What exactly is Web 2.0?

For starters, Web 2.0 is clearly about a more
interactive Web that looks and feels more like an application than a
static Web page or Web site.

At the heart of
this is the concept of AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML-a
combination of long-standing Web technologies that, when joined, yields
something different than a series of point-and-click Web pages. The
classic example is Google Maps, where users can manipulate graphical
maps in real time, zooming in and out and pinging the app for
landmarks, directions and more.

"The technology
is not new, it's just been recently re-named," said Jason Billingsley,
VP-marketing at e-commerce vendor Elastic Path. "`Once people acquire
the skills to do it, they can roll out applications that are much
richer experiences for users."

In November,
Elastic Path introduced a new component of its e-commerce application
that uses AJAX to let users go through an entire shopping cart
check-out experience on a single interactive screen. The application
does real-time ZIP code look-ups, allows users to edit their shopping
carts, validates form errors and tallies final prices, shipping costs
and taxes-all without a trip back to the server.

"It
really eliminates the wait-and-see process at check-out," Billingsley
said. "It has the potential to reduce shopping cart abandonment rather
significantly."

Another way to describe Web 2.0 applications is that they change the Web