In this session, Smith discusses the evolution of the web application paradigm that is being fueled by the extreme popularity of blogs and wikis, creating new ways of interacting and truly enabling the read/write web. These technologies are evolving to enable the next wave of DIY-IT by combining the flexibility of user-oriented information architecture provided by active content (such as wikis) with that of content-in-flight (such as web services and RSS feeds) to provide an easy-to-use integration platform for creating a new style of content-centric applications.

Characteristics of DIY-IT include:

• A collaborative environment to create, share, manage, and evolve content on your terms
• Integration of new capabilities for publishing and handling content, targeting a less technically sophisticated user and broadening its reach to the entire web development skills continuum
• A programming model that is activity/situational based, focused on accessing and aggregating valuable content with relatively little programming, providing immediate business value and feedback
• An extensible development environment where the application serves as the toolbox
• Built on the rich interaction model provided by AJAX, delivering a rich user experience via the browser

In general, application design is rebalancing the ratio of code to content using a variety of architectures, data formats, and feeds. DIY-IT enables end users to aggregate and filter disparate fragments of the evolving data platform more effectively than more traditional database-centric applications.