The 2005 Wrap-Up

So another year has passed and 2006 has come along. There are quite a lot of things that I'm planning for this New Year. I hope to get that done soon, so that I can start planning the things to do in 2007.

In retrospect, 2005 was a reasonably good year. For starters, it's the year this blog got this new design. And it's the first year the blog clocked 50,000 annual hits. It's the year that saw the Web2.0 paradigm emerge, the year when we witnessed aggressive acquisitions by the leaders of the Internet industry, the Googles and the Yahoos and the rest.

Macromedia went out to Adobe this year, something that doesn't matter a lot, yet signifies an end of something. Probably the end of a minor-era. How much it affects the huge community of developers and designers using Macromedia products is what we'll know in 2006 and beyond, but its sad to see Macromedia, one of the foremost web media innovators, die as its flagship product reached true maturity as a UI alternative. I had always believed that Flash's true calling was the rich interface. Well, this year, we saw a mishmash of new startups, some that used Flash truly innovatively ( Pandora.com, Gtalkr.com , Goowy.com). Yet the easier-to-develop, easier-on-the-browser and more-hyped AJAX ate into a substantial UI future-share of Flash on a permanent basis.

The web proliferated with applications for almost anything you'd want to do with it. And almost all of them were free with no or very limited advertising. And ALL of them were beta. That is pretty sensible too, for pardon my economics, but I do not see where they are going to get their millions in profits. Maybe the revenue model was in alpha all year round. Or maybe far too many ventures are betting on getting acquired by the Richie Richs of Internet. However, looking at it from the user's perspective, I do pray to god they have something up their sleeve.

And there is a strong probability that they may. For Web2.0 is the wave of 2000 ( Web1.0 ?) minus the hype and plus the innovation. Applications on the web are truly changing the way people use the Web, and the changes are quite fundamental in their nature. Now when people find a great page, they tag it on their delicious or make a digg. When they have to share with their family or friends, they do a flickr. When they want to listen to music they like, they open Pandora. And when the sharing bug truly strikes, they blog, vlog or podcast. They collaborate their calendars, their documents and their projects online. And when they need to find, they search the web and they search the blogosphere (Technorati, Feedster). They read all their regular sites at one place and IM on the web (meebo, gtalkr).

Okay, so everybody on the web is not using these tools. But then, not long ago, the only people using google were Stanford students. Its as if the world wide web is shedding its skin, and these applications are going to be the new tegument.

Personally, the year was good enough. It was the first full year of my life without any sort of academic courses. I spent the entire year in Bangalore (Or Bengaluru), and fell in love with the city. Okay, I can't write that with a straight face. I hated the city for the most part (As is evident here and here). But probably I've been unfair to the city. [NOSTALGIA ALERT ->] Probably the 1 AM coffee at Barista's when it rained 10cm/min outside and manager wailed for us to leave; or the occasional survey of the clear night sky; or the incredible achievement of a 75% discount from the friendly neighborhood book-wallah; or the Traffic Jam hours spent reading most of what I read throughout the year; or maybe Aunty's food at Tasty-Bites; or perhaps the multi-cultural soul of the city; the failed Maggi-Kurkure combination; or the successful Pizza-Coke alternative; the Christmas spirit and the Plum Cake; or the In-House New Year bash… probably, just probably, these compensated for all that went wrong with Bengaluru apart from its name. [END OF ALERT, YOU CAN BLINK NOW]

Finally, the list of Ice-Thanks-You's for 2005:

• Sean J. Partridge : For his humor and hosting space.
• Amanjeev Singh : For carrying a link to my blog on 75% of his posts. Thanks AJ, I hope you have a great time changing all those links when I change my blog url this year.
• Jennifer : For calling this blog "The ultimate and best blog I've seen on net so far."
• Regular Visitors : For all the pageloads.
• One-Time Visitors : For the pageload.

PS: If you're wondering why I'm posting this 6 days into 2006; its amazing, because, believe it or not, so am I.