What is Web 2.0

"Web 2.0" is commonly associated with web development and web design that facilitates interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them .

The Online Aviation Exposition is the very definition of a Web 2.0 Website. Soon this technology and web usage will become commonplace. Google may very well, in fact, be moving towards an entire 3-D World completely modeled after the one where we currently live.

Google currently offers a service called Google SketchUp. It is an amazing piece of software used for 3-D modeling. You can design anything with it but the main thing you can design with it is buildings. By the way, Google SketchUp is free and comes with a lot of instructional videos. http://sketchup.google.com/

Why is something that obviously cost so much to produce and maintain, free?

Most of you probably know that Google also offers a service called Google Earth . You can virtually go anywhere on earth simply by zooming in on it or entering an address. These images, which use satellite photos, look amazing from 1,000 ft in the air looking down; however, on ground level they are very pixilated. http://earth.google.com/

What do you think it would take to create a believable world at ground level?

The answer is 3-D buildings and objects. However, it would be impossible for any one company to virtually recreate every building in the world unless they solicited the help of the world through a free service such as Google SketchUp .

Using today's technology, people can interact online - they can talk, buy products and more or less go about their lives all online as if they were actually doing it. Soon companies will be able to open virtual stores online and soon after that they will be required to open virtual stores to compete. The pioneers, as with everything else, will garner the most success.

Two things have to happen before this becomes a reality. The Internet has to be faster than it is now and all the buildings, street, shops, etc. have to be in placed in the virtual world.

Researchers are very close to implementing Laser Internet which uses satellites to beam lasers across the world. It is Internet at the speed of light to everyone. If you don’t believe this just ‘Google It. '

Second, all the buildings need to be in place. There are hundreds of thousands of them already completed and growing by the second. If you do not believe this go to http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/  and see if a building you have been to in the last week has already been rendored in 3-D.

In order to compete in tomorrow’s business environment, your company will need a virtual business online. The FBO Academy offers a free service to help you get started creating your virtual 3-D space. Go to http://www.fboacademy.com/3dxplorer/index.htm  and select, 'Sign up here!'