Web 4.0 vs Web 3.0 vs Web 2.0

The amazing thing about technology is it's momentum. 2 posts ago, I posted about Web 2.0 and RIA . But I don't want my app/site worth an archeological dig when I finish it. So I decided to look forward to Web 4.0.

Ofcourse, I googled and surprisingly not surprised to face myself with 30 million results.
The earliest refernce to Web 4.0 from Google's first page of search results is the article Web 4.0: Start planning now by Steven Pemberton in 2006.

Here are my one line definitions about the Web x.0 (why do we have only x.0 and not 1.1, 2.8, etc): Key words, and my vision about web 4.0

Web 1.0 :
Information Collection Place, similar to books, and photocopies
Keywords: HTML

Web 2.0:
Interactive, apart from Web 1.0 information collection, a grouping and interacting place (In old world these are called museums, townhalls, bartering): flickr, facebook, Amazon etc
Keywords: RIA

Web 3.0:
Symantic, understanding the relationships and provide cross-content from multiple sources.(Again, in old world these were called private investigators, pychologists,..)
Keywords: Concepts, ontology

Web 4.0: My view

1. Personalized mashable applications, from subcomponents of different web 3.0 apps
   
2. Define the rules for making the relationships
3. Automated information collection agents
4. Complete replacement of having information on dektops/laptops
   

I will keep adding my vision to this list.


So, now let me point you to some sources that did a good job in explaining the differences (without putting me to sleep, yawn..!!)

Sramana Mitra defines Web 3.0 as

Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS).

3C = Content, Commerce, Community |
4th C = Context |
P = Personalization |
VS = Vertical Search

But for me pictures are worth 1000 words. (So was year 2000, y2k worth 2 pictures?)

Paisano summarized web 2.0 vs web 3.0 vs Web 4.0 very well. Coming back to 2.0 vs 3.0 the figure below is how he summarized the differences. Thank you Paisano for making this so easy.

I encourage you to go to his blog for more on this topic.

Image Processing: Where to begin

One of the subjects I am exploring in recent times is image processing.

How does Image Processing relate to a person in daily life?
With the explosion and usage of digital gadgets in our daily lives: such as cameras, ipods, cellphones , unconsciously we are exposed to some aspect of image processing tasks. For example: uploading images from your camera to a website such as picasa or flickr involves data compression. This is one of the major image processing problems.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: image processing

Set of computational techniques for analyzing, enhancing, compressing, and reconstructing images. Its main components are importing, in which an image is captured through scanning or digital photography; analysis and manipulation of the image, accomplished using various specialized software applications; and output (e.g., to a printer or monitor). Image processing has extensive applications in many areas, including astronomy, medicine, industrial robotics, and remote sensing by satellites.

As a technology fan, I like to experiment with new gadgets and applications. But as a computer scientist, I have to be familiar if not an expert in the computational algorithms and techniques. That is every time I upload an image, I will be wondering about the algorithm behind it.

This is the book followed in many universities for the Image Processing course.

Digital Image Processing

By Rafael C. Gonzalez, Richard E. Woods

Published by Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007

ISBN 013168728X, 9780131687288

Multilingualism, Rich Internet Applications, and the art of Web 2.0 programming

Several programming languages ago the rules were simple: For kernel level go with C/C++, and for visual applications there were some open source GUI libraries.

When I started looking around for an appropriate language to develop my own Rich Internet Application (to be on the list of 'me too' web 2.0 apps), I was overwhelmed by the choices.

When web programming was in the blooming stage, HTML was the uni solution. Then came SGML, Java, Flash, XML...and the list never stopped growing. While I am glad for all these technological developments, I feel we are reaching a stage where the evolving of the programming environment looks like the evolving of the natural languages on earth:totally segmented and compartmentalized.

For me, the choice of language should meet all the requirements below

1. It should be both installable, and also easily portable to web (or vice versa)
2. There should be lot of open source widgets available
   
3. If I have a cluster or other parallel environment in future, it should leverage that automatically, or using minimum programming (using addons)
4. Security should be inbuilt

Of course all the above are the basic requirements of web 2.0.

For now I decided on Ruby and Ruby-on-Rails (I am not sure if Ruby satisfies the above conditions..not yet).

For list of other apps, take a look at the links below.

• "An A to Z for the RIA Era"
• Programming language Popularity

Please post in comments if Ruby is indeed the ideal choice.

Why the title “itrial”?

Trying new technology is fun, but sometimes achieving what you set to do is a process of trial and error. In this process, occasionally one loses interest and gives up; and when we don’t, we succeed.

That’s the gist of “itrial: Trials and Successes”

It is also a place to log my opinions and useful information, based on my readings and trials.

Bottom line: I am as eager as you to see how it evolves