Like a Sponge

I think the actual education you receive from a good university isn't much different from an average university. The true perks of attending a prestigious institute is the environment that surrounds you. The few years that I've been here, I've had the opportunity to hear talks from CEO's and founders of some pretty sweet companies. There's no bigger motivation to starting your own company than having someone in front of you whose already done it. And best of all, they all made it seem as though the opportunities are out there waiting to be taken. The most important theme they all seemed to share was the idea of Web 2.0. Man, that's just an awesome name. Lets go over it.

‹Web 2.0›

Considering how advanced technology has evolved over the last few years, the internet has some major catching up to do. We've probably gotten prettier layouts with CSS, or cute graphics with DHTML, but it's all pretty much the same. It's all just a bunch of html pages linked together. Every time you need to do something, you have to click, wait, and continue. The 'wait' part hasn't been a big deal with the sort of applications available so far. You don't really care if it takes two or three seconds to place an order on a website. But for anything that required multiple user interactions, that 'wait' is killer! Look at Yahoo maps. If you wanted to move the map around to see past the edges, you'd have to click on the arrow, wait, and then continue. But if you wanted to scroll more, you'd have to keep repeating. Pain in the ass.

But soon that'll be history! Like mice with rubber balls. Google (ah... precious Google) came along a little while back with a revolutionary idea. It went a little like this: Get Rid of the Wait. Genius. The technology has actually been there for a while, but only Google has taken full advantage of it. With their Google Maps, they asynchronously send server requests, meaning you dodn't have to refresh the whole damn page just to see a change in a small square. This simple removal of the 'wait' has opened up the internet to scores of web applications that can now take in successive user inputs without pissing the crap out of users. And like every cool, new, hip thing, this idea was given a name: Ajax.

‹/Web 2.0›

Now I am making sure to attend every talk and presentation that I can. Every time I hear a new interesting idea, I think how I can apply that technology. I'm making sure to absorb as much of this info as I can. Slowly I'm molding my idea. Hopefully, with all this advice, I'll be able to come out with something interesting for people to use. Only time will tell.