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and identify for others who is in the photo. You can also search for people on
Facebook using their digital image to find and identify them.

Intelligent Agent Shopping Bots Chapter 11 describes the capabilities of
software agents with built-in intelligence that can gather or filter information
and perform other tasks to assist users. Shopping bots use intelligent agent
software for searching the Internet for shopping information. Shopping bots
such as MySimon or Google Product Search can help people interested in
making a purchase filter and retrieve information about products of interest,
evaluate competing products according to criteria the users have established,
and negotiate with vendors for price and delivery terms. Many of these shopping
agents search the Web for pricing and availability of products specified by the
user and return a list of sites that sell the item along with pricing information
and a purchase link.

Web 2.0
Today’s Web sites don’t just contain static content—they enable people to
collaborate, share information, and create new services and content online.
These second-generation interactive Internet-based services are referred to as
Web 2.0. If you have shared photos over the Internet at Flickr or another photo
site, pinned a photo on Pinterest, posted a video to YouTube, created a blog,
or added an app to your Facebook page, you’ve used some of these Web 2.0
services.
Web 2.0 has four defining features: interactivity, real-time user control,
social participation (sharing), and user-generated content. The technolo-
gies and services behind these features include cloud computing, software
mashups and apps, blogs, RSS, wikis, and social networks.
Mashups, which we introduced in Chapter 5, are software services that
enable users and system developers to mix and match content or software
components to create something entirely new. For example, Yahoo’s photo
storage and sharing site Flickr combines photos with other information
about the images provided by users and tools to make it usable within other
programming environments. Web 2.0 tools and services have fueled the
creation of social networks and other online communities where people can
interact with one another in the manner of their choosing.
A blog, the popular term for a Weblog, is a personal Web site that typically con-
tains a series of chronological entries (newest to oldest) by its author, and links to
related Web pages. The blog may include a blogroll (a collection of links to other
blogs) and trackbacks (a list of entries in other blogs that refer to a post on the first
blog). Most blogs allow readers to post comments on the blog entries as well. The
act of creating a blog is often referred to as “blogging.” Blogs can be hosted by a
third-party service such as Blogger.com, TypePad.com, and Xanga.com, and blog-
ging features have been incorporated into social networks such as Facebook and
collaboration platforms such as Lotus Notes. WordPress is a leading open source
blogging tool and content management system. Microblogging, used in Twitter,
is a type of blogging that features short posts of 140 characters or less.
Blog pages are usually variations on templates provided by the blogging
service or software. Therefore, millions of people without HTML skills of any
kind can post their own Web pages and share content with others. The totality
of blog-related Web sites is often referred to as the blogosphere. Although blogs
have become popular personal publishing tools, they also have business uses
(see Chapters 2 and 10).
If you’re an avid blog reader, you might use RSS to keep up with your favor-
ite blogs without constantly checking them for updates. RSS, which stands for

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