]]>By Kerry Newberry from Oregon Wine Press
Pop icon Madonna gyrated into 1984 with her inaugural album “Like a Virgin.” Fingerless gloves and fishnet stockings took stage as she crooned catchy tunes such as “Shoo-Bee-Doo” and “Material Girl.” Lyrics from the latter song: “Cause we are living in a material world/And I am a material girl” sing veritably today if you slip in the adjective “virtual.” Three decades later and without the fingerless gloves, we are living in a virtual world, and I think I am a virtual girl.
Virtually everything is available online: music and movies, couture and cuisine, love, romance and, now, wine. Yes, it is all a mere mouse-click away. Welcome to Web 2.0, the second generation of web development and design, where dynamic communication, information sharing and collaboration are key. For this new and improved web world, think of sites with user-generated content, web-based communities, podcasts, social networking sites, video-sharing platforms, wikis and blogs.
More writing from Kerry here.