Jakob is undoubtedly a master of stating the obvious. That may seem like an insult, but the truth is that many in the industry lose sight of the obvious in exchange for being progressive and innovative. As a result, there is an important place for his work, and people shouldn't be so swift to write him off.

Recently, Jakob wrote a column titled "Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous". This is another one of those columns designed to get people stirred up. It addresses some of the components of the Web 2.0 movement including: rich internet applications, social networking, mashups, and advertising based business models. He builds an argument that claims that companies should not get caught up in the hype surrounding Web 2.0 while working with their current web properties. They should instead focus on getting the fundamentals, or the Web 1.0 features perfect.

This article makes a lot of sense, and I find myself unable to disagree with him for the most part. In order to get the right perspective on this article though, you have to really understand who he is writing it for. This article is not targeted at web development professionals, it is targeted at business owners, project managers, and decision makers that may not understand what these Web 2.0 patterns really are from a technical standpoint, but still need to make strategic decisions.

I'd like to indulge in a little response article to Jakob's hottest new controversial column, and cover it in two parts that I think are of particular importance to the Rich Internet Application community.

Part 1 - There's a Forklift in my Toolbox

This Alertbox article is primarily highlighting what I like to call the "Forklift in my Toolbox" anti-pattern. He seems to feel that many are trying to apply the powerful patterns of Web 2.0 to things that do not really benefit from it, and in turn wasting time and money.

I always find myself coming back to three simple resulting ends for digital experiences today. The ends are: to inform, to entertain and to empower. It is crucial for any experience designer to be very aware of which of the above comprise the goals for their project. Applying the wrong design solution and technology to any of the above ends often leads to an experience being a failure.

The Web 2.0 movement is really about creating patterns for solving new problems on the web. It is about facilitating new types of communications between people, new ways of distributing content, and ultimately, pushing the majority of our everyday computing into the cloud. It is a mistake to think of these new patterns as a replacement for the previous ones, it should instead be perceived as a layer on top. The web as we have known it is still very useful, and it is not going away.

These new problems though, are big ones indeed. Imagine them as a public works project. The city has to create new roads, new highways, new on and off ramps, and to get it done, they have to use heavy duty equipment that can be very expensive and time consuming. The result is a new infrastructure, that allows many more people to travel through the city much faster and more effective than ever before.

What about small towns in the country though? Do we really need to acquire all this heavy equipment and build big highways to facilitate mass transit? Are people actually going to be able to get to the few places in the town faster than they already do? The likelihood is that most people living in the small town (as well as people visiting it), would be confused by this new overblown infrastructure. It would feel bulky, awkward and inappropriate.

So as a developer, just because I have an army of heavy equipment that I could use, and an array of plans for building large highways and bridges, it doesn't mean that I should apply such resources to a small town. It is certainly a waste of my time, and my clients money.

Overall, Jakob has a really solid point in this article. The majority of the web properties out there do not need to implement Web 2.0 patterns, as the majority of them exist to inform only. Trying to generate social and viral activity, where the desire to do so does not already exist is silly indeed.

Experiences designed to inform do benefit most from focusing on findability, and a traditional document centric navigational paradigm.

While I am agreeing with Jakob, I still get really frustrated by something he always seems to do that damages people out there using this technology well. People could read his column and come away from it thinking that AJAX is bad. He has a knack for discussing issues in usability and experience design, and making it seem like the problems are the fault of the technology implemented. This is what I find misleading about his work, because the truth is, the experience designer is really at fault here.

This quote sticks out to me:

"We recently tested about 100 e-commerce sites and found many problems with AJAX shopping carts. In particular, users often overlooked modest changes, such as when they added something to the cart and it updated only a small area in a corner of the screen"

This quote generates a stigma for AJAX, where it really should be focused on the fact that the designers failed to implement an intuitive user interface for a shopping cart using AJAX. Prompting them to avoid the technology and sticking to the traditional ways of building a shopping cart is not good advice. It is a sweeping generalization that assumes that all designers and strategists will likely fail at the task of building a better shopping cart experience.

If I could blame my keyboard for every spelling mistake I have ever made, that would be great. If I could blame the paint and paintbrush for not spattering onto the carpet, then I would start a side business painting houses. If it was the oven's fault that the cookies got burned, then I'd have a much better reputation in the kitchen.

If I could make a suggestion to Jakob's readers, I would ask them to carefully evaluate the people involved at the strategic stage of their web project before anything else. Be sure that your team is working against a strategy for success, that makes sense without talking technology.

There are many people out there, that have technological biases, and will talk technology before talking about strategy. These people can definitely be dangerous, because they have a personal supply and demand problem, and can't wait to jump into that forklift and put it to work.

In order to be sure when to use the forklift, we have to be sure we are working on a project that requires the heavy lifting. Based on Jakob's column we need to answer the following questions: What is an "actual application", what is "true functionality" and finally, what does the term "Website" really mean these days?. I am am going to cover all of this in my next article: "Who's Coat is this Jacket?".