Reflections

Time’s passing, by and its only roughly a month before we go back in time and return DownUnder.

With the count down already begun, I spent the first half the day configuring mom’s MacBook (bought in Sep 2007 and was hibernating yesterday:)) to work with the HSPDA modem for Internet access. That was easy, but had to spend a couple of hours setting up e-mail accounts, FaceBook accounts, adding and tagging pictures! Finally now, mom and dad both have their FaceBook accounts ready to go online and feel the social warmth of Web 2.0. You really must see the excitement around the place exchanging invites and adding friends to the list – its exhilarating!


Photo credit: Kelsey Lynn & Pacific Lutheran University

Collaboration and participation has always been huge in the innovative open source software development approach. Now it is here to stay with Web 2.0.

Consider any one of the recent super success stories. From Twitter to the iPhone – what’s common is the ability for an entire community to participate in driving the technology, and continuously pushing for new adoption mechanisms previously not anticipated by its creators. The explosive growth of Apple’s iPhone is hardly because of its state-of-the-art mobile phone unit with speech recognition – but rather because its API is public. This meant thousands of developers could then write applications for the unit driving up adoption rates sky high. There are quite a few success stories of individuals writing such applications as hobbies, making enough success they’ve made it into full-time careers. Same goes Twitter. See How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live, an article published on the Times magazine that explores how a service limited with status updates to just 140 characters made it so big.