ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

“EVERYTHING WE DO TODAY is now significantly impacted by 2.0 ideas. This applied to product development, marketing, customer service, operations, line of business, finance, communications, human resources, and just about everything else. How then do we start understanding the axes of opportunity and being applying to our organizations?”

Over the next few weeks, Web 2.0 analyst Dion Hinchcliffe will be posting a series of articles that deeply explore a strategy for using the power of Web 2.0 ideas to move businesses into the 21st century. He’ll begin exploring each quadrant in this diagram (below, taken from Hinchcliffe’s blog), looking at how to use 2.0 to dramatically create growth, transform the customer relationship to drive revenue, drive operational costs down, improve productivity, safely restructure our business models, effect change, and leverage/harnessing innovation.

GOOGLE’s NEW CHROME BROWSER, launched yesterday, promised to be faster, safer and smarter than other browsers. Key features include an Omnibox (where one can type in a website’s address or any search term), a Privacy mode (which ensures that traces of an Internet session are erased the moment one exits the browser) and Smart tabs (where tabs run on separate “processes, so if one website takes up too much resources or causes a software app to crash, that tab can be shut down individually).

For some reason though, I didn’t manage to install or run Chrome on my desktop PC yesterday. Still wondering whether that has anything to do a coincidental Windows update on the PC just before that. Anyway, I’m intrigued by what Keso has written about Chrome, in particular:

I think the real reason for Google to join the browsers bandwagon two years ago are this: Google needs control of a browser that has sufficient influence. It also needs to set up de facto standards through something that can be controlled and demonstrated.

Therefore, what’s important about Chrome are these two things: A new JavaScript engine V8 and a “Webified” version of the desktop app Gears. Both are part of Google’s key strategy to expand browser functions to better support future Web apps.

We often naively assume that Desktop battles are waged for the purpose of establishing Trojan horse pipelines. Actually, the smarter purpose of such battles is not for thievery or user base, but for the establishment of de facto standards that are advantageous to one’s future plans. For Google, this standard will enable its apps to run perfectly regardless of the platform or terminal that anyone may use. In order to better release its “cloud of accumulated energy”, Google needs a well-supported standard and a popular browser.

Therefore, Google has chosen not to integrate many of its own products and services into Chrome. Some people complain that one can easily install Google Toolbar on IE, but not on Chrome. Actually, there’re many more things that one cannot do on Chrome: visit Gmail with one click, publish easily from Blogger, upload video to YouTube, and even customize the default search engine…

Like Chrome, V8 and Gears are released as open-source projects. This will undoubtedly enhance their neutrality and therefore appeal to developers. It doesn’t matter how much market share Chrome will claim eventually. The key is whether it can provide the best demonstration of Gears and V8, thereby enabling them to become de facto standards.

Some people say that the target of Chrome is neither IE nor Firefox but Windows. Considering the line of “cloud”, apps and browser, I basically agree with this judgement.

SIX INVESTORS told The Straits Times recently said they would: (1) Advertise a website, (2) Buy index futures, (3) Buy growth stocks, (4) Go on the Silk Road, (5) Buy an apartment and (6) Switch to Reits respectively. Personally, I would drop everything, apply for an assistantship and pursue further studies in educational psychology in U.S.A.

What would you do, and why? Just tick one of the options/boxes below. You can also add a new option (by clicking here (scroll to the bottom to enter a new and preferred option — remember to click the box to cast your vote!), or add a comment (by clicking the “Discuss this Poll” link below).

Aha! “The Birth of Google”, reported Wired in August 2005, “began with an argument.”

Apparently when Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, first knew each other in their undergrad days in Stanford, they clashed incessantly, debating over many things. Jokingly, Page said he thought Brin was arrogant. Brin retorted that Page was obnoxious, “We had a kind of bantering thing going.” In the reporter’s words, “they were clearly drawn together – two swords sharpening one another.” Later however, it was their shared obsession with backlinks that started something big. Read the rest of this entry »