Web 3.0 Interview Preparation Guide

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Web 3.0 is a set of standards that turns the Web into one big database. There is also a debate among tech savvy individuals regarding web 3.0 vs web 2.0, whether the web 3.0 would completely replace the web 2.0 or function as a parallel entity.

It is said that implementing artificial intelligence in different web applications should be the next big thing and also one of the features of Web 3.0. Today, the results provided by Internet search engines make use of sophisticated software called crawlers. The results however, may not be exact enough to satisfy the users needs. The human element/quality of analyzing and grading a particular result to be useful can bring a sea change in the way quality information is provided to the user. The discrepancy or probably limitation of human beings manipulating or giving a biased opinion about a particular thing can also hamper this process at the same time. The need for implementation of artificial intelligence in making search engines more efficient could arise in the future and be one of the features of Web 3.0.

It is probably the answer to what is discussed in the paragraph above. A Semantic Web is a kind of web which groups information in a manner that both computer and humans are able to comprehend. The Web 3.0 Semantic Web is the combination of artificial intelligence and Semantic Web. Evolution of artificial intelligence in due course of time would enrich the Web 3.0 Semantic Web.

Web 2.0: The lack of active interaction of common user with the web lead to the birth of Web 2.0. The year 1999 marked the beginning of a Read-Write-Publish era with notable contributions from LiveJournal (Launched in April, 1999) and Blogger (Launched in August, 1999). Now even a non-technical user can actively interact & contribute to the web using different blog platforms. This era empowered the common user with a few new concepts viz. Blog, Social-Media & Video-Streaming. Publishing your content is only a few clicks away! Few remarkable developments of Web 2.0 are Twitter, YouTube, eZineArticles, Flickr and Facebook.

Web 3.0: It seems we have everything whatever we had wished for in Web 2.0, but it is way behind when it comes to intelligence. Perhaps a six year old child has a better analytical abilities than the existing search technologies! Keyword based search of web 2.0 resulted in an information overload. The following attributes are going to be a part of Web 3.0:

► contextual Search
► Tailor made Search
► Personalized Search
► Evolution of 3D Web
► Deductive Reasoning

To put it simply, the web 3.0 will be smarter than the web 2.0. This form of web will act similar to an assistant. It will understand our instructions in a far better manner than the necessary-to-program computers. Based on the search patterns of the user and information that is already present on the web, extremely specialized/customized results would be provided.

Web 1.0 – That Geocities & Hotmail era was all about read-only content and static HTML websites. People preferred navigating the web through link directories of Yahoo! and dmoz.

Web 2.0 – This is about user-generated content and the read-write web. People are consuming as well as contributing information through blogs or sites like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. The line dividing a consumer and content publisher is increasingly getting blurred in the Web 2.0 era.

Web 3.0 – This will be about semantic web (or the meaning of data), personalization (e.g. iGoogle), intelligent search and behavioral advertising among other things.

As we have learned so far that web 3.0 would help in making our search related tasks easier, let us study one such web 3.0 example. If a person is searching information regarding best offers about vacations in Hawaii, he/she can obtain relevant results by typing an entire sentence. Moreover, the search patterns of a particular user creates information that can be further used to provide even more accuracy in search results. Such a technology can really revolutionize the usage of web. The technology required for providing such a service is still in its infancy and only time can unveil the wonderful future that lies ahead.

Web 3.0 will be aimed at making web usage to be an increasingly more personal experience for a web user. The information presented to him will be modified according to his specific needs and past searches on the web. The web will be like a close friend or an assistant who knows enough about you to know what you want. While this idea seems ludicrous, that is one of the goals of Web 3.0. We are already taking steps towards it through social networking sites like Facebook that provide information tailored to a users expectations.

Artificial Intelligence
The parameters that are set by users can be used in obtaining information from the Internet with artificial intelligence. There are many such web 3.0 examples apart from artificial intelligence where the technology would evolve.

Semantic Web
Tim Berners Lee, the director of World Wide Web Consortium coined the term semantic web. The different methods and set of technologies being used in the process of teaching machines the meaning of data/information present in the world wide web forms the basis of web 3.0. The concept of semantic web will play a central role in the evolution of web 3.0 and this term has therefore, become synonymous with web 3.0.

Before web 2.0, the Internet was nothing but just a huge number of HTML pages. These HTML pages contained a lot of information, but the user had no involvement in this world of information. It was a big library containing a vast number of books, where users could get information from, but contribute nothing. So, if there was any real time problem and somebody had a solution to the same, he could not provide it to the world wide web without having a website of his own. Yes, there were no forums, no bloggers and of course, no social networking sites. This was when the concept of web 2.0 came in. Web developers recognized the importance of users and decided to use them to contribute information to this field, hence allowing the amount of information to increase by ten folds. Wiki came into being, and blogger websites became the right place to search for information from specialist users, most importantly the social networking sites. Then there were the RSS feeds that came into scene. All these were just different ways for the user to contribute information. The web became very intelligent. If you had a problem and type it on the Internet Search Engines, you would straight away be directed to the right page where you can find the information or solution. If none of the websites had ever listed the answer to your query, there would be some forum, in which some other user sitting in some other corner of the world would answer your question. Thus, we can safely say that the introduction of web 2.0 had completely changed the face of the Internet. One more important thing, pages were no more designed in mere HTML code. Languages like PHP, Javascript, Ajax, etc., which allowed to handle dynamic pages, had come into picture.