Web 2.0 was coined as a cool name for a conference about the state of the internet back in 2004. Kind of a play on the fact that software is released in ‘versions’ (1.1, 1.4, 1.2.3.1.2, etc, etc) whereas the web is clearly evolving and branching in a way that defies this kind of classification.
Web 2.0 draws an arbitrary line that says the current state of the web is significantly different now from how it was a few years ago.
There’s been a lot of talk about what Web 2.0 really means and what it doesn’t (here’s the official line from Tim O’Reilly who coined the term).
Revolution Health is a new startup from Steve Case, former CEO of America Online and chairman of AOL Time Warner.
The website is an amalgamation of several startups purchased by Case and aims to offer an information portal about healthcare with medical tools and a database of doctors and clinics which users can rate.
Visiting the site, the main emphasis seems to be on the ability to rate your own physician. It also offers users blogs, forums and other ways of posting their opinions about health problems and health delivery.
The site has information from several insitutions including the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Harvard.
The site is only just launched so the effects of the social networking and user generated content has not kicked in yet. It will be interesting to see whether the site provides professional evidenced based advice on health issues or just ends up being a repository of anecdotal evidence generated from it’s users.
Interview with Brazilian TV by Nicholas Negroponte about the OLPC. He mentions that microsoft are working on a SD card for it that will allow it to run windows. Also talks about Intel’s new Eduwise low-cost laptop.
Here’s a demo of a large multi-touch screen. This technology seems to be getting a lot of press at the moment - probably due to the fact that the new Apple iPhone uses a multi-touch screen. Read the rest of this entry »
