RICH USER EXPERIENCES

Ajaxrain.com

What is Rich user experience? Well is to make it easy for the user to interact with user interfaces in order to get more people to use them more. Hardly any (for not saying all of them) successful sites have a difficult ‘unfriendly’ user interface; most of them use different tools to make it easy for users. It’s the combination of style and flair are important considerations, but beauty must be matched by easily achieve functionality.

Let’s have a look at Ajaxrain. Ajaxrain is a site that puts together tutorials and user friendly scripts on programs most web developers need in order to create a successful website (Photoshop, HMTL5, Flash and specially AJAX). Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) has gone from being rare to being a household name in the web development community. Why? Because users want is for developers to build applications that meet their needs and that are easy to use. There is need to support advanced multimedia types such as sound and video and a wish for browser applications to behave more like familiar desktop applications or RIAs (Rich Internet Applications).

Ajaxrain is all about what web developers need in order to have more user friendly tools. For example drop-down menus

Or fancy footers....

In my opinion it is great that a website shows great tools and scripts to make websites look better and user friendly. Now there is no reason to have a mediocre website that only displays boring text when so many tools are available for free.



References:

Ajaxrain

Wikipedia...Ajax

IINNOVATION IN ASSEMBLY- Realestate.com.au

INNOVATION IN ASSEMBLY
Realstate.com.au

Innovation in assembly is quite common on Web 2.0 websites/platforms/applications for other websites. What it means that any website can encourage web developers to create an API (Application Programming Interface) which they can use to attach or harness the information within those applications for other uses.

Realstate.com.au is a clear example of this development where the website meets its main objective (in this case showing lists of properties to rent or buy, according to a specific criteria) and helps its users to connect with Facebook and Twitter (just in case you feel like sharing the place you want to buy or rent with your friends and also get their opinion about it).

It also uses Google Maps to help the users locate the property and meet a bit more about the suburb without actually being there physically.

In addition to all the tools that makes realestate.com.au a good example of a web 2.0 Innovation in Assembly they also have and application for iPhone, where they can book an appointment with the real estate agent and keep track of the properties they have visited.

In my opinion the integration of APIs and services is good to the end user, because he/she can enjoy all the tools and applications in a more integrated way. But it is also good for developers and website as they can advertise their product and services outside their websites giving them a bit more of prestige.

Data is the next Intel inside

Twitter

How the data is handled is probably one of the most important aspects for a website, as discussed in class the maximization of data as a strategic asset is one of the benefits that a website can get from its users putting input (data) and having data strategies.

The most important or relevant pages of the last years are the ones that have a strategy over the handling of data. One of this websites is Twitter. When you think about it twitter does not provide any new information or data, it just provides the service to help users (organizations, companies, celebrities or just regular people) to communicate with each other.

Twitter has emerged from just a simple SMS service to a successful and popular social networking platform.
By the end of July 2010 Twitter had over 190 million accounts. So why is Twitter so successful?

It is a really easy concept to understand and does not involve any special training to start using it. Also the internet suffers from a massive problem of information overload and Twitter seems to offer a way out of it to some extent; the user can choose the source of information they want constantly to receive (organizations, companies, celebrities or just your family and friends)

Harnessing Collective Intelligence

Yahoo! Answers

This website is an online community for anyone looking to Ask, Answer and/or Discover questions on any topic. It is a clear example of a Web 2.0 new generation websites and Harnessing Collective Intelligence as changes and improves as more people use it.

This service is completely free. However in order to Ask or Answer a question the user will need an email account with Yahoo; this is not needed at the time of browsing or ‘Discover’ around the questions that already been answered, which anyone can do. At the time of creating a question, the user has the option of adding extra information or details, which being more specific can help him/her to get the answer needed (which is a feature that was not there at the time Yahoo! Answers first started). The same users has to categorized the question with more than twenty categories to choose from, which choosing the right category can help others find your question.

The other part of Yahoo! Answer is the where a registered user can Answer, contribute or complement any answer. The user just has to select one category and the questions relating to it will show where a simple click gives the option to answer the question. A user is not limited by just one post per question. However the website has guidelines and if anyone spamming, using bad language or making offensive remarks to any group of people may be at risk for review and possible termination of their Yahoo! Answers account.

Yahoo Answers encourage its users to answer giving points each time you post an answer and even more points when your answer is selected as ‘best answer’ in order to motivate or encourage users to give good quality information. Unlike a message board, where a thread of messages can continue indefinitely without ever getting resolved, the questions in Yahoo Answers are resolved when a best answer is picked.

A simple query in Google can easily be directed to a question in Yahoo! Answers (which does not require to be a registered user in order to see the question or the answer). The range of questions varies because everyone has life experience and knowledge about something, and Yahoo! Answers provides a way for people to share their experience and insight. A simple question about friendship or a technical question about setting up a router can be found in it. 

In conclusion Yahoo! Answers is a website that has changed a lot since was first started. In my opinion the job of a Web 2.0 website is never over as it always have to change and evolve to suit to the changes required by its users, like for example: connectivity to sites like Facebook and Twitter, introducing new tools so its users have all they need in the website.