CS-490: Classifying web-usage

This homework will be graded. It is due Tuesday, December 7th, at noon. Feel free to work in small groups. I imagine that you will write short essays for most of the questions in which you briefly discuss your choices made.

On Thursday, we saw a brief summary of how we use the web. Below is a list of categories that attempt to classify how the web is used. Criticize the set of categories provided. Attempt to find web-sites or ways of using the web that do not seem to squarly fall into the categories, and then suggest new or alternative categories. Alternatively, find representative example for the categories provided and/or the categories that you come up with. Also, if you think that some of them should have sub-categories, please do provide them. Again, give examples. By an example, I mean the URL of a web-site and a brief (three sentence) description of what it does.

Web-usage can be classified by the following categories:

Answer the following questions, when it comes to the web:

  1. What's hot? What are some web-sites or uses of the web that are very popular right now, or otherwise intrigueing, or seem to fill in an interesting niche?
  2. What's not? What are some web-sites or uses of the web that seem to fulfil a need that is not there or that just use outdated technology?
  3. What's a work horse? What are some web-sites or uses of the web that have come to be a reliable and established way of doing things over the web?
  4. What's up-and-coming? What are some web-sites or uses of the web that may be hot in a couple of months? Think about anything from businesses to whatever.
  5. What's going to be hot after that? Let's begin to think about the future; what are some ways of using the web that are not realized right now.