Things I learned at the Web 2.0 conference

I couldn't take time off work to go to the presentations but I spent my thursday night classtime perusing the wares at the "booth crawl" Altho the way they were pouring beer it might be called the "booth stagger" for some folks. I myself grabbed an embossed pint mug from the ebay booth (still can't figure out what they were promoting) and I plan to post it for sale on ebay later today. Can't decide whether to post it as half full or half empty. Half full might get more buyers, half empty might get more positive feedback responses (for my honesty as a seller) Tough choice. Here's what I learned.......

Hella schwagg...so bring a bag.

Big booth = big beer...Lotsa free beer but no free puppies as far as I could tell.
crackberry's still outnumber iphonaddicts among geekazoids. Tight polo shirt with tech logo = blackberry. Tight suit with no tie = iphone. High heels = blackberry. Clogs = iphone.

Posing the question; "but how can this be used for educational purposes?" will often stump the booth jockey.

Social networking is the new black. I did some "research" and at this time there are approximately 27, 468 social networking sites. ( I can't divulge my research methodology b/c the algorithm is a trade secret between me and google) I myself am starting a new social network site called YoUrSpace. (this word is trademarked so don't even think of stealing it) It's your space..just for you..no one else can link to it, RSS feed from it, comment on it, or find it in any web searches. It's a place to put YoUrStuff (also trademarked so back off) your pics, your embarrassing video's, your offshore bank accounts, your extensive porn collection. It's private....it's YoUrSpace. I'm gonna be rich!!!!

No seriously, everyone is jumping on the social network bandwagon and your current social network stored stuff is referred to as assets. New sites are appearing that centralize the experience. In class I presented the browser Flock b/c it's a great way to centralize access to all your other accts (facebook, digg, de.li.cious, etc) but these new interfaces are the actual environment themselves. You never actually have to log into any other location. At nomee.com you create a user identity that you upload directly to and it feeds to any other site you want to update. Load pics to nomee, they are stored in your flicker acct. Create an album in nomee, your facebook acct gets a similar album. write an update to your blog in nomee, it loads onto your blogspot....you get the picture. This is definitely the next step. The buzzword seems to be social operating system, but I think that overstates the capabilities a little. Nonetheless, an interesting next step. Collaboration, integration with existing apps and assets, unlimited storage, no branding, no ads, and all open source seemed to be the overiding theme to the event. Sadly, education was not well represented. Like education games, education web 2.0 seems to be an area that's avoided by developers. Then again, that leaves room for those of us in itec to fill a niche.

My fave booths...besides the ones serving beer...were

Adobe. Adobe has an amazing 3-D thing they can do in flash. Actually it's more of a hologram effect but I was impressed by it. I couldn't help thinking how engaging this could be for a science application. Here's a demo on GE's website. You need acces to your printer to make it work.
Hologram
Maybe it's not new to you, but it was for me.

Another fave was any booth using microsoft surface technology. It's a pricey piece of hardware (10k for developers, 15K for you and me ) but you can see that it's the interactive surface that our grandkids will use. I remember it was 10K for a 50 inch plasma screen in 2004, yesterday I saw a guy in san jose selling his 55 inch screen LCD for $500. We went from chalkboard to whiteboard to smartboard and the next step should be this type of interactive board.

Here's some video's of the table. vids