The creator of the faux "Web 2.0" corporate logos at right is not the only one illustrating the extent to which the term has been over-hyped:
- Dack.com offers a Web Economy BS Generator to aid in recognizing Web 2.0 technobabble business opportunities.
- Dotomator.com gives you not one but two ways to come up with a geeky cool Web 2.0 company and domain name.
- AndrewWooldridge.com will even help you choose a Web 2.0 company name and product at the same time!
- Then, with this Web 2.0 BuzzPhrase Generator, writing a business plan to wow the cash cows VCs is a piece of cake!
- And to make sure your website is "Web 2.0 compliant", run it through this Web 2.0 Validator.
Reload and enjoy... But when you're through, keep in mind that Web 2.0 actually does mean something: The trick is it has meaning only in context, and not standing alone. Let's take designing for Web 2.0 as an example:
We often see South Florida web designers referring to Web 2.0 as if it really was an industry standard to be validated, or a packaged product to be sold. It is neither. As one lucid techno-blogger points out:
"'Web 2.0 design' has no definition, yet it is widely recognizable. Consisting of a light and 'easy on the eyes' look, Web 2.0 design utilizes whitespace with bright, vivid colors and gradients. Fonts play a major role in Web 2.0 - the H1 tag resurfaces as a major part of a web page's design... Links are bright and typically neon in color, and color combinations themselves are heavily contrasted against their backdrop... [Web 2.0] borrows from minimalist styles - where less is more."
Effective web professionals know there's a lot more to Web 2.0 than "whitespace and bright colors". The flash-enriched source generating those minimalist masterpieces should allow owners of business websites to dynamically leverage the full interactive potential of their online marketing resources--along with that of the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) web servers on which they reside. Web pages should be coded in tableless XHTML and CSS for streamlined, mobile-friendly delivery of semantics freed from syntax, content separated from form. Every web page should be validated compliant with all relevant W3C coding standards and accessibillity guidelines. And the most important thing to remember about Web 2.0 is this:
Regardless of how it's defined, keep results in mind…
