Internet Killed the Taxonomy Star

In a world where we label, group, bookmark, favorite, request, and tag, has taxonomy lost it's value? Folksonomy is quickly growing to be the favored way to categorize and "file" away our interests on the web.

Folksonomy

A folksonomy(as defined by Dictionary.com)is: a type of classification system for online content, created by an individual user who tags information with freely chosen keywords. Visual example to your left. Folksonomy was a term made and coined by Thomas Vander Wal, created by combining the words Folk and Taxonomy. The ability to label and define anything you wanted the way you want to, with any word (misspelled or not) has massive appeal; especially in a society that is constantly trying to define itself and striving to be

original. The down side? Mess. There can be millions upon millions of individually created tags which can lead to a lot of site clutter.

Taxonomy

Now taxonomy you don't see much of on the internet.

Taxonomy is a was of hierarchal

classification. My personal favorite site with incorporates this has to be DeviantArt.com's categorization. It works for the site, helping you to find images relative to our interests. But on top of a taxonomy, DeviantArt does incorporate a folksonomy system for their search function. Taxonomies on the web are great for narrowing down your field of interests and locating a general group reletive to your interests, but as for finding an individual image, site, or video, taxonomy just cannot keep up. The level of categorical separations a site would have to go to would be unreasonable and almost impossible. For the millions of tags made with folksonomy, there would be just as many if not more having to be made in taxonomy.

So has taxonomy been out classed? Items of the web, just simply yes.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/folksonomy

Study of Folksonomy

http://www.deviantart.com/

Studio/Artist Exploration- Gaia Online Interactive

I was having somewhat of a hard time thinking of something really cutting edge and cool I had discovered recently pertaining to flash, then it hit me: Gaia Online Interactive. It is a forum website my sister visits often. Recently they have created the very first massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based solely as a Flash-browser game named zOMG!.



Even if you aren't a gamer, the concept of having to program Flash to such a technical depth to create that level on interactivity is amazing. Gaia Online, is said, to have started the development phase in 2004, but due to technical difficulties, the project was postponed for a later date. The games senior producer and creative director, David Georgeson, and Gaia Online's own developer team, AniHQ, (along with other developers) started the official development in 2007, eventually leading to its open beta release in November of 2008. As of yet, the game has not left open-beta, but it is rumored to be entering V1 quickly.

The game has over approximately 9 million players, thus making it a very successful game and very successful step for the Flash world. Upon initial development, Gaia's own senior producer was skeptical on the creation of a Flash based MMO, if Flash could even be pushed that far. Eventually, the team used a combination of Flash and Java to create the world of zOMG. Georgeson, in an interview with onRPG, was quoted as saying "we've had to create code to sit on top of Flash so that Flash can do things that even the Adobe engineers didn't anticipate because most Flash apps don't have the enormous scope of an entire virtual world."

Having played the game for a time, it was enjoyable. More often then not, you would forget that it is in fact a flash based game. The game-play is smooth, simple, and with zero download, it is virtually playable by anyone with internet access (and a Gaia Online account). Though zOMG is just passed its first year of public release, developers are already making plans to expand content. Personally, I hope that the boundaries zOMG has pushed in the Flash world are pushed even further with its future releases, and possibly by new games, aswell.