Tuesday, October 7, 2008

WE'b'~INTERACT'ion'

Internet has evolved over time as an Interactive Platform from a mere content provider. Down the line, different people have tried to exploit it by coming up with beautiful concepts that has changed the way WE INTERACT over web, create and share content like online Desktop, online office, online web conferencing, online web application development and list goes on.
When everything is going online there are growing concern about the privacy and security issues, also, the nuisance of remembering all those user names and passwords. Initiative like that of OpenID sure will need some time to reach to ever increasing online user base. On the contrary, single sign on is much sought technology in use.
At the same time, what about those sites at which you have registered and created a profile on it, only to find that its not exciting and stop using it. So, what happens to your profile on the site? Many of the sites do not provide option for closing an account, so it remains as a junk on that server. Even if you close this account (I mean previously registered username), sometimes the same account can be created (I would say renewed) under different Identity( that is by different person or through different e-mail id). For this user may choose not to close such accounts.
Online created content too add to the same chaos. Different technologies and innovative products have come up over time to empower users in the generation of multimedia and text content. Here, innovation lies in ways to capture content and linking the content to the user and sharing among user groups.
But, the future lies in connecting user to the content in a context and sharing the context with the interests of the other user. For example, you are interested in purchasing IPhone from any online store and you want to take the feedback of the users. It can be visualized as; you connected to different users in the context, who have purchased it or have experienced using it. Currently, you can take feedback from the user group of the online store that uses it. But, the context sharing will let you see relevant people among your other social networks or let you connect to other people in a contextual manner to create a logical network, I would say "virtual social network" that exists only within the scope of context.

In the recent times, content sharing have seen some radical changes. Now you can carry this content along with you, say using url, through HTML embedding code. Online life has become better place with RSS. It's a way to get updates to which you have subscribed (following the content on the web). It works by linking contents from different sources to you through readers; but not by linking you to different contents that you create. One can argue RSS do provide a work around for that, by subscribing to your contents. This way it provides way to reach to your content from a single point.

It's a matter of time, no sooner till the existing technologies matures with open standards in place that we can realize the semantic change in how WE(b)~INTERACT(ion).

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