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Glossy Buttons have replaced the drab word proccessor style buttons from the past.

Web 2.0 Even the name just sounds like a another excuse for a sales pitch! As you know I’ve been researching all sorts of ideas, blogs, sites, products etc. I’ve been trying to cut through all the dross to help you and me to find legitimate ways to establish & build an online business that’s relatively easy to monetize and maintain. So back to Web 2.0! I suppose I should attempt to define it before I go on.

Web 2.0 refers to what was perceived as a second generation of web design & development. It’s components include, but are not exclusive to:

• Communication
• Information sharing
• Defining Information
• Collaboration

This has lead to the evolution of web-based communities, such as facebook & MySpace, hosted services and even web applications. Can you remember a web without youtube, Google or any of the many other new Kings of the new web frontiers?

Darcy DiNucci  coined the term “Web 2.0″  in 1999. In her article “Fragmented Future,” she wrote “The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. … The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens. It will [...] appear on your computer screen, [...] on your TV set [...] your car dashboard [...] your cell phone [...] hand-held game machines [...] and maybe even your microwave.” When you think of it that was almost a prophetic insight into where the web was going as all of these areas have come to pass!

Most people in the know  associate the term “Web 2.0″ with Tim O’Reilly due to the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. According to Tim O’Reilly: “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.” It has to be said that these guys are pretty much Ipso facto in defining 2.0 so I’ll put a link at the end of my article to their website that gives a very comprehensive explanation.

But before you disappear off there … have a look at this first. I’ve been encouraged by you dear reader to expand the look of the site a little so I’ve been out scurrying around the far corners of the web, (maybe I should say furthest reaches as I can’t imagine corners in a “cloud!”) And I’ve come across this great  site that’s selling a very large collection of 2.0 savvy Icons, Graphics, Opt-in Templates, Squeeze Page Templates, Video Templates, Website Templates, Buttons etc and all for a ridiculously low price! You’ll see some of them appear on my site over the next few weeks, but head on over there yourself and get it while it’s still available! And yes … I do get a affiliate commission from it but you can too when you buy it for yourself!

Let me know what you think … thanks for all your kind comments too! Please keep them coming! Here’s that link to the O’Reilly article