User experience the web 2.0 way

A whole lot of stuff has been written on web 2.0 and how its changing the very nature of the websites from socialisation to collaboration. One of the most significant aspects of this new development has been the way websites manage the user experience. Gone are the days of the simple client server architecture where to get any data the page had to be refreshed or even the bland Yahoo kind of interfaces - the pages where as lite as possible to have a faster turn around time . Ironically the folks who started this next generation evolution had the simplest page on the web - google.com.

Google have been the pioneers of using Ajax - A whole lot of social networking sites use the technology. Recently I came across some very useful sites which are kind of personlised home pages on the web. The best of the lot - http://www.netvibes.com/ and http://www.webwag.com/. The way these sites operate is phenomenal. Though the content may be limited based on their resources and IP related issues - The amount of data and information that can be pumped is mind boggling. They have a series of small windows ..widgets - each a world of their own. Its simply wonderful and astonishing. What we are observing is a mini revolution... the tech gurus are calling this the widgetisation of
the web or the widget wide web. They are all pervasive. Which has also made blogging so simple. Even without any knowledge of coding - simpletons can do up a great site on their own . One of the other sites I really like is http://www.go2web20.net/ it gives a simple directory of a whole range of web 2.0 sites as guessed suggested by users. It has a good tag search capability.