Now, what Google announced is really exciting! I'm not kidding. It's even better than I hoped. Yes, it's only Python, but IBM's PC-DOS was only BASIC and Pascal when it first came out, and it didn't matter. Yeah, I preferred C, but I coded in Pascal because that's what you had to do to get an app running. What you're going to see here that you've never seen before is shrinkwrap net apps that scale that can be deployed by civillians. That's a mouthful, but that's what's coming. Why? Because here is a standardized platform that can be stamped out in the billions of units. Maybe Google can't do it, but the perception is that they can. Who is willing to stand up and say Google hasn't nailed scaling? What PCs did in the 80s, Google is doing now. PCs took the black magic out of owning a computer.

The NY Times had a story yesterday, much-written-about in the blogosphere, that said that bloggers were working themselves to death. This was one article about blogging I was glad to be left out of, even so, it could have been about me, a number of years ago, when my lifestyle almost did kill me.

Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do 'cool kids' choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java? I have to admit that I do not have an answer. Why do I even care? Because I am a Java developer. Like many Java developers, I get along with Java well. Not only the language itself, but the development environments (Eclipse for example), step-by-step debugging helper, wide availability of libraries and code snippets, and the readily accessible information on almost any technical question I may have on Java via Google. Last but not least, I go to JavaOne and see 10,000 people that talk and walk just like me.

As a web 2.0 guy who blogs on 'Direct from Web 2.0', I did not see this coming. In fact, my preferences were Mitt Romney from the republican side (maybe McCain too) and Hilary Clinton from the democrat side. I think the three of them (Mitt Romney, John McCain and Hilary Clinton) will do better in the oval office than other candidates. Just like how venture capitalists pick CEOs for their portfolio companies, I put 'experience' and -track record of execution' very high in my assessment. If you are conducting a CEO search for your company, would you pick someone who just graduated from Harvard executive MBA, or someone who has been there, done that and has been doing that for the entire life?

The Web is evolving as an open platform with rich user interface capabilities of desktop clients. This has triggered user-driven management of service consumer ecosystems, expanding the reach of SOA with rich interactive controls and Web 2.0 tools to access the Web content and services. However the usability dimension of these Web 2.0-based service consumer ecosystems is often ignored, leaving doubt about whether present usability testing techniques in Web-based systems are capable enough to guarantee a usable experience in RIA-based service consumer systems.

As Microsoft's recent $240M investment in Facebook gives FB all the capital it needs to further its grand ambitions, some are concerned that one corporation should control so much information about the detailed personal activities and connections among individuals. Even before OpenSocial launched today, one individual had decided to outline an open source software architecture to address these concerns. He has published a technical overview of his ideas for an open source infrastructure for social networking, calling it 'Breaking Open Facebook with Open Source Software.'

The BBC carried a report yesterday that raises the alarming possibility of extending cellphone use on board airplanes from just either end of a journey to throughout the duration of the flight. The key to the whole thing, the technical trick that circumvents the problem found in 2003 by the CAA that mobile phone signals skew navigation bearing displays by up to five degrees, is that cellphones in the plane are not allowed to connect to any base stations on the ground.

In true Web 2.0 style, Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz this week gave an inadvertent masterclass in how those who live by the blog also die by the blog, when he publicly blogged an advance heads-up that Sun is about to 'retire' its historic NASDAQ ticker symbol 'SUNW' and replace it with 'JAVA,' the name of what Schwartz somewhat hyperbolically described as 'a technology whose value is near infinite to the Internet.'

When building the right project team to complete a custom solution there are many forces at work. These include business drivers, technical drivers, and organizational and political motivations. Regardless of the business or organization there are three basic rules to follow in building a team to deliver a technical solution. The first is to involve the business before the team is even assembled. Each organization has certain technology standards that govern specific tools and products that can be used on a given project.

Since most any two words can and will be put together in this world, what with us being Homo Loquens and all, it is easy just to shrug when you hear new colloquies like 'social software,' 'social networking' or 'social computing' and dismiss them as just three more inevitable permutations in a world of whirling words and phrases.

Despite the common wisdom that VCs are stupid (yes, some of them are. I maintain a personal list of VCs who I would advise companies to stay away from), I actually think quite a few of them are really smart and I have always learned a lot from conversations with them. What is their issue with enterprise software? Is there money to be made with enterprise software? What is going on?

Many commentators, analysts, executives, and software developers so far this year have been processing the arrival of what has been dubbed 'Web 2.0' with sage prudence born of having seen Web 2.0's bubble-like characteristics once before, with Web 1.0...and having gotten burned. The VC community is showing no such prudence, and I am firmly with them. We are witnessing the onset of a new Golden Age, the beginning of the new rich-media web.

People across the globe are publishing countless articles and books to try to define Web 2.0, but like its underpinning philosophy, it is not easily defined. In fact, to put it into a box would be to contradict its very nature. Web 2.0 can take two distinct directions, and it is perhaps the rhetoric of it all that will define the path. Web 2.0 can be the French Revolution of Technology or it can be the American Revolution of Technology.

The psychological experience of using the Internet is undergoing slow but constant change. Up until now, using the Web has involved 'going out' to Web sites. However, this is changing. Understanding this transformation, and plotting its direction, can provide us with a new understanding of where our Web technology is going. This destination can be called 'Web 3.0.'

In 1998, I got my hands on Mitchell Waldrop's book called 'Complexity'. Ever since, I've been on an amazing journey discovering one of the most profound developments in modern science. Complexity, or more formally, the study of complex systems, is about unifying themes that run through all modern scientific disciplines including physics, biology, economics, ecology, linguistics, and sociology.

I've been having more fun than a person should have over the past few months with Web 2.0, and you're going to get a kick out of what I've been doing. Especially since it involves the impending death of a beloved Web mascot.

There's no reason why our desktop applications cannot be web-aware. An improvement in this area would drive up our productivity, because switching back and forth between the application and the browser is very inefficient. This article looks at some examples of apps that already succeed in integrating web sites and web services into our desktops.

Digital convergence is a much-maligned concept, conjuring up images of the intelligent fridge - a concept most people think they have no need for! But Digital convergence is an idea whose dawn is near, even though there is a lot of confusion about what exactly is meant by digital convergence.

At the time of the big crash, web designers had to multi-task. All of a sudden if you wanted to get by you had to know PHP, JavaScript, IA, Flash, be a cracking designer as well as a first rate Information Architect. Oh, and you had to be pretty good at making tea too. That was still the case up until a few months ago. We are on the cusp of something here. I can smell it.

Will the social software that enables conversations in and between blogs, social product recommendations, wikis, and MMOGs, and much, much more, make this kind of software more powerful than any other that has come before it? If so, what are the drivers of such power?