[Thsi is the trascript of Talk i gave during Barcamp Delhi ]
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Simply put "Power of Default" is the tendency of user to accept ,whatever is offered to him and they don't explore other options available to them . Ppl accept the suboptimal solution just becuase it come to them as default . for example let me ask you a question which is the most widely used Instant Messenger in World ? Yahoo ?? MSN ? Google ? No ! its AOL . why ? because it comes as default with an AOL account . same is True for Windows Media Player of Internet Explorer .
This is just one example of Power of Default . if we look attentively we will find that in narrow sense of word we live under a tyranny of default .
If we look closely we will find that History of software industry is just a study in "Art OF Making Mouse Traps" , From OS To Middleware ,From RDBMS to Office Productivity suits, From Browser to Email Clients . It all about locking the customer in claws .
Some time We called it by a more describing term ��No-Brainer �. Windows is a No Brainier when it comes to OS. Oracle &
MS-SQL Server is a No Brainer when its come to RDBMS. And Outlook is a No Brainier in Mail Client.
But when I used Red Hat, MySQL and ThunderBird I understood why it is called "No Brainer " & realized that I Was the one who was a �No-Brainer �.
In Late 90's during dotcom bubble . their was a lot of noise about Internet and how Internet will bring the "Era Of Choice" and put an end to "Tyranny Of Default" .It will allow us to choose the way we want to work, how we want to work and where we want to work. Having a Windows will not mean giving up everything to do with Linux. Netscape will bring us Nirvana. Things changed for sure! But the default dependency doesn�t vanished overnight. it got converted from dependency on OS to Dependency to Browser. From Windows it became IE.
Instead of controlling what we do after bootstrap, copanies begin to control what we do after we connect to Internet. Then there was bust and a long silence.
Approx. 5 years down the line I see the same kind of euphoria once again, the same madness is in the air.
This time it�s called Web 2.0. So what is Web 2.0 ??
well nobody know for sure . it was a marketing term invented by ppl at O'Rielly . but we can say there are some key charatristics in every comapny which has something to do with Web 2.0 .We can broadly say that Web 2.0 is about
Community (Blogging,Tagging & Book marking ,
Social Networking,Usability ,Web Service,Ajax &
�Eternal Beta � )
These companies promises to bring us everything .by Every thing i mean Everything .not only sun,moon and milky way but also the city of El Do Rado . so here are some of the promises which are made by Web 2.0 .
ERA OF CHOICE
DESKTOP LIKE FUNCTIONALITY IN WEB APPICATION BY AJAX
Concept of INTERNET AS A PLATFORM
Hosted APPLICATIONs which WILL BE INDEPENDENT OF OS
XML INTERFACES TO ENABLE INTERACTION BITWEEN APPLICATIONS
these are few of the claims made by Web 2.0 style applications . of all the people present overhere i will be the happiest if this come true but i see some thing disturbing . i don't know if it is History repeating it self or Old Habbit Goes hard thing . but the "Default " factor is palying again .look at the some of the high profile events of few months
Google,Yahoo & MSN fighting each other to partner with AOL
Google is Default Page in FireFox
Motorola cell phone will have a �G� Button which will load Google
There is no clear.Exit path from Web Based Applications.
there is a common thread in all of these events . players are trying to exploit the "Deafult " Factor
But I am still hopefull . because there are some exceptionally good news and trends .
people are trying new thing . there is no default way of application designe , no default way of business logic . people are giving up the default approach of problem solving and resorting to novel methodes .
image Search is a case in point here. It is a billion dollar industry and something interesting is going on here.
People are approaching the problem of search with different techniques and everyone is betting big time on their version of future of web search. For example consider image search.
First approach is Tagging and participation of end user in content generation: I am not only excited about the application aspect of Tagging, for me it means some thing else. It seems to symbolize something totally different, it stands for an alternate approach to search. Through out the history of Internet our approach to search was to extract information from unstructured web page and try to super impose human logic/approach on it by means of algorithms and natural language processing techniques. But all of us know that this has a limit, algorithms can mimic human approach to search to a certain extent only, because we really don�t know much about how human mind works.
When we do tagging we are embedding human intelligence in the page, search on a tag stand for searching and various opinions, explanation and interpretation of the same content, which no algorithm can understand.
While Google seems to be happy working with geeks to enhance and improve algorithms on pattern matching. Yahoo is betting big times on Tagging movement.
RIYA the Indian image search company that is till in its private alpha phase is creating a lot of news for its superb object recognition technologies. It has just rejected an offer to be bought by Google. It�s bet for image search is object recognition tech
So we have Google Image Search, Flickr and RIYA. One problem, three solutions. This is a refreshing thing. This is innovation. People are testing the basic premises, default approach to problems.
It is only a matter of time when this thinking trickle down from application design to business logic.
This gives me a hope.
And even the business logic part is not that distant. There are sites like Bus monster, which uses Google Maps API. There is online Ajax Desktop like Page flake, Net vibe, which allows you to choose your online web, based Word Processor or Online office productivity suit, email and feed reader. They don�t force you to use anything built in. so user can explore and choose application of there liking without worrying about compatibility.
So it looks like that �Power of Default � will no more be there in Web 2.0. I think it will not be that big in magnitude but still it will be they�re to some extent. Because
a) Most of the people are too lazy to explore options.
b) Most of the sites I mentioned are still underdogs
c) People are still not comfortable with the idea of hosting their data on a remote server.
d) Lack of alternate revenue model than advertisement
I sincerely feel that Web 2.0 will remove the barrier of default and bring true freedom to net users . Let there be no default. Thank You less
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