning, based only on the standards of HTML, HTTP, and URL, the sites provided by the Web were static, meaning the information stayed unchanged until the original publisher decided for an update. For a long time, the WWW, today referred to as Web 1.0, was understood as a technical mean to publish information to a vast audience across time and space. Data was kept locally and Web sites were only occasionally updated by uploading files from the client to the Web server. Application software was limited to local desktops and operated only on local data. With the advent of dynamic concepts on server-side (script languages like hypertext preprocessor (PHP) or Perl and Web applications with JSP or ASP) and client-side (e.g., JavaScript), the WWW became more dynamic. Server-side content management systems (CMS) allowed editing Web sites via the browser during run-time. These systems interact with multiple users through PHP-interfaces that push information into server-side databases (e.g., mySQL) which again feed Web sites with content. Thus, the Web became accessible and editable not only for programmers and “techies” but also for the common user. Yet, technological limitations such as slow Internet connections, consumer-unfriendly Internet rates, and poor multimedia support still inhibited a mass-usage of the Web. It needed broad-band Internet access, flat rates, and digitalized media processing to catch on.

Author(s):  
Bill Karakostas ◽  
Yannis Zorgios

Chapter II presented the main concepts underlying business services. Ultimately, as this book proposes, business services need to be decomposed into networks of executable Web services. Web services are the primary software technology available today that closely matches the characteristics of business services. To understand the mapping from business to Web services, we need to understand the fundamental characteristics of the latter. This chapter therefore will introduce the main Web services concepts and standards. It does not intend to be a comprehensive description of all standards applicable to Web services, as many of them are still in a state of flux. It focuses instead on the more important and stable standards. All such standards are fully and precisely defined and maintained by the organizations that have defined and endorsed them, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (http://w3c. org), the OASIS organization (http://www.oasis-open.org) and others. We advise readers to visit periodically the Web sites describing the various standards to obtain the up to date versions.


Author(s):  
Rafael Cunha Cardoso ◽  
Fernando da Fonseca de Souza ◽  
Ana Carolina Salgado

Currently, systems dedicated to information retrieval/extraction perform an important role on fetching relevant and qualified information from the World Wide Web (WWW). The Semantic Web can be described as the Web’s future once it introduces a set of new concepts and tools. For instance, ontology is used to insert knowledge into contents of the current WWW to give meaning to such contents. This allows software agents to better understand the Web’s content meaning so that such agents can execute more complex and useful tasks to users. This work introduces an architecture that uses some Semantic Web concepts allied to Regular Expressions (REGEX) in order to develop a system that retrieves/extracts specific domain information from the Web. A prototype, based on such architecture, was developed to find information about offers announced on supermarkets Web sites.


1997 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 276-280
Author(s):  
Nicholas P. Poolos

There has been an explosion in the number of World Wide Web sites on the Internet dedicated to neuroscience. With a little direction, it is possible to navigate around the Web and find databases containing information indispensable to both basic and clinical neuroscientists. This article reviews some Web sites of particular interest. NEUROSCIENTIST 3:276–280, 1997


1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth E. Barnes

While students at major universities may have access to the World Wide Web via campus computer labs, many have yet to take advantage of the Web's offerings. Regular demonstrations of Web sites were incorporated into an introductory advertising course to pique students’ interest in the Web. This paper discusses how Web site visits were incorporated into lectures and the students’ evaluation of the Web site component of the course.


Author(s):  
Ross A. Malaga

This chapter examines the role of the World Wide Web in traditional lecture based courses. It details a student oriented approach to the development and maintenance of course Web sites. An experiment was conducted in order to determine if use of a course Web site improves student performance. The surprising results, that students in certain sections did not use the site at all, are analyzed. It was concluded that using the Web in class and making Web assignments part of student’s graded work may impact use of a course Web site.


Author(s):  
Thomas A. Slivinski ◽  
Francis D. Tuggle

The World Wide Web (web) grows apace, yet many web sites possess a confusing design, frustrating would-be users. We offer a structured approach, called SPUD (Site - Purpose Users Design) to the task of designing, not implementing, web sites. Our methodology focuses upon a structured walkthrough of a web site and consists of three phases (and 15 substeps), with possible iteration between the stages. (1) Define the audience characteristics of users of the web site, including their motives for visiting, their demographics, and their likely technological capabilities. (2) Plan accordingly the structure of the web site, the page layouts, and the navigation procedures between pages. (3) Develop and test functions useful to the users of the web site, such as a search function (for a complex web site) or an order function (for a retail web site).


Author(s):  
Américo Sampaio

The growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web has contributed to significant changes in many areas of our society. The Web has provided new ways of doing business, and many companies have been offering new services as well as migrating their systems to the Web. The main goal of the first Web sites was to facilitate the sharing of information between computers around the world. These Web sites were mainly composed of simple hypertext documents containing information in text format and links to other documents that could be spread all over the world. The first users of this new technology were university researchers interested in some easier form of publishing their work, and also searching for other interesting research sources from other universities.


2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 110-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy A Brown

The Telemedicine Information Exchange (TIE) has provided comprehensive telemedicine information on the World Wide Web (Web) since early 1995. It received major funding from the National Library of Medicine in 1997. Among other things, the TIE contains six major databases: literature citations; active telemedicine programmes; a ‘what's new in telemedicine’ column; funding opportunities; forthcoming conferences; and a list of vendors of telemedicine equipment and services. Recent additions include a document delivery service, inaugurated in early 1999. More than 1000 other Web sites link to the TIE, and we have 5000 visitors per month from several countries. Given its relative longevity on the Web, TIE researchers have been in a unique position to observe trends in telemedicine.


1998 ◽  
Vol 162 ◽  
pp. 68-73
Author(s):  
Jay M. Pasachoff

I discuss the burgeoning World Wide Web and how it can be used to aid astronomy teaching.I supply a list of a variety of useful Web sites.The World Wide Web was invented 5 years ago at CERN, which is now translated as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as a way of aiding access to information from remote sites. The invention of graphic interfaces, notably Mosaic by a group at the National Supercomputer Center in Illinois and then Netscape Navigator as a private development by many of the original Mosaic people, led to an explosion in use of the Web. Millions of people around the world are now able to access information from over 100,000 Web sites.There is much astronomical information on the Web, though that information make up only a small fraction of all the information available through this medium.


Author(s):  
Brian M. Katt ◽  
Ludovico Lucenti ◽  
Nailah F. Mubin ◽  
Michael Nakashian ◽  
Daniel Fletcher ◽  
...  

Abstract Introduction The use of the internet for health-related information continues to increase. Because of its decentralized structure, information contained within the World Wide Web is not regulated. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the type and quality of information on the internet regarding Kienböck’s disease. We hypothesized that the information available on the World Wide Web would be of good informational value. Materials and Methods The search phrase “Kienböck’s disease” was entered into the five most commonly used internet search engines. The top 49 nonsponsored Web sites identified by each search engine were collected. Each unique Web site was evaluated for authorship and content, and an informational score ranging from 0 to 100 points was assigned. Each site was reviewed by two fellowship-trained hand surgeons. Results The informational mean score for the sites was 45.5 out of a maximum of 100 points. Thirty-one (63%) of the Web sites evaluated were authored by an academic institution or a physician. Twelve (24%) of the sites were commercial sites or sold commercial products. The remaining 6 Web sites (12%) were noninformational, provided unconventional information, or had lay authorship. The average informational score on the academic or physician authored Web sites was 54 out of 100 points, compared with 38 out of 100 for the remainder of the sites. This difference was statistically significant. Conclusion While the majority of the Web sites evaluated were authored by academic institutions or physicians, the informational value contained within is of limited completeness. More than one quarter of the Web sites were commercial in nature. There remains significant room for improvement in the completeness of information available for common hand conditions in the internet.


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