Design Patterns and Web 2.0

The new age of the Internet is dawning, after the colossal waste of money seen 5 years ago when it crashed all around us. Not only do we have a whole bunch of new companies trying to do some intersting stuff on the web, we also have the old regime of junk - dot com companies with meaningless names and funky logos, doing very niche and quite often useless things with cool interfaces.

For instance, take a look at these:



It quite amazing how all these companies have succeeded in resurrecting the "Internet economy" of the past, but with a lot more caution and this time around, solid business plans for revenue generation :)

Some of these logos most of us will be familiar with, as for the rest, lets just hope their angel investors cash out soon before the next bubble burts. With that logo list growing bigger and bigger every month, I won't be surprised to see a few Indian companies getting into the game as well. In fact, thanks to Neeta, I just read an article thats talks about how overseas investors are looking at some Indian companies, and that the race to buy or invest in a few indian companies is hotting up.

So what's the big deal, you ask? Well, quite a lot actually.

For one, web designers are moving to cleaner, more usable and much better looking designs. Most the the new sites out there seem to despise clutter, think CSS is the coolest invention since the wheel and treat typography as an art, and not just "Lest use Arial man, its the best!". This is the best overview of this design evolution I've come across so far, please go read it, it's good stuff.

The hiring game has gotten quite heated - all the big boys are offering quite a few perks to bring in and keep the best talent available.
Here's hoping they start a perk race amongst HR departments:)

Not only has usability become very important, people are sharing their insights and *gasp!* sometimes even their code to ensure these good practices live on. The big boys are also playing nice, as one can make out from Yahoo's example.

Personally, I'm happy to see all this. There's a nagging feeling at the back of my head that says very few of these new Web 2.0/AJAX spewing/funkiness enhanced applications will actually live for more than 2 years. But hey, if they're going to be helping make the Internet a better place, then I'm all for it.