An emerging trend in Social Networking sites and Web portals is the opening up of their APIs to external application develop- ers. For example, the Facebook Platform, Google Gadgets and Yahoo! Widgets allow developers to design their own applications, which can then can be integrated with the platform and shared with other users. However, current APIs are targeted towards develop- ers with programming expertise and database knowledge; they are not accessible to a large class of users who do not have a programming/database background, but would nevertheless like to create new applications. To address this need, we have developed the AppForge system, which provides a WYSIWYG application development platform. Users can graphically specify the components of webpages inside a Web browser, and the corresponding database schema and application logic will be automatically generated on the fly by the system.
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Whether we like it or not the technology and culture of Web 2.0 is something all businesses should take note of – but as usual businesses are left trying to work out how it all affects them. To offer some guidance through simple explanation of the technology and 5 Ideas where real issues can be addressed, this white paper goes some way towards clearing the way for businesses to work with Web 2.0.
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Many IT organizations view the phrase Web 2.0 as either just marketing hype that is devoid of any meaning or they associate it exclusively with social networking sites such as MySpace. That’s understandable as Web 2.0 is not the same as a new protocol that has an associated RFC that spells out definitively what is and what is not included as part of the protocol. As a result, many concepts get lumped under the banner of Web 2.0. In one of the most insightful analyses of Web 2.0, Tim Reilly points out that Web 2.0 involves fundamentally new design patterns and business models and he compares companies that were successful with Web 1.0 with those companies that are leading the movement to Web 2.0.
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