7th International Scientific Conference on Production Engineering

DEVELOPMENT AND MODERNIZATION OF PRODUCTION

WEB 2.0 SERVICES AND THEIR WIDESPREAD APPLICATION

Amel Džanić*, Jasmin Ćosić**

*University of Bihać, Faculty of Technical Engineering Bihać [email protected]
** Ministry of Internal Affairs of Una-Sana canton, [email protected]

Keywords: Web 2.0, Business, Application

ABSTRACT:

Since its first appearance in year 2004 and up to today, the concept of Web 2.0 services has found a
wide variety of applications in almost every field of social life. The innovations it introduced, which
include interactivity with the user and the ability to adjust and modify the contents on behalf of the
user, have become the basic framework for the majority of applications and web services which are
being developed for different kinds of use.
Within this paper the authors will give an overview of the web technologies and web 2.0 services
implemented in e-learning, e-government as well as e-business and in everyday use in business
dealings.

1. INTRODUCTION

Ever since year 2006, the Web 2.0 services have been taking over every field of social life on the
Internet. The application of web 2.0 services introduces certain changes in business in terms of
increased productivity of the employees, establishing easier communication and availability between
business partners and providing greater transparency in the dealings of the company. The fundamental
differences that Web 2.0 had brought were dynamic web pages and user interactivity with the
underlying services enabling transaction and active communication with the contents on the web.
These services are most often used in the following areas:

• E-education, e-learning
• E-tourism
• E-government
• Social life

In the following outlines the authors will give an overview of the web technologies and web 2.0
services implemented in e-learning, e-government as well as e-business and in everyday use in
business dealings and social networks.

Edited by: I.Karabegovic, V. Dolecek, M. Jurkovic 1

University of Bihac, Faculty of Technical Engineering
 A. Džanić, J. Ćosić - WEB 2.0 SERVICES AND THEIR WIDESPREAD APPLICATION
2. ABOUT WEB 2.0 SERVICES

Web 2.0 first appeared in the late 2004 and became more popular in the beginning of 2006 [1]. The
power of Web 2.0 services is interactivity, which includes the ability of the user to actively participate
in the sessions, to upload files to the Internet, to shop online, take online courses etc. The fundamental
difference brought by Web 2.0 is the interactivity between users and services which gives the
possibility to actively exchange and communicate the contents on the web. In contrast with the
standard offline PC platforms, here the Internet itself plays the role of a platform. Instead of running
programs and applications locally on the client machine (the user’s computer), web applications are
run on servers, i.e. Internet environment, using web browsers. Thus the contents adjust themselves to
the needs of the users which has been the basic drawback of the traditional Web 1.0.

Figure 1.”Meme map” of a WEB 2.0 service[1]

The revolution started with Google’s AJAX [9] and its services such as google maps, orkut, gmail,
while in the year 2008 the best Web 2.0 applications were flickr, meebo, google doc, google calendar,
zoho, picasa and of course facebook and myspace[10]. With passing of time the other vendors have
also moved their applications from desktop to the Internet where they run in different environments
such as Adobe Flash, Google Web Toolkit, JavaFX, Open Laszlo, Microsoft SilverLight etc.

2. APPLICATION OF WEB 2.0 SERVICES

Ever since they first appeared, Web 2.0 services have found great use in many fields of social life.
The possibilities for the application of these services are numerous – from e-government,
entertainment, business applications, e-education, e-tourism and even e-industry.
In the following outlines the authors will give an overview of the implementation of these services in
education, tourism and governmental institutions.

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 A. Džanić, J. Ćosić - WEB 2.0 SERVICES AND THEIR WIDESPREAD APPLICATION
3.1. E-Education

A great number of Universities and high school establishments in the world have developed e-
education or distance learning platforms. Behind these platforms are often hidden some web 2.0
services such as moodle, weblog, Wikipedia, different kinds of forums, chats and even youtube and
podcasts.
There are many definitions of e-education or e-learning. We can say that e-education implies learning
with the use of digital utilities and digital contents [2].
There are several platforms for e-learning and the best known are Moodle, Carolina, BlackBoard,
dotLRN etc.
LMS (Learning Management Services) are usually platforms with integrated web services that are
most often used in e-education. There are roughly two groups of these services: synchronized and
asynchronous. Asynchronous web services that are greatly used for spreading of knowledge are
services in which information is transmitted at different timeframes, i.e. without any defined short-
term time intervals that have to be obeyed. This means that when a user sends a request to a service,
he has to wait for a response which can arrive at some later moment in time. Typical representations
of this kind of services are email communication, forums, quizzes, texts and documents that can be
downloaded from the Internet etc.

Figure 2. (Learning Management System) Moodle

With synchronized communication, i.e. communication that happens instantly or over a very short
time interval, a client gets a response immediately. Web services mostly used with this kind of
communication are video conferences, chats, simultaneous messaging – online meetings, electronic
boards and screen sharing. With synchronized activities all parties involved should participate
simultaneously [3].
When using these learning platforms, classes are given in a way that all the materials that are needed
and prepared for the students are distributed electronically, while the consultations and contacts face-

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 A. Džanić, J. Ćosić - WEB 2.0 SERVICES AND THEIR WIDESPREAD APPLICATION
to-face with the professors are made through web 2.0 services, e-mail, chat, video conferences or
forums.
Students are usually given a certain task to fulfill until a predetermined deadline, when they upload
their homework to the LMS, and they are able to revise the knowledge they had accumulated during
the previous lessons through quizzes and similar tests.

3.2. Tourism 2.0

The web has been, for a long time now, one of the main promoters of tourism. In the previous edition
(Web 1.0) every touristic destination offered certain online services but everything was presented as
static web pages with photo galleries and some video content.
With the development of Web 2.0 services, tourism got a new dimension. The web has become
dynamic and the level, as well as the spectrum of services got broadened. Today all major touristic
agencies worldwide offer all their services online. The need to physically visit an agency has become
obsolete, as well as the need to collect and review various brochures and printed offers.
Users of these services can now through specialized web portals choose the destination that they want
to travel to, the level (quality) of services according to their needs (rating of the hotel in which they’re
going to stay, what kind of food and beverages they like or dislike and in which class and travel
company they would like to travel with).
A new dimension to the experience is added by the visually appealing appearance that tourists get
while they’re browsing through the site, and they surely won’t turn down the offer after such a
persuasive presentation.

Figure 3. Web portal www.adriatic.hr

For example, through Google’s web service google maps on some touristic agency’s web site, we can
get a geographical map of the town in which we want to find a certain hotel, and the complete
roadmap plotted from the location of departure to the destination, together with the information about
the shortest route, fastest route, the ability to calculate travel expenses depending on the type of
transportation. In case we decide to travel by an airplane we have special offers for online reservation

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 A. Džanić, J. Ćosić - WEB 2.0 SERVICES AND THEIR WIDESPREAD APPLICATION
(of much cheaper tickets) and the possibility to pay online using web services and safe transactions
(through encrypted channels).
On the Figure 3 we see a web portal composed of a multitude of web services. The best known web
services used in the field of tourism are Wikimapia, Flickr and Yahoo Traveler [7].

3.3. E-Governance

There are many definitions of e-governance. While they’re all essentially the same, they differ only
depending on the point of view. The various aspects of e-governance could be those of the consumers,
of the State, technologies or businesses. One of the definitions is “The term e-Governance refers to
the use of information technologies (e.g. WAN, Internet, mobile computing) by a public governance
establishment which has a power to change relationships with the citizens, companies and other
branches of public governance (ministries , agencies)” [4]. Web 2.0 services found their place in e-
Governance very quickly.
Taking in consideration the fact that the Internet has long ago found its place in the homes of the
citizens of the world, conditions were met for States to establish a way of offering services online.
Over a billion people in the world use the Internet nowadays. The percentage of population using
Internet in BiH is 33% - over a million [5], while that percentage in the world is much bigger: from
34 million in France to 180 million users in China [6].
The idea behind e-Governance or electronic governance is to enable the state to offer its services to its
citizens over the Internet. In other words, this means that the citizens would be able to renew the
validity period of their documents (ID, driver’s license, etc), request the issuing of their birth or
marriage certificates and to vote online.
Many countries from EU as well as from other highly developed countries of the world like the USA,
Japan and even China and India, have made a huge step forward in developing of these services.
Great Britain is the leading country in the EU that implements this kind of services available to its
citizens 24 hours a day[11].
These services are integrated into a public portal where they’re sorted up and divided according to
different areas of interest of the citizens. Services intended for education, citizenship issues, travelling
and information about particular countries are found on one part of the portal, while on the other side
we find services intended for youth, family, children, elderly people etc.
In case a service is found on another governmental web site, there’s a clearly visible link to it.
The citizens can find any necessary information in every moment and through these services they can
fulfill their citizen rights, get a necessary document, and accomplish their obligations without
unnecessary visits to governmental institutions, waiting in lines and wasting time.
In a majority of countries, on many public places there are public Internet access points for those
citizens that don’t have access to the Internet at home, where they can accomplish all the tasks they
would normally have to accomplish by visiting some governmental institutions.
Some institutions also offer online help-desk services where they can communicate with citizens who
have particular requests or aren’t apt in using these services directly using synchronous services.
For over three years Web 2.0 services have been the underlying framework for these services in many
highly developed countries of the world.

3.4. Social Life

In our recent history we are witnessing a new phenomenon – social networks – with ever increasing
number of users. It is simply an astonishing fact that Facebook has over 200 million registered users
[8]. Social networks were invented as a way for friends and family to stay in touch with each other
wherever they find themselves, sharing photographs, experiences, videos etc. But today, the idea of
social networks outgrows these primary goals. The development and the influence of social networks
upon society, has become ever more important in everyday life. Reshaping of the public repute,
creation of interest groups which cross territorial boundaries, are today’s reality of social networks.
The influence that these new activities have on everyday life is still greatly undiscovered.
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 A. Džanić, J. Ćosić - WEB 2.0 SERVICES AND THEIR WIDESPREAD APPLICATION
3. CONCLUSION

The application of web 2.0 services introduces certain changes in business in terms of increased
productivity of the employees, establishing easier communication and availability between business
partners and providing greater transparency in the dealings of the company, but it also comes with
certain risks and restrictions which demand controlled use of these services.
New forms of communication achieved with Web 2.0 give us new possibilities of use of information
and communication technologies in all fields of human intervention. It is clear that the influence of
these new technologies has caused a transfer of software development from desktop to the web and
the creation of web services that are replacing traditional desktop applications. This approach has
several advantages, some of which were mentioned in this paper. Looking at these advantages we can
make a simple conclusion that every institution, company or individual, should consider the effects of
using Web 2.0 services in their activity or business, which are both useful and risky.

4. REFERENCES

[1] O'reilly, T., What is web 2.0: design patterns and business models for the next generation of
software, O'Reilly Radar, Sept. 2005,
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
[2] N.Mark, E-learning in Context , http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/sites/default/files/ng/group-661/n877-1--
-e-learning-in-context.pdf
[3] CarNet, Referealni Centar, Metodika i komunikacija e-obrazovanja,
http://wwww.carnet.hr/referalni/obrazovni/mkod/metodika/sinasin?CARNetweb=e69abce4883c404e9
c59837c36d0795b
[4] Radivojević M., E-uprava od vizije do implementacije, Sarajevo/Banjaluka, 2007
[5] Regulatorna Agencija za komunikacije BiH , www.cra.ba
[6] ComScore, Press and Events, http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events
[7] Micro Persuasion, The web 2.0 Impact,
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007/02/web_20s_impact_.html
[8] http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)
[10] http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2008/winners.html
[11] http://www.direct.gov.uk

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