Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Blogging toys and treats!

Blogging, and Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is described as the second generation of websites and services. Essentially, this is just a name, and there are no actual rules or standards, however the title encompasses everything from blogging to youtube. Common examples are social networking sites like digg.com and photo sharing sites such as flickr.

Professional web designers and programmers do like to adhere to a standard practice, and they may argue that there are rules and standards, which I think is great, as they lead the way to cleaner and smoother running websites and services, however as always, the public dictates the norm. For the blogger, this means that there are some great tools and utilities to pretty up your blog, or add functionality like never before. Most of us prefer to simply write and publish to our blogs. Quick and dirty. No programming, no coding just write it and save it to the web. Web 2.0 functionality allows us to add features like photo and video sharing, chat boxes, and social networking features simply by drag and drop.

Google’s blogger (this website actually) for example is arranged by laying out the page into elements or modules. Every portion of the page is edited in pieces. No need for programming. You can add chat modules from 3rd party websites and simply cut and paste the special code into your module.

If you’re looking to spice up your blog, or website, you should look into sites such as g02web20.net, and killerstartups.com. A quick tip to finding some neat things for your blog – search on the tags at the top, and try the blogging tag.