To boldly go where no man has gone before

Currently we are existing in the era of Web 2.0, which is the term used to describe the changing trends in web technology and design. It effectively refers to the changes in the way developers and end users utilise the Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the evolution of hosted services and communities that we all use every day, for example social networking sites or blogs. In this rapidly changing environment, the question is what's next? The answer: quite simply, Web 3.0.

So what will the future look like with the arrival of Web 3.0 and beyond? Well the honest answer is that most people don't really know. The future is just as unimaginable as the world we live in today was just a couple of decades ago. There are obviously some educated speculations, such as Nova Spivack, a leading web pioneer who says Web 3.0 refers to the attempt by technologists to radically overhaul the basic platform of the web so it understands the near infinite pieces of information and connections between them. So it is effectively about making the web smarter and as Jonathan Richards puts it, "giving the Internet itself a brain". This to me sounds all too close to science fiction.

One thing we can be sure of is that the web will become even more fragmented. More information will be floating about and there will be even more customisation and personalisation of what of we want to use and consume. This trend has already started to emerge, for example just look at applications, such as iGoogle and Google News. Google News uses content from all other sites to create its news page with links to other news outlets. While iGoogle gives the user even more freedom allowing them to decide what news, feeds and information they want to consume and read with links to favourite sites and headlines or information streams from chosen web sites.

The next question is, how far will this trend develop within computer technology? Are we actually going to breach the realms of many of the fictional representations that we so often see of the future. Hollywood movies over the years have predicted or at least envisaged the future, most of the time quite wildly inaccurately, but every so often a film or fictional idea comes along that ends up being truly prophetic.

Films such as 2001: A Space Oddysey, Blade Runner and Minority Report have all contained ideas and visions that scientists think may become reality or have already formed part of real science.

In years to come will we have even more personalised computer technology that even greets us via retina identification when walking into shopping malls like in Minority Report?

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Or will we have to worry about this dismal depiction of the future from Terminator 2, by giving the web its so called 'brain'?

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Some claim that science and technology are moving so fast that it has become impossible for science fiction to keep up. Sci-fi did fail to predict the transistor, which as Marcus Chown from the New Scientist argues, is the development that enabled computers to conquer the modern world. Chown now believes that it may have become harder to predict the technological developments which will change our lives. With huge sci-fi films that portray even more depressing visions of the future, such as Avatar and Terminator Salvation, on the horizon lets just hope the rest of these predictions don't actually become reality.

Photo courtesy of Troutfactory:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/troutfactory/2046952826/

SuperlativeQuip:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeradkaliher/2226420056/
and

anthx: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23402088@N07/2237237354/

Blog first, ask questions later

Individuals are finally taking over the web. Today over 50% of online pages are now personal pages and for the first time this year social media even overtook pornography.

In a recent Online Journalism lecture Antony Mayfield from iCrossing (a leader in Search Engine Marketing) hit us with some pretty impressive statistics. There are roughly 1.4 billion people online with 400 million members of social networks. There over a trillion web sites tracked by Google and ten hours of video footage is uploaded onto Youtube every minute. Who are all these people producing all this content? The people formerly known as the audience.

Clearly as I am blogging, I should talk about one of the biggest forms of user produced content, the blog itself.

In an even more recent lecture from Shane Richmond, the Communities Editor of the Telegraph, we were told that their most successful blogs were not chasing the mainstream audiences, but the niche, focused blogs that build audiences at title and even article level. He wasn't just referring to Telegraph journalist's blogs, but more importantly the user blogs part of their My Telegraph site that allows anyone to start blogging on the Telegraph's site. It was also clear that unless you blog regularly, its not worth blogging. This can be witnessed even when looking at more mainstream blogs for example Ricky Gervais's Blog that keeps its high popularity with constant posts including numerous links, multimedia and amusing anecdotes.

In this new world full of virtual conversation it is Google that rules. It doesn't just have an 80% market share, but effectively defines the way in which we know and use the web today. The reason for this is that Google puts the user first. And guess what? Google loves blogs. There are many reasons why, including that it fits their business model and that blogs are constantly updated and full of archived information, but also because blogs are considered one of the most honest resources on the net. This brings me onto one important factor when considering user content, which is moderation.

Many people argue the web is full of rubbish user content. Shane Richmond argued that it might be rubbish or it might just be not be for you, which is a fair point. Yet one thing that is clear in this era of necessary constant contribution, immediate updating and even possible future correction, is that sometimes content is let loose on the web at the cost of accuracy. Not only that, but despite re-editing, the idea of yesterday's news being tomorrow's fish and chip paper isn't true anymore as this content is effectively out there forever, rubbish or no. Sometimes this need for speed, as it were, can even have more serious dangers such as legal implications.

Many argue that it is the journalists and media that have allowed the user conversation to flourish online, but the conversation has always happened, instead it is the journalist that has joined the conversation. Richmond said that as journalists we should not expect the audience to change, but we are the ones that have to change the way we think and evolve in this modern world. Clearly in this epoch of more freedom and individual expression online I agree we need to let the conversation continue, but as long as its not at the total expense of accuracy and decency.

Photo courtesy of kekuri:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kekuri/1116048366/

The Deadline is now

The deadline isn’t next week, it isn’t tomorrow, and it isn’t even 5 o’clock. For the journalists of today the deadline is now.

This was the message in this week’s online journalism lecture endorsed by Adam Tinworth, Head of Blogging at Reed Business Information, Europe’s leading online and offline publisher.

Adam said that weekly news magazines don’t work anymore as news has to be instantly published in today’s modern world. Undoubtedly this is true. There still can be weekly news analysis magazines and print media still has a role to play in news telling and analysis, but it is the world wide web where news is now first broken. News today also doesn’t end when the article is published, it is constantly updated, re-examined and followed up. News stories aren’t finished they are simply developed.

I was doing work experience with a local newspaper, the Bath Chronicle in September 2007 when they changed from a daily to a weekly edition to cut back on costs. This made me realise how the stories and style of news reporting had to change and adapt to fit to this modern world and evidently so much more emphasis for breaking news went through the online site.

All of this led me to consider the British newspaper reporting on the American election last week. Ironically this came up in conversation with Peter Preston the ex-Guardian editor in a lecture later in the week where Peter was questioned about why some British papers had the election result by the morning and why others didn’t. We were told it was simply about editions as certain national newspapers managed to get the result in earlier editions than others. Yet it did make me wonder whether anyone in the UK read a British newspaper to find out the outcome of the election unlike maybe in the past. Surely it would be through the online and broadcasting channels that most people found out that Obama had won.

Certain sporting matches bring up these issues again for newspapers where decisions whether to include results or match reports in the first edition can depend on where and when they finished. Sports reporting in fact is one sphere of journalism where these wider changes can be noticed more than anywhere else.

Today sites like the BBC have minute-by-minute updates of all the football matches and you can have instant messages sent to your mobile phone.

We also have massively successful and exciting live sports programmes such as Sky's Gillette Soccer Saturday that have instant reaction, analysis, scores and information. Despite not actually showing any football coverage it remains one the most popular, distinguished and as you can see from this clip brilliantly funny sports programmes on television.

Then you also have Setanta’s 24 hour sports channel that is hugely popular online available through a stand alone player as both audio or video with constant rolling sports news, which is also on a digital television station.

Even ITV’s Formula One site is full of continuously updated news and video content with live streaming of races.

This trend has even reached more local stations and individual matches for example Steve Tucker from Wales Online blogged the whole Cardiff game at the weekend live.

Newspapers have to keep up with broadcasters and online stations with their own online coverage, as shown by the acclaimed Timesonline ‘news site of the year’, whose own sport coverage is pretty extensive and revolves around breaking stories, updates and scores.

So it seems if the news and sport isn't instantaneous, live, breaking or immediate, then the chances are that it is probably not news anymore.

Photos courtesy of JonHall: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ormondroyd/265542756/

and sunsetbeach: http://www.flickr.com/photos/veeg/64817511/