1. Why did you pick the name "Rayt"?

It's a play on the word "rate." Rayt allows users to rate the content of web sites by making a comment and also to rate other people's comments. Also, Rayt is like a "ray" of light, shining the interactivity of real Web 2.0 throughout the entire internet. So really, the name works on three levels.

2. Tell me quickly, how does Rayt work?

First you install the Rayt add-on to you Firefox browser. Then you will have a little Rayt icon on your toolbar. Whenever you visit a site that you want to make a comment about, you click the icon and a dialogue box will appear. You type you comment and press "submit" and you're done. Your comment is linked to the page you were commenting on and is stored on a server so whenever another Rayt user visits that page they will see you comment in a banner at the top of their browser. Each comment on the banner is a link. If you click the link, a dialogue box will appear that allows you to rayt the comment from 5 (awesome) to 1 (crapola) or even 0 (spam). Top-ranked comments move to the front of the banner while low-ranked quotes and spam go to the end. If you'd like more detail about how Rayt works (or to see prototype screen-shots of what Rayt will look like) read the Rayt Manifesto.

3. Haven't people tried this kind of thing before?

Yes, in the late nineties there was a similar browser plug-called ThirdVoice, which allowed people to leave comments on web sites much the way Rayt does. The problem was, many people opposed ThirdVoice because there was no way to control the comments. Many of the comments were spam or insults: "graffiti." Comment rating (which didn't exist in 1999) solves this problem because users can rayt comments according to their value (insults probably wouldn't rank very high) and there is an anti-spam rayting that drops spam to the end of the banner. Also, because of the "one strike and you're out" spam rayting, a site owner can single-handedly clean spam from his or her page. (Of course, if other users think that the comment is not spam, then the ranking system kicks in: one 0 (spam) rating and one 4 (pretty good) ranking equal a final ranking of 2). Basically, this has been done before, meaning that there is a constituency of people that want it to happen, and now we have the tools necessary to solve the problems that made people oppose earlier efforts.

4. Why is the subtitle of this blog "developing the real Web 2.0"?

Currently, Web 2.0 does not exist. There are some sites - like Flickr and Wikipedia and Digg - where users can generate content, but most sites are broadcast. You absorb what they put online but you have no input into that content. We don't have Web 2.0 . We have web sites 2.0. Rayt changes this by allowing users to contribute content, in the form of comments, to any web site on the internet. Rayt would make Web 2.0 a reality and this is a blog about the process of developing it.