So where does SL feature in all of this?

Found this article on BBC News:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4793481.stm?ls

Many of the websites chosen for 2006 are examples of so-called web 2.0 sites, which give users tools to create and share content online.

They are "next-generation sites offering dynamic new ways to inform and entertain, sites with cutting-edge tools to create, consume, share or discuss all manners of media, from blog posts to video clips," wrote Maryanne Murray-Buechner.

There's no mention whatsoever of Second Life, which hails itself as not just part of the future of the internet, but "the" future. Is the reality, of Second Life being an online computer game, different from the image that Linden Lab is trying to portray?

Discuss.

Lewis

Sorry Lewis, Web 2.0 is just a coined term to represent websites that act more like standalone local applications in their immediacy. Another term used is AJAX (Asyncronous JavaScript and XML), a "technology" you can see used many places today such as Amazon.com, Google Earth, and even Second Life's WebmapAPI.

Since Web pages are really a static technology (you enter address, browser dutifully connectes to server, dowloads page, disconnects), Web 2.0 seems to sow immediacy. Rather than typing in values on a form and hitting submit, when you make a seclection an update occurs automatically. If you've ever used Amazon.com this can be easily seen in their recommendations area where you can rate a product by clicking on one of five stars. A tiny "wait" cursor happens for a second and you here a click, but the page stays while the number of stars you selected gets highlighted. Using an invisible IFRAME normally, information about your action is sent to the server and new information is retrieved transparently.

Second Life's embeddable map uses this technology. As for Second Life itself, unless they were to ever follow There's model and embed the client within a browser, it was always meant as a new protocol meaning it needed a new client (namely the Second Life client you use) to access the information. Remember, the Web is just one Internet protocol (HTTP) in a sea of them (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, FTP, GOPHER, etc.).