Category Archives: hotlist

Jeffrey Zeldman has an interesting post about web 3.0 like he calls it at A List Apart. For all of you working with AJAX and Ruby On Rails, creating social networking applications online, he wishes you good luck…. and reminds you of the fact that 20 people (and probably loads more) are working on the same. Or in a snapshot: web 2.0 is fresh-faced starlet on the intertwingled longtail to the disruptive experience  of tomorrow. Web 3.0 thinks you’re so 2005.

Another really interesting post can be found on Infotangle about “The Hype and the Hullabaloo of Web 2.0”. It’s not really taking opinion at this point, but it does give a good overview of what it’s all about, who’s pro & contra and why. If you haven’t heard of the phenomenon before, I guess I would suggest you read this.

Finally you should check out the source of this nice graph that goes together with my post. It comes from Simply Blog and it’s about the 10 reasons why web 2.0 is like disco. For the full story, visit the blog, but here is the top 10:

#1: Feels great, but don’t want any pictures caught doing it.
#2: Nobody quite sure what it is, but everyone wants to try.
#3: First learned how to do it at [foo | bar | summer] camp.
#4: Lots of parties, alcohol, and women with big hair.
#5: Can fool most people if you can just do [ajax | the hustle].
#6: More about having fun than doing something useful.
#7: Open source, free love, & fashion from the 70’s.
#8: People are remixing it all the time.
#9: More popular it gets, more people trash it, more popular it gets.

and last but not least:

#10: Done best when you don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks.

I just failed miserably on the web 2.0 quiz, basically showing I have no clue what the new web is about. What the heck, it reminds me of an interesting post of Dion Hincliffe on web 2.0, namely the 10 issues facing web 2.0 today. Really worth reading. In short:

1. Excessive hype: it’s not the solution to every software problem so stop proclaiming this
2. Lack of simple definition: look it up on Wikipedia if you want
3. Aging poster children: loads of startup are being released, but not one has yet made a difference like say Google (and they exist already for 7 years)
4. Needing a permaconnection: most applications require fast, stable and always-on connections
5. Ajax as the official web 2.0 experience: trying to use it for a hammer in every solution will cause everyone a lot of difficulty
6. Excessive attention on the technology: people care about the given value, not how that value has been created underneath
7. Really bad adherents: don’t call yourself of what you do web 2.0, just do it
8. Blogging instead of doing: too much discussion about it and not enough action
9. Not facing hard thruths: some aspects of the web 2.0 business models aren’t so postive
10. Adopting the lightweight creation model: how will large, centrally controlled organisations (think Microsoft) try to deliver nimble, lightweight software in frequent releases at a faster speed than their current software cycle

More and more web predictions for 2006 popup these days. I think they’re all fun to read, some of them more realistic than others. Make sure you read John Battelle’s predictions, it’s been up there for a few days now but a must read I think. Wondering how good/bad he was the years before, take a look at his review on both the 2004 and the 2005 predictions.

Another great top 10 is to be found on Dave’s WordPress Blog. He actually only gets to 8, but feel free to fill the gap with some of the nice ideas in the comments that could easily feature in his top 10. I especially like the Skype-Ebay module that scans everything in your house and puts it on auction :-)

Another way to do this is by using Matt McAlister’s Dotcom Prediction Generator, certainly if you need to get your own predictions out before the New Year but don’t know what to say.

And now we’re at it, some more of the serious predictions can be found over here:

• Top 10 tech trends for 2006 (The Mercury News)
• Predictions on Slashdot
• Top predictions for 2006 (Computerworld)
• New Media Predictions (Robin Good)
• The Coming Year in Online Marketing (ClickZ)
• Internet Marketing Predictions for 2006 (WMG)

Personally I would say that we will see the first stumble of Google, the first glitch on their way up. We will also see a boost of video in online advertising, blogging and certainly video search. Telephony over the web will finally breakthrough, now all the ‘classic’ IM services are gearing up their voice solution in respect to what Skype is offering. There will be better measurement on RSS, going hand in hand with more advertising on RSS too. I also feel there’s an opportunity for more dynamic feeds than what’s mainly offered for the moment, but 2006 might as well be the year to change this. And ofcourse user generated content is still so hot that we will be seeing a lot more in this space too. Finally we will get more and more convergence between the desktop and the internet (think also Vista and Windows Live) and especially mobile.

Happy 2006 for all in the online industry (and all the others too ofcourse). There was a great top 10 on Conversion Rater, let’s not forget to look back in 12 months and see if it was any good. I feel there’s certainly something to it:

1. RSS will become two-way with the help of Simple Sharing Extensions from Microsoft
2. Social news site Digg will expand into other content areas and media types and then will be acquired
3. Web 2.0 will be looked down upon as a buzzword, and it’s usage will drop off dramatically
4. Face-recognition photo application Riya will be acquired by a major player
5. Some ecommerce shopping applications using the more recent advancements in social web technologies will be developed and will succeed
6. Google Analytics will again drop the hammer on the web analytics industry
7. A forward thinking company will build technology to support transparency, efficiency, and relationships in the online advertising business
8. Microsoft will launch a contextual advertising network that will either be huge, or fail miserably
9. Two to three new startups will be so cool and successful they will make the heroes of 2005 like Flickr and del.icio.us seem small and insignificant
10. The venture capital investments and acquisition bubble will heat up even more, then deflate in the 2nd half of 2006 after a number of companies fail

Read more at Conversion Rater.

As probably the most of you are still looking for nice christmas presents these days – as am I – the internet again can offer us some great help. Find good ideas for original presents on the web, now almost every website is creating their Top 10 2005 list. This is a first overview of some of those hotlists, which I will follow up on the coming days.

As far as gadgets are concerned, there are the Ten to Avoid or Hottest Gadgets for 2005. But the more creative lists are the ones that really get my attention. The guys at MSN have some neat examples, like the Top 10 No-Fail Gift Ideas For Your Boss or the Top 10 Funky Hostess Gifts.

 Happy shopping.