Elearning - February/March 2008 - (Page 25) COLLABORATE Collaboration is a core capability of Web 2.0. New software tools like Google Docs (docs.google.com) make it possible for people separated geographically to work together in real time over the Internet. As is common to most Web 2.0 applications, the documents are centrally stored for access over the Internet. This facilitates team projects, as participants can all edit the same document at the same time rather than e-mailing different versions back and forth. In a simple sense, this mimics the real-world experience of working with team members in remote locations. Students use wikis (hosted at pbwiki.com) to work together during the semester. They sign up for group projects, post and answer each other’s study questions prior to an exam, and share links to interesting Websites. Unlike blogs, a wiki contributor may edit, change or delete another contributor’s entry. All changes are logged, so it is possible to revert back to an earlier version of a wiki page if necessary. Students share in the responsibility of creating and organizing course materials for themselves and their classmates. Figure 3. My Tag Cloud Figure 4. Facebook Friends Mashup Design CREATE Many Web 2.0 applications allow users to create their own organizational schemes by assigning descriptive tags to Web resources. For example, visitors to Flickr.com may upload, organize and search for photographs based on their assigned tags. del.icio.us is a site for bookmarking favorite Web pages. Tags and related information are stored on a server, making them available on any computer with an Internet connection. Displayed with each tag is the number of people who tagged the same article and links to other articles or Websites containing the same tags. Because people assign them, tags often better indicate the quality or usefulness of a resource than a simple Web search on key words. This approach blends a “folksonomy” with a more traditional taxonomy for organizing resources on the Web. A tag cloud is a popular way to display tags. (See Figure 3). Mashups are at the heart of many Web 2.0 applications that integrate data from different sources or corporate applications. Companies such as Google, eBay and Amazon.com provide application programming interfaces so that others may access their data to use in their own appli- creators. That’ll allow Web 2.0 to take a huge step forward.” SECURITY CONCERNS? One possible bump in the road for Websites that employ Web 2.0 technology is security: users are vulnerable to hackers. “Bad guys have developed malicious content to take advantage of some Web 2.0 platforms and infect site visitors with crimeware,” observes Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer for Finjan, Inc. “We found hundreds of such malicious cases on MySpace, Yahoo, and all the top-rated sites. And our trend reports indicate even more serious threats in the future.” Historically, “Trojan horse” software has been successful in installing backdoor programs into the computers of unsuspecting users. Today, “Trojan 2.0” programs are even more sophisticated. “The Web 2.0 platform is a very efficient intermediator, so the Trojan doesn’t have to communicate directly to the hacker,” notes Ben-Itzhak. “It can actually place and store malicious commands on a Web 2.0 site. So then the hacker can visit the site periodically and collect the data, remove it from that server, and use it for his or her own benefit. The new Trojans don’t even disclose the hacker’s URL location, so it’s difficult to find and stop multiple offenders.” Ben-Itzhak says that Web 2.0 site owners should inspect uploaded users’ content just before they are about to publish it on their site. This process is very simple and very effective in minimizing or halting infection. Individual users should make certain that their operating systems have the latest security patch from the vendor: Microsoft, Mac, Linux, or any of the others. “Additionally,” Ben Itzhak says, “users can buy security technologies that inspect incoming content in real time to understand whether it’s good or bad. “This type of computer technology does not rely on signatures or URLs like antivirus or URL-filtering programs do. It reads and inspects each individual code on the Web page before it shows on your brows- er. Although Finjan sells its products to the enterprise market, Finjan’s SecureBrowsing, is a free browser add-on for end-users utilizing the same technology in use by large enterprises. Using Finjan SecureBrowsing, what the user sees on the computer screen is a green dot (good content) or red dot (bad content) alongside the URL site.” Reportedly, Web 2.0 security problems will get worse before they get better. As long as the attack methods are successful, and as long as malicious sites are not being blacklisted, hackers will continue to take advantage of them. ED. NOTE: Eluma markets a desktop Web organizer that lets you collect, organize and share any and all of the information you find on the Web. For more information, visit the Website www.beta.eluma.com. Finjan, Inc. provides a free browser plug-in available for downloading that employs the same technology that the company provides to large enterprises. For more information, visit the Website www.finjan.com. Elearning! February/March 2008 25 http://Flickr.com http://docs.google.com http://www.pbwiki.com http://www.pbwiki.com http://Amazon.com http://www.eluma.com/beta2.php http://www.finjan.com
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