GoodStorm, an ecommerce company, has opened its GoodStorm API release 2.0 giving web developers access to ecommerce functionality and product metadata for selling books, non-DRMed MP3s, CDs, DVDs, and video games online.

Back four years ago (2002), a good friend who works at Microsoft told me confidentially that Microsoft is working on something called 'XAML'. 'Very similar to Nexaweb - watch out', he said. To the contrary, I was actually thrilled. Regardless of what it means from a competitive perspective, XAML validates the declarative programming approach that Nexaweb has been championing for many years.

Chris Rowe, founder of innovative recruitment site, Employmint, is using the Web 2.0 model to turn the recruitment business on its head. 'The global acceptance of Google grew to the point that people don't search any more, they Google.' explains Chris. Google leveraged the search engine's popularity by creating additional services such as gmail, adwords and adsense. 'Now anyone can serve Google ads on their web sites and make money.' says Chris, 'In addition, anyone can purchase Google adwords to promote their business - the business owner determines how much they are willing to pay.'

Kapow Technologies, the enterprise mashup software platform provider, announced the addition of Joe Keller as chief marketing officer. As the company's first C-level marketing executive, he will be responsible for expanding and managing the company's worldwide marketing efforts, primarily in the United States and European regions.

Oracle today announced Oracle(R) WebCenter Suite, a new component of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle WebCenter Suite will improve information worker productivity by delivering a unified, context-aware user experience that integrates a full set of enterprise services. It delivers a unified environment that provides user access to business applications, structured and un-structured content, business intelligence, enterprise search, business processes, and communication and collaboration services. Oracle WebCenter Suite will provide the first user interaction environment that breaks down the boundaries between web-based portals, enterprise applications, and Web 2.0 technologies to enable the rapid creation of flexible, context-sensitive work processes. The product will be based on an open, standards-based architecture and will be used customers to develop their own Web 2.0 centric applications. Oracle WebCenter Suite will also become the default user environment for Oracle Fusion Applications.

Kapow Technologies (http: //www.kapowtech.com/), the leading enterprise mashup software platform provider, today announced the addition of Joe Keller as chief marketing officer. As the company's first C-level marketing executive, he will be responsible for expanding and managing the company's worldwide marketing efforts, primarily in the United States and European regions.

IBM and The University of Arizona have announced a new collaborative initiative to develop a course aimed at helping developers build online communities and social network systems using Web 2.0 technologies. The curriculum, which is designed to equip students with skills in the creation and management of online communities, will be offered to the Management Information Systems Department (MIS) and Marketing students in The University of Arizona's Eller College of Management.

Virtualization of the computing environment is a clear trend in the industry. RHEL5 will provide support for Virtualized Linux. For some Linux system administrators virtualization already means virtualized disk space. Being able to manage your storage independently of your applications or operating system has been the norm in the industry for 15 years. Virtualized partitions are graphically assembled with tools. Configuring RAID support (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks) is as simple as pressing play in these virtualized environments. If you have played with these tools, you know how intuitive and flexible they are. Virtualization also has impacted development models.

Sun Microsystems has announced its 'Galaxy' line of Sun Fire x64 (x86, 64-bit) servers powered by Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors and the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), the most advanced operating system on the planet. The Sun Fire X4100 M2, Sun Fire X4200 M2 and Sun Fire X4600 M2 servers with on-chip virtualization support set new standards for reliability and energy efficiency.

Sun Microsystems has unveiled Project Blackbox, a systems innovation designed to reset datacenter economics. Project Blackbox applies Sun's trademark innovation and network computing expertise to provide a simple, 'instant-on' modular datacenter targeting companies seeking rapid and highly efficient deployment of lights-out infrastructure. Project Blackbox packages compute, storage and network infrastructure, along with high-efficiency power and cooling into modular units based on standard shipping containers.

It has been just two years since Firefox appeared on the scene, but this Mozilla browser has surely changed the rules of the game. Firefox brought back the spirit, the innovation and the crowds of followers. Firefox is not only the underdog we are rooting for, it is a movement that is strong on business, community and ideas. And with the latest release the Firefox team has shown its razor-sharp focus on software quality and the understanding of what it takes to win the market.

We all know HTTP, the communication layer of Web 1.0. Recently, we also started to realize some of the limitations of HTTP. For example, HTTP is request/response only and does not support bi-directional communication. There are techniques to be employed for enabling bi-directional communications on top of HTTP. These techniques are being called as ?comet?. However, comet addresses only a small part of the challenge. There are a lot of other challenges to be addressed in order for the web communications layer to work well.

IBM has introduced software aimed at helping clients build more profitable customer relationships through master data management. IBM WebSphere Customer Center 7.0, part of IBM's master data management family of products, is designed to help businesses achieve a single version of the truth across all of their business processes from customer treatment to product performance.

MyBestDate.co.uk, UK's online dating service enhanced their services with a cut-edge web messenger technology, powered by Userplane. After the success of MyBestDate's built-in AJAX chat, MyBestDate decided to give a far more functional live chat with audio/video streaming and anonymous telephony services.

Unique social networking, news, and content website, providing users with the ability to create their own communities of content URLs. Uses democratic editorial control where users can vote content to the front using Web 2.0 and Ajax technologies.

San Francisco-based Wallop recently announced that its new social networking website has helped to trigger a new round of funding, in the amount of $10M. This Series B round of capital will help Wallop build out its site combining social computing with a marketplace, allowing users to purchase ready-made interactive graphics and features based on Adobe Flash.

David Boloker, IBM's chief technology officer for emerging Internet technologies, said that the combination of Web 2.0 tools and open source communities are creating a 'perfect storm' to enable new kinds of collaborations among businesses and their constituents.

Web 2.0 technologies promise to turn the Internet into a true application platform, featuring robust client-side logic and rich interfaces that put users back in control of application flow. For the enterprise IT community, achieving the aims of Web 2.0 requires looking beyond the adoption of popular Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) development languages like AJAX, Flash, Java, and .NET.

With all the noise the Web 2.0 revolutionaries are making, it's easy to ignore another-this time velvet-revolution. E-commerce 2.0 is coming into maturity and getting ready to relieve its now 10+ year old predecessor. It's about time.

Nexaweb announced it has secured $10 million in Series B venture capital funding from Egan-Managed Capital, Masthead Venture Partners and Velocity Partners. This latest capital investment supports Nexaweb's accelerated growth in the Enterprise Web 2.0 and Rich Internet Application (RIA) markets and further strengthens its financial position, adding to its steady sales revenue stream.

SYS-CON Events (www.events.sys-con.com) announced today that the first international 'AJAXWorld(TM) Conference & Expo' (www.ajaxworldexpo.com), taking place on October 3-4, 2006, at theSanta Clara Convention Center, California, will offer AJAXWorld University - Developer Bootcamp program. The AJAX Developer Bootcamp will take placeon Monday, October 2, 2006, one day before the conference opens.

'As a pioneer of RIA and Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions, Nexaweb has met the application development challenges of enterprises, independent software vendors, and system integrators around the world,' said Chris Heidelberger, newly appointed CEO at Nexaweb, as the company today announced it has secured $10M in Series B venture capital funding from Egan-Managed Capital, Masthead Venture Partners and Velocity Partners.

Mark Knopfler once said, 'I don't like definitions, but if there is a definition of freedom, it would be when you have control over your reality to transform it, to change it, rather than having it imposed upon you. You can't really ask for more than that.' Anyone with that kind of gift for succinctness ought to be let loose on defining 'Web 2.0'!

This AJAXWorld Conference session discusses how Java EE 5 technologies can be used to create next-generation Web 2.0 applications. It covers how rich interactive GUIs similar to traditional desktops can be designed with AJAX, enabling features such as mash-ups, tagging, and user participation. It also discusses patterns for using Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) to design AJAX back ends using REST-based web services. In addition, it examines security features such as using Captchas to prevent automated attacks and using security images to prevent phishing scams. It discusses programming model issues such as use conventions, how to leverage JavaScript libraries, designing AJAX-enabled JavaServer FacFaces components, and using a single-page paradigm for a Web application. It also examines the use of the model-view-controller pattern for AJAX and contrasts it with its use in traditional Web applications, discusses strategies for producing and consuming RSS feeds, and covers how to plug in a search engine as well as integrate search engine services such as Google.

Ruby on Rails, as it has come to be known ever since, certainly hit a dry spot. Armed with Hansson's mantra - such as 'Don't Repeat Yourself' and 'Convention Over Configuration' - developers found that Ruby on Rails (RoR) empowered them, allowing beautiful code to solve the problems most people have in Web-application development.

With all the noise the Web 2.0 revolutionaries are making, it's easy to ignore another &emdash; this time velvet &emdash; revolution: 'E-commerce 2.0' is coming into maturity and getting ready to relieve its now ten-plus year old predecessor. It's about time.

OpenAJAX Alliance, an open industry collaboration dedicated to developing and expanding AJAX, has announced new partners and initiatives around the AJAX Community, signaling continued momentum for AJAX-based Web technologies.

Level 3 Communications Content Markets group today announced it has been selected by YouTube to support the company's rapidly growing online video entertainment service. Under the terms of the agreement, Level 3 will provide Level 3(R) High Speed Internet Access via Multiple 10 gigabits per second (10GigE) ports. Level 3 will also provide 10 GigE LAN PHY wavelength service across a nationwide footprint connecting YouTube's data centers.

Optaros Inc., an open source software consulting and integration firm that provides enterprises with online platforms for the next generation of the Internet, announced the development of Swisscom Mobile Labs (http://labs. swisscom-mobile.ch/), an innovative web platform and testing environment for Swisscom Mobile that all Internet users can access.

Optaros, an open source software consulting and integration firm announced the development of Swisscom Mobile Labs, an innovative web platform and testing environment for Swisscom Mobile that all Internet users can access. The environment allows the leading Swiss telecommunications company to propose and introduce new products and services at an early stage to interested people.

I had an interesting discussion on the phone today with Yoram Meriaz, CEO of MB Technologies, and maker of the remarkable Bindows AJAX framework. As AJAX becomes more mainstream, organizations have become increasingly interested in taking advantage of rich, interactive, zero-footprint Web-based applications.

When we talk about AJAX and its huge impact on Web development, one important thing to mention is that it's not a ready-to-ship component that you just plug into your app and now you're Web 2.0. In fact, what AJAX can do for you is to provide a simple, yet powerful way to make transparent server requests; but nothing more than that. The important point with AJAX is what to do with it. In other words, how do we use it to improve the user experience?

Cynapse releases cyn.in exclusively to Web2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 market experts and bloggers. Along with a completedemonstration of the capabilities of cyn.in, bloggers will receive a fullyfunctional 6 month, 20 user subscription.

LiveOffice Corp.'s Conferencing Division (ht tp://freeconferencing.liv eoffice.com/) today launched a new web-based call control panel to its 14,000+ service subscribers. The new Free Conferencing Web Manager helps conference call organizers better manage every step of their calls by allowing them to control individual attendee rights from the convenience of their Internet-connected desktop or laptop PC.

MSN has announced the U.S. beta release of Soapbox on MSN Video, a user-uploaded video service that makes it easy for people to express themselves by uploading, discovering and sharing personal videos with the Soapbox community and others around the world. Soapbox will be available on MSN Video and will be deeply integrated throughout Microsoft?s portfolio of online services, including Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Messenger.

Gartner announced its 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle which assesses the maturity, impact and adoption speed of 36 key technologies and trends during the next ten years. This year's hype cycle highlights three major themes that are experiencing significant activity and which include new or heavily hyped technologies, where organisations may be uncertain as to which will have most impact on their business.

The 1990s saw the Web's rise and abrupt fall. Venture capitalists poured hundreds of millions of dollars into start-ups that burst along with the bubble. Welcome to its re-birth: deemed Web 2.0. From wiki's, blogs, podcasts, to RIAs, RSS feeds and user generated content: this is the new generation of a user-driven internet.

SYS-CON Events (www.event s.sys-con.com)announced today the initial speaker lineup of the First International AJAXWorld Conference & Expo, which will take place October 2-4, 2006, atthe Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California.

In a keynote speech to leading technology executives, Rod Smith, IBM's vice president of emerging Internet technologies, declared that the technologies underpinning blogs, wikis and innovative sites like Google Maps and Wikipedia on the Web will transform the way productivity applications are developed -- in some cases in as little as five minutes -- using the ever-expanding palette of Web 2.0 components available for free on the Internet.

When AJAXWorld Magazine's editor-in-chief Dion Hinchcliffe asked recently 'Is 'Web 2.0' Really About the Web, or Us?' he touched a vein.