The Leaf

Web 2.0

Many of us heard the term Web 2.0. What is Web 1.0? and what about Web 2.0?

"Web 1.0 is a retronym which refers to the state of the World Wide Web, and website design style before the Web 2.0 phenomenon, and included most websites in the period between 1994 and 2004." -Wikipedia

There is a vast difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. With Web 1.0, the webmaster is responsible of the burden of updating his website to keep his visitots informed and engaged.

Today internet users are looking for more than information, they're searching for an experience. New technology is transforming the way people use the World Wide Web.

Web 2.0 is a marketing term. It's a different way of building applications. The applications are relatively small they can run on any device, PC or mobile phone. They are very fast and customizable.

With Web 2.0, the webmaster shares the responsibility with his internet audience for keeping the website informative and engaging. The website is transforming from a simple static HTML place to store information to a dynamic place where people regularly gather and interact.

This concept have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as web forum, social-networking sites, social-bookmarking sites, wikis, blogs, podcasts.. etc.

Here's a list of some Web 2.0 applications:


Start Pages


Get your daily fix of the web with iGoogle. Customizable with a variety of widgets, Google's start page can include regular features such as weather reports as well as fun stuff like Beer of the Day.


Customize your Netvibes start page with the RSS feeds and widgets of your choice. Keep up with the weather, your favorite blogs, what's going on with your social networks and the latest news stories.


With a neat interface, Pageflakes lets you check your email, the weather, upcoming evnts, news and more on both its standard and customizable start pages.


Social Communities


Facebook attempts to bring all the features of social networking - messaging, photos, chat, groups, events and games - together into one web service. Find old friends, colleagues and new acquaintances and never lose touch again.


With Twitter, you can microblog your day, keep up with your friends and track the happenings at big events. Send and receive messages from your mobile phone, IM client or desktop application and never again be out of the loop!


Linkedin is like Facebook for business professionals: Build yourself a business network to give you credibility in job searches and hiring, or use LinkedIn to reconnect or keep in touch with important business connections.


Social Bookmarking Sites


Digg is all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the digg community. Share, discover, bookmark, and promote stuff that's important to you!


del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. Using bookmarklets, you can add bookmarks to your list and categorize them


StumbleUpon uses thumbs up and down ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages which friends and like–minded stumblers have liked


Reddit is a source for what's new and popular online. reddit learns what you like as you vote on existing links or submit your own!


Furl lets you store your favorite online finds and let others discover the cool stuff you've bookmarked. Comment on the content you find and read what other users are saying about your bookmarks.


Photos and Digital Images


Flickr is both a great place to store your photographs and to search for high-quality images.


Picassa is Google's photo sharing service. It comes with excellent software for editing your pictures. Easy, fast uploads make Picasa fun and simple to use.


Collaborative Writing and Word Processing


Google Docs and Spreadsheets lets you create, store and share documents within your Google accountwith Google's free online document management feature.


Writeboard lets users edit documents while still being able to access earlier versions of the same text. Subscribe to RSS feeds of documents' changes and share documents with as many people as you like.


Thinkfree brings the functionality and features of a desktop office application to the Internet, from content creation to storage and collaboration.


Food and Cooking


Imcooked is an entire site dedicated to food, Im Cooked lets members share recipes, make friends, watch cooking videos and learn more about culinary arts without the frills that often come with gourmet food television shows and websites.


With ifoods, you can connect with fellow cooks from across the world, or just browse iFoods' collection of recipes, food-related discussions and blog posts. Enter competitions and prove yourself to be a superior chef!


In the future, I will be talking about Web 2.0 applications.

Cheers!

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Ankh: Everlsating Life

Possibly one of the most widely recognized symbols, sacred to the ancient Egyptians. In Egyptian hieroglyphics this symbol stands for life or living, and forms part of the Egyptian words such as 'health' and 'happiness'.

The Ankh is held by most Egyptian Gods. It is associated with Isis (eternal mother and High Priestess) and Osiris in the Early Dynastic Period. The loop of the ankh is considered to be the feminine, while the T shape is considered to be the masculine.. These two sacred units then come together and form life. Because of its powerful appeal, the Ankh was used in various religious and cultural rituals involving royalty. In the Treasures of Tutankhumun, the Ankh was a major artifact found in the tomb. The circle symbolizes eternal life and the cross below it represents the material plane. The Ankh is called the "Crux Ansata," it is of Egyptian origin and can be traced to the Early Dynastic Period, appearing frequently in artwork of various material and in relief, depicting the Gods.

It is usually held to the nose of the deceased king by the Gods to represent the breath of life given in the after-world. The Ankh also resembles a key and is considered the key to eternal life after death. Its influence was felt in every dynastic period and survives as an icon possessing mystical power throughout the Coptic Christian era. The Ankh possessed by each God had power associated with that God. The Ankh of the God Anubis (shown in the picture to the right) is related to the protection of the dead, that of Sekmet, War, Hapi related to the living waters of the Nile and Amen, the spirit God, the breath of life.

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Stargazing

Astronomy geeks, this post is for you!

Stargazing is a hobby whose participants enjoy studying celestial objects. It is usually associated with viewing the night sky when most celestial objects and events are visible.

"In January, Venus, the “evening star,” is beginning to emerge low in the southwest after sunset. Each week it’s getting a bit easier to see in the twilight. After darkness falls, the winter constellation Orion strides high in the southeast. Orange Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus, the bull, shines above him. Far below Orion (and perhaps a bit to the left) sparkles brilliant Sirius, the Dog Star. Later in the evening, yellow Saturn rises in the east, with dimmer Regulus beneath it."

Check out this site for your guide of Stargazing!



There is also this great page: http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/
It contains:

• The Sky Map that shows the entire sky as viewed from a given location at a specified time and date. A stereographic projection is used, as is the convention for printed star maps.
  
• Horizon Views, showing the stars above the horizon as seen from a specified observing site at a given date and time. The viewing direction (azimuth) may be set to cardinal points on the compass or arbitrarily by entering a value in degrees.
  
• The Virtual Telescope which is a sample virtual telescope image Your Sky's Virtual Telescope is your Humble Soft Telescope of the Web. Controls allow you to set time and date, aiming point, orbital elements to track an asteroid or comet, and a variety of viewing options. You can compose a request with custom settings and save the results in your browser's hotlist or bookmark table, allowing direct access to the virtual telescope with all the controls preset to your own preferences.

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Electronic Music Guide

Electronic music is music created using electronic devices. These devices are low-power systems and use components such as transistors and integrated circuits. Examples of an electronic instrument are samplers, theremins, synthesizers, and a computers.

Electronic Instruments:

• Synthesizer is an "electronic musical instrument designed to produce electronically generated sound, using techniques such as additive, subtractive, FM, physical modeling synthesis, phase distortion, or Scanned synthesis. Synthesizers create sounds through direct manipulation of electrical voltages (as in analog synthesizers), mathematical manipulation of discrete values using computers (as in software synthesizers), or by a combination of both methods. In the final stage of the synthesizer, electrical voltages generated by the synthesizer cause vibrations in the diaphragms of loudspeakers, headphones, etc. This synthesized sound is contrasted with recording of natural sound, where the mechanical energy of a sound wave is transformed into a signal which will then be converted back to mechanical energy on playback (though sampling synthesizers significantly blur this distinction). Synthesizers typically have a keyboard which provides the human interface to the instrument and are often thought of as keyboard instruments. However, a synthesizer's human interface does not necessarily have to be a keyboard, nor does a synthesizer strictly need to be playable by a human. Different fingerboard synthesizer or ribbon controlled synthesizers have also been developed."
  
• Sampler is an "electronic music instrument closely related to a synthesizer. Instead of generating sounds from scratch, however, a sampler starts with multiple recordings (or “samples”) of different sounds, and then plays each back based on how the instrument is configured. Because these samples are usually stored in RAM, the information can be quickly accessed. Unlike traditional digital audio playback, each sample is associated with a set of synthesis parameters, and can thus be modified in many different ways. Most samplers have polyphonic capabilities: they are able to play more than one note at the same time. Many are also multitimbral: they can play back different sounds at the same time."

1. Trance: Trance is the most emotional genre. It can make you cry, make you shout, make you cheer, and make you celebrate absolutely nothing of substance except pure, ecstatic bliss. This is interesting, when at one time it was very repetitive and hypnotic (hence its label 'trance').
   
   • Progressive: The term "progressive" typically refers to the structure of a track which occur incrementally. An exception is progressive trance. The term Progressive trance usually refers to a type of trance music that features a less prominent lead melody and focuses more on the atmosphere.
     Sasha - Xpander
     Lost Tribe - Gamemaster
     Marc Norman - Touchdown
     
   • Dark: Darker, more "evil-sounding" Trance.
     Fascinated - Totally Fascinated
     De Niro - Mind of man
     
   • Melodic: Less loops, very melodic.
     BT - Flaming June
     
   • Uplifting (Anthem): A combination of Progressive and Melodic Trance. It's the most popular dance music in the world, it's euphoric and the most emotional Trance.
     Rank1 - Airwave
     Paul Van Dyk - For an Angel
     Vincent de Moor - Fly Away
     Tiesto - Adagio for Strings
     
   • Tech: More techy, less melodic, more loops, very similar to House music.
     Timo Maas - Riding on a Storm
     Breeder - The Chain
     
   • Vocal: Trance music accompanied with some vocals.
     Tiesto - Silence (Tiesto's In Search of sunrise remix)
     Planet Perfecto - Bullet in the Gun
     
   • Psychedelic or Goa: Psychedelic Trance removes the hindu/middle-eastern influences and melodies and full-on blasts you with great sounds...teleport zappers, star trek tweeps, nintendo twerps, theremin squeels, feedback hums and radio antennae frequency squelches. This is the futuristic sci-fi Trance.
     Infected Mushroom - Acid Killer
     Hallucinogen - Twisted (Album)
     
2. Techno: Techno is a form of electronic dance music that became prominent in Detroit, Michigan during the mid-1980s with influences from Chicago House, electro, New Wave, Funk and futuristic fiction themes that were prevalent and relative to modern culture during the end of the Cold War in industrial America at that time. Following the initial success of Detroit Techno as a musical culture — at the very least on a regional level — an expanded and related subset of genres in the 1990s emerged globally. The term "techno", which derives from "technology", is often used (many would say misused) to refer to all forms of electronic music. Music journalists and fans of the genre, however, are generally more selective in their use of the term, being careful not to conflate it with related but distinct genres (i.e. house, trance)
   
   
   • Detroit Techno: Detroit techno is an early style of techno music originating from Detroit, Michigan, USA in the mid-1980s. A distinguishing trait of Detroit techno is the use of analog synthesizers and early drum machines, notably the roland TR-909 for its production or, in later releases, the use of digital emulation to create the characteristic sounds of those machines.
     Jeff Mills - The bells
     Carl Craig - Dreamland
3. House: House is the most soulful genre. It's also the simplest, the oldest, the warmest, and where electronic music is concerned, easily the most human-sounding, making it one of the most popular, commanding the most producers, artists, labels, DJs, fans, and subgenres.
   
   • Progressive: In the case of progressive house, the term "progressive" can also refer to the style's open mindedness to bring in new elements to the genre. These elements can be a variety of sounds, such as a guitar loop, computer generated noises, or other elements typical of other genres.
     
   • Tribal: Just like its name, it's the Loop-based House.
     Kao - Pressure
     Papacha - Sentossa
4. Drum n Bass: Drum and bass (commonly abbreviated to DnB or drum n bass) is a type of electronic dance music also known as jungle. Emerging in the early 1990s, the genre is characterised by fast tempo broken beat drums (generally between 160 & 180 beats per minute) with heavy, often intricate basslines. Today, drum and bass is still considered an underground musical style, but its currents of influence run throughout popular music and culture.
   
5. Experimental Experimental music is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is!! This type of music uses "extended techniques" which are methods of performing on a musical instrument that are unique, innovative, and sometimes regarded as improper. For example, ordinary instruments modified in their tuning or sound-producing characteristics. For example, guitar strings can have a weight attached at a certain point, changing their harmonic characteristics! Strings on a piano can be manipulated directly instead of being played the orthodox, keyboard-based way (an innovation of Henry Cowell's known as "string piano"), a dozen or more piano keys may be depressed simultaneously with the forearm to produce a tone cluster (another technique popularized by Cowell), or the tuning pegs on a guitar can be rotated while a note sounds (called a "tuner glissando"). It also uses an incorporation of instruments, tunings, rhythms or scales from non-Western musical traditions, sound sources other than conventional musical instruments such as trash cans, telephone ringers, and doors slamming.
   Aphex Twin - I care because you do (Album)
   Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album (Album)
   Autechre - Confield (Album)
   
6. Chill out:Chill out (sometimes chillout), a term derived from a slang injunction to relax, emerged in the early and mid-1990s as a catch-all term for various styles of relatively mellow, slow-tempo music made by contemporary producers in the electronic music scene. A number of compilations with "Chill Out" in their titles were released in the mid-1990s and beyond, helping to establish the genre as being very closely related to downtempo and trip hop but also incorporating, especially in the early 2000s, slower varieties of house music, nu-jazz, and lounge music.
   The Buddha Bar series of albums.
   

1. Trance
   • Tiesto
   • Armin van Buuren
   • Paul Van Dyk
   • Paul Oakenfold
   • Above and Beyond
   • Ferry Corsten
   • Signum
   • Ronski Speed
2. House
   • Sasha
   • John Digweed
   • Steve Lawler (Tribal)
   • Deep Dish
   • Saeed & Palash (Tribal)
   • Deep Dish
   • Danny Howells
   • Nick Warren
   • Dani Tenaglia
   • Satoshi Tomiie
3. Chill out
   • Claude Challe
   • Aria
   • La Roca
   • Gotan Project
   • David Visan
   • Dies Irae

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