It's the end of a hectic week of conference-going for your R/WW correspondent - and so time for a wrap-up of my thoughts on the Web 2.0 Summit. Firstly, my overriding feeling is that this year's conference was a lot different from last year's. It was still a great conference, but in a different way - perhaps reflected in the name change to Summit (a more business-sounding title). Last year there were a lot more developers and designers running around, this year the crowd was overwhelmingly from the media and business worlds. No doubt because of this, I also felt this year's conference lacked in cutting edge new products - and I didn't learn many new insights about Web technology. Having said that, it was still a very enjoyable conference - O'Reilly Media and CMP put on a great show. There was plenty of schmoozing in the hallways and lots of excellent discussions.

Why was 2006 different to 2005?

As others have pointed out, the Summit had an 'exclusive' feel to it due to the $3k price tag and business focus - and this meant a lot of the development and design innovators in the Web world were not present. The reason why the developer/designer set has been crowded out of this conference reflects the fact that, over the last year, traditional media companies (e.g. EMI, Fox Interactive, the TV networks) have entered the Web 2.0 world in a big way. That is a trend that will only intensify over the coming year, as web innovation becomes mainstream. Also more traditional big tech companies are doing 'web 2.0' things - e.g. Intel released an enterprise suite at the Summit and companies like IBM and Symantic were in attendance. These trends are inevitable - and welcome. Because how else will little web 2.0 startups be ultimately successful, unless they're embraced by the mass market that big companies (or VC money) can bring them?

I do feel sad though that the developers and designers aren't as much a part of the Web 2.0 Summit (nee Conference) any more - but perhaps this is where the Web 2.0 Expo will come in, the new sister conference being held in April 2007. I certainly hope so, because finding out about new web technologies and trends is what I love the best.

The Best of the conference

To be purely selfish, undoubtedly my personal highlight was seeing Lou Reed play live (courtesy of AOL). I've read some cynical reports about the 20-minute set he played - that he was surly to the crowd and ironic etc. But isn't that what you always get from a Lou Reed show? I thought his set was great and he's a legend to me - 'nuff said! :-)

But onto actual Web stuff... highlights included:

• Jeff Bezos, who spoke on day 1, was especially interesting - talking about Amazon's WebOS initiatives. This is a topic that Read/WriteWeb has covered extensively and hearing Bezos describe the background and strategy around this was fascinating. I would've liked to hear a bit more about their future plans, but then that's something R/WW will dig into for you! ;-)
• The desktop/Web integration theme was hot this year - with Adobe and Laszlo both in attendance. I will explore both technologies in future posts. Also Zimbra announced an offline mode for their web office suite. As Scott Karp nicely put it to me later, the offline technologies we're seeing are very reflective of this transitional online/offline period of the Web. Broadband is not ubiquitous yet (ironically demonstrated by the poor WiFi at the Summit venue!), so that's why we're seeing all these offline solutions.
• Mary Meeker's The State of the Internet, Part 3. It was another 10-minute quickfire powerpoint show by Meeker, with data points hitting the stunned audience like machine gun bullets. But it's great data and I will be delving into the powerpoint when I get a chance!
• A Conversation with Ray Ozzie - although Ozzie didn't reveal anything new, he's a person who commands a great deal of respect and so is a worthy successor to Bill Gates in terms of vision and strategy. I also enjoyed hearing the counterpoint "office is dead" view from Steve Gillmor in the press room afterwards.
• The panel featuring 5 teenagers and 5 parents talking about what they use on the Web was interesting, if a little awkward at times. What would be great is if some of the Web research or analytics firms did bigger studies of this - and released it to the blog world. Then we'd have some substantive data to build on and analyze. It is certainly important to know what 'real world' people use on the Web, so I viewed this panel as just a taster for the kind of data we're crying out for.

The disappointments

• The Web 2.0 Summit Launchpad fell a little flat, in my opinion. There were some innovative products there (e.g. 3B, Omnidrive, Sharpcast), but some of the others seemed a little derivative. I don't mean to dismiss their potential, as no doubt some will make great businesses. And I admire anyone who goes out and does a web startup, so I wish all of them the best with their products. But I really wanted to see the next Zimbra, or the next JotSpot, or the next big thing. I don't think we saw that. I'd be interested in your opinions on this (feel free to comment).
• I didn't come away from the conference having learned much - even though I enjoyed the conference overall.
• The intent to have more international voices was great, but there still seems to be a cultural disconnect. Liz Gannes at Gigaom called the international speakers (and other people outside of the inner tech circles) "cultural exhibits". Personally I think the right intent is there from the conference organizers to make the event more international, so hopefully next year there will be more innovative companies from outside the Valley - both speaking and showing their products. There's a lot going on outside the valley in terms of innovation, as R/WW's International Web Apps series has proven.
• Also disappointing was that I couldn't respond to all the email requests I got to check out new products, and meet all the people I wanted to! :-(

Summary

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the conference. Last year in my wrap-up I probably came across as a little too enthusiastic - even though I called last year's post Cautious Optimism and Cynical Buzz. This year I wasn't as excited, but the conference was just as busy and maybe a little more 'mature' in terms of where the industry is headed. So my feeling coming away from the conference is that it was a great crowd of people there and the web industry is still alive and thriving. Are we in a bubble? Absolutely, so the cautious optimism and cynical buzz remains. 

Some folks, like Ben Metcalfe, think the conference has lost its edge. Maybe it has, but the Web 2.0 Summit is a different beast now than it was last year - and that's a sign of the times. Or to put it another way, so Lou Reed does corporate gigs now... hey, it's still great music! ;-)

Pics: Dave Forrest, RJ, Dave McClure

Poll

Tell us what you think in terms of what you learned from the Summit - either if you were lucky enough to be there, or from the reports filed by me and other blogs/sites. Let us know in the following poll. Plus comments (as always) are welcome.

This is the final session at the Web 2.0 Summit this year, a conversation with Yahoo co-founder David Filo and Bradley Horowitz (Yahoo's head of innovation).

John says there's a vibe that Y! has slowed down somewhat in public perception, as opposed to Google. Bradley says that he picks up that from the media. He says Y! has two lines of business - "audience creation" and monetization. He says they haven't done as good a job with the monetization part in recent years. He says Y! is "a social media company" and so tries to knit together / integrate a lot of their services. He says Y! has been growing faster than the internet as a whole.

John asks David if they think a lot about Google. David says yes, as Google started out in one area and now they cover a lot of things. He says 12 years ago it was about competing with AOL, Time Warner, etc. So there has never been a shortage of competitors, but they change over time. He says "the next thing" is just as much a threat - MySpace, YouTube etc. He says that in 5 years time things will be very different again, so may be another startup that gets big.

John asks what things they look for in new companies. David says they look for a great product and service that fits into Y!, but the people is important. Bradley says the "micro acquisition" is something Y! does well in - e.g. Flickr, upcoming.

John talks about the rumors of Yahoo merging with another large Internet company, like Microsoft. David says these things have been talked about for years, so he doesn't have anything to add.

Openness - what is Yahoo's take? David says it's very important to them, e.g. in the platforms and APIs. Bradley talks about the cultural importance of it and mentions the Y! Hack Day.

A question about scaling the infrastructure and perhaps doing something like Amazon's S2 etc. David says the challenges are the physics of it (e.g. building data centers) and other "across the board" challenges.

Question about peoples perception of Y! - mentioning the previous panel. David says kids thinking Y! is "silly" is fine, because they want it to be fun. Trust is also important and takes many years.

Dave McClure asks about why no blogging platform? Dave likes Facebook and Vox for Y! Bradley says 360 is a blogging product - and "it may be doing a 180".

A question about social media, and whether Y! is passionate about blogging. David says he hopes in 5 years from now Y! will be "a very major player in that space".

At last year's Web 2.0 Conference, a much discussed panel was one featuring a group of teenagers telling everyone what Web products they use. This year the concept has been take an extra level, by inviting the parents of the teenagers as well. The panel was moderated by Safa Rashtchy.

Most of the panel has Google as their main search engine. One adult panelist uses Ask.com, because she can put questions into the search box. One (adult) panelist says she uses Google out of habit. Another adult panelist uses Yahoo for the maps and other information. One of the teenagers says she uses Google because her school wants her to. Most of the panelists did not know MSN had a search engine.

In regards to online video, one adult panelist said she spends 3-4 hours per week on YouTube. A teenager spends 2-3 hours a day at the library with his friends watching YouTube. One teenager says he uses Google Video. Another says she uses some download software (Shakespeare something??). Safa asks would any of them pay $1 to watch video, e.g. Lost. The majority opinion is no. As for free but with videos, one teenager says she would and in fact it's better than download.

Website recognition

Safa rattles off some names of websites:

• Skype - just two people know what it is and use it, both for international calls. One says "it rarely works" in terms of sound quality.
• craigslist - yes
• yelp - no
• judyslist - no
• blogs - yes, about half read them read them; a couple mentioned reading them on myspace, but also for their interests/hobbies

Re uploading, most have done this. One adult panelist says pictures.

Internet Companies

Safa now asks about companies:

• Yahoo: most of the adult panelists use them - e.g. for horoscopes. a lot of them use Yahoo Mail (a few use Gmail); one teenager thinks Yahoo is "silly", as in entertaining. One adult panelist says she likes Yahoo for things like games and emails, and scans the news.
• Google: one teenager "seems more like a friend" and he also uses Gmail because it's easy and user-friendly; another says he uses Google Video and he likes Google; all the teenagers would trust Google over Yahoo!
• MSN: nobody has much to say about it; one teenager says he likes Xbox; one says they like the little (cartoon) characters. Word was mentioned.
• eBay: some of them use it, e.g. for concert tickets, books etc.
• Amazon: a few people, one says for "mostly media type things" like books, CDs.

Instant Messaging

One teenager uses AOL "all day" to talk to his friends. Same for another teenage boy. Three most mentioned by teenagers were AIM, MSN and Yahoo. One says 2-3 hours per day.

MySpace

One teenager compares MySpace to xmas presents, because he sees something new or a new friend every day - he spends around 3 hours per day. Another says 2-3 hours per day - "making sure my profile's good". One mother signed up to monitor what her child was doing - she found out her 14 year old son was 17 on MySpace.

Questions

Do they read paper books? Not much response, but one uses book summaries.

Issues? One says security and spam (she has been a victim of identity theft).

Browser choice: 3 teenagers say Firefox. Two say IE. Of the adults, 3 say IE, one says Opera, one Firefox.

Cellphone use? The adults use them for text and talk; they all seem to use email on a cellphone. One notes she has a sidekick.

Marissa Mayer from Google only has 10 minutes to speak at Web 2.0 Summit, so she gives a high level look at Google's use of Ajax in applications. She notes that the key reason they created Gmail in Ajax was speed. This is a theme in Google Maps too. In terms of Google Videos, she says how instant something is and giving instant gratification is key - they used to make users wait 24-48 hours to see their videos after uploading to GVideo.

She asks what does speed mean for future apps? She has a slide that shows browser support - FF2 and IE7. Marissa says we'll see built-in support for client side languages (e.g. javascript). She says also that people will spend more time online, due to increase in broadband etc - and this is good for Google. Another point she makes is that mobile hardware will improve a lot.

In conclusion, she says speed is very important for web 2.0 and the future of the Web.

Kevin Rose is on stage talking about what Digg knows. He says they have 600k editors that digg stories. Yesterday they set a record for fastest story to hit digg frontpage - the Rumsfeld resignation story took just 4 minutes to hit the homepage after it was submitted! He said netscape and reddit also got the story on their frontpages before mainstream media. 33% of diggs for popular stories typically come via Swarm or Stack.

Kevin said that they'll be launching a custom flash toollit for publishers soon, for them to skin their own interface for swarm/stack. He shows a very cute (but Kevin called it a bit lame) example of bees pollinating (=digging) flowers (=stories), so the flowers will grow over time.

Kevin now addresses the issue of gaming. He says they have 1 sitewide administrator, so they have to create the tools behind the scenes for that person plus the community to help prevent gaming. He says they gave the power to the community to prevent the spamming, but they wanted to go one step deeper. So they take a look at digg patterns - trying to pick up "unhealthy patterns". So they look at referrers, ip addresses etc - if for example 90% no referrals for a story, the know it's spam. Another thing they look for is same-source digging - always digging the same source. Also high % of anon proxies.

Kevin ends by saying they have around 20 new features coming next month.

Today has already had a flurry of announcements and news. Here's a brief wrap of them:

• Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth was introduced by Gary Flake at the conference. It's an impressive 3D and photo analysis tool. Currently you can't upload your own photos, so it's more a showcase than a real product right now.
• Yahoo has announced integration of their IM product with Yahoo Mail Beta. It will be a single interface, differentiating it from the Gmail and Gtalk integration (which can be a little awkward to use at times).
• Zimbra announced new offline functionality, which enables you to access your email while on a plane, train, etc. Basically it's a local sync'd cache of the data, which allows you to search, tag, organize your data even without network access - and it syncs up when you go back online. To be honest, this would've come in handy at the Summit!! (where wifi has been spotty at best).
• Sharpcast today introduced a new service code-named ‚ÄúHummingbird‚Ä?. It allows people to manage all kinds of file types - e.g. documents, photos, music and videos - across their computer hard drives, mobile devices and the web. This is a continuation of their long-term strategy to enable syncing of all media across devices and the Web.
• ThinkFree, a Web Office suite provider, has launched ThinkFree Viewers - which allow Web services such as Coil (a virtual office application for work processing) to add office productivity functionality to their applications and Web sites.

I'll follow up with more substantial analysis a little later. It's been so hectic here and yesterday I was extremely fortunate to see Lou Reed playing live, courtesy of AOL at the after-dinner show! I'm still buzzing about that, as I'm a huge Velvet Underground fan. Anyway, more tech related stories coming soon :-)

In the final session of the day, John Battelle chats with Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. John starts with the now famous memo, which "leaked" (but it wasn't leaked, according to Ray) - he asked Ray how it was progressing. Ray said the intent of the memo was to start people thinking. He said now they're at a very interesting juncture, now that office and Vista are "done" - i.e. "released to manufacturing" said Ray. He said this means when it will be released to the public, it won't be perfect but "it's fulfilling the role that an operating system needs to have in this era". He said the single biggest thing Vista can do is provide a secure environment for doing things on the Web. He said "Vista really was secure by design", to ensure vulnerabilities were removed before it is shipped. Vista will be released to businesses by end of Nov, and to consumers by end of January. Office is due by end of Nov.

John asks if there'll be a cultural change in Microsoft. Ray says that Microsoft has a lot of different groups and he says things have changed already - but "it's not one person that makes this happen, it's a conversation".

John asks if the current web services and online advertising business model as big a deal as the mid-90's Gates memo on the Internet. Ray said it's as big a deal business-wise. He says they ask themselves what is the best way to deliver value - which John notes is called 'scenario-based design'. He says his message in the memo was: for the experience being delivered via the Internet, which piece will be on PC and which via the browser? So it's an evolution of thinking from the PC era, then the server era.

John asks what Ray thinks of Google. Ray praises Google and says they stay focused on the user. John says Google is proving the advertising model for web services, so he asks Ray what's the zeitgeist on the Microsoft campus. John mentions the office suite. Ray says there are half a billion odd users in the office market, so he says they already have the audience - so his question is how they deliver value to this audience in this era. John asks when Word will be completely web native? Ray says it depends on the scenario of the usage - he doesn't see that it's the right thing to do to take the PC interface and functionality, and port it up to the Web. Ray says the Web is good at universal access, sharing scenarios, etc - and the PC is good at flexible and fast UI, is reliable. He says we're going to a world where we're dropping media items into our documents, but the PC was designed for media editing.

John says that Bill Gates had ability to mandate things to happen, so will Ray have that ability? Ray says that the way that Microsoft works, it is very rare that Bill just gave orders and they had to be done. For Ray, he was given "a free pass" when he came into the company, but he has to earn the "followership" that Bill had.

Qst from the audience: what will be the theme for software in next generation? (3-5 years). Ray said that on the office side, he thinks the biggest opportunity is mobile devices, smart phones - so a lot of opportunity with those different types of productivity scenarios. On the Vista side, hardware is moving from multicore to manycore (many processors), so the system needs to help app programmers to consume that. He also thinks there's opportunities to innovate in power management. He says they'll address Windows support things like state separation and deployment models will be brought up to date ("everything should be deployed on the Web").

Qst regarding the Adobe CEO's comment that PDF has won the game of electronic reading file format. Ray said that they're now in an era where customers are storing data for a long time, so it's imperative that all vendors create formats that enable data longevity. He says XML makes data transparent and that's the world we're in right now.

Qst re Zune, why did MS come up with a closed system for music. Ray says there's one very strong focus with Zune, that is to build an end-to-end experience. He says they never would have succeeded at this if they put too many dependencies and complexities in the product at once - but this may open up in future.

This session at Web 2.0 Summit reunites two old Ask.com execs, current Ask CEO Jim Lanzone and former and ex-CEO and now senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft Steve Berkowitz (whom I interviewed a couple of days ago).

60-70% of Ask's revenue historically comes from Google (the current figure isn't being revealed, but Jim said it's in that ballpark). That's from contextual ads on Ask.com, which come from Google.

Steve notes that Microsoft's challenge is to take the search experience the next step from Google. He says that Microsoft's challenge is to move search from products to experiences - "keep the users engaged".

John Battelle asks if Ask.com will begin to roll out more new features. Jim says that 6-7 months after the ask.com launch, they need to earn the respect of people - after the poor reputation for quality Jeeves used to have. He said they're not a portal, but a straight search engine - which is another reason for the ask.com brand. He's aiming to be the number 2 brand in search - he says the top results in Ask are editorial, which he thinks makes them higher quality.

Steve says there will be a lot of innovation in the UI, graphical search for example. Also he says the search experience depends on how a user enters the search - e.g. that may affect how search utilizes a user's community. But the main point is that both Steve and Jim emphasize that search will continue to evolve.

John asks: where is Google vulnerable? Jim says that there hasn't been much competition for Google, until now. He says Google's challenge is to grow "beyond search", which brings the risk that they won't innovate so much in search as they used to. Steve says that backwards compatibility will be Google's greatest challenge. He also mentions that Google expanding their footprint is a risk - as it's a big task and discipline to make sure the focus stays right. Also he says being a public company is a challenge.

Jim points out that the whole search industry will continue to grow - he says Ask is the 7th biggest web property in the US, ahead of Amazon for example.

Steve says that in search "the product is the marketing" - and he thinks Google is in a great position in that respect.

A question from the audience for Steve about live.com, what is his vision for it. Steve says his vision is for "search plus", that live.com will be the way to get to Microsoft's services. He says that search will be center to their product range.

See also: Microsoft's 3D Web: A Chat with Steve Berkowitz and Christopher Payne (an interview I did with Steve and his colleague Christopher Payne, a couple of days ago)

At last year's Web 2.0 Conference, Mary Meeker of MorganStanley outlined how mobile and Asia were set for big growth. At this year's Summit, Meeker focused on video and monetizing that.

Mary speaks at a million miles per hour and data points go past faster than one can type them. So check out the slides for all the data details. Some quick notes:

• It's tough to succeed on the Web - around 2% of tech companies create close to 100% of the wealth.
• International markets are becoming crucial, as US share of world internet users falls from 37% to around 20% in 2007. China obviously, but also India and Russia are noted by Mary.
• Mobile - entering the "adoption sweet spot" in 2007.
• Growth is still going up - especially outside the US.
• Just as Apple monetized online music, the market for online video is poised for similar growth
• Momentum for online video continues to build
• Effective editing of video will become more important - e.g. Yahoo's The 9.
• Audio search will become more popular
• Only 13% of top 15 online retailers are pure internet plays (Amazon is #1)
• Watch where the younger generation goes

Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen is talking to Tim O'Reilly on stage now. Bruce says that before the Macromedia acquisition, Adobe was a peripheral player on the Web - so the acquisition brought them back into the heart and soul of the Web. He talks about the importance of Flash on mobile (Flash lite), which is key going forward. 

Tim asked him about Ajax and how it is taking over the use of Flash in some things. Bruce replied that they don't view Ajax as a competitor to Flash. He also says they've believed in open standards from day 1.

On the challenge from Microsoft, Bruce said he's pleased Google is "a heat shield". He says "the good news is that Microsoft has lots of enemies". He notes that Microsoft has been competing with Adobe almost as long as they've been in business - e.g. Microsoft's PhotoDrop product in the mid-90's. He says Adobe will focus on what they're really good at - "making things local".

Tim mentions the electronic reading apps that both Microsoft (via NYTimes) and Adobe have come out with recently. Bruce says the NYTimes Reader is similar to what Adobe has been trying to do with PDF. Adobe are extending that themselves with their Digital Reader. He says over the last 7 years they've been talking about ebooks, but he thinks "we're almost there" in regards to ebook devices - he points to Sony Reader as an example.

Finally he talks a little about Apollo, which renders Flex and HTML etc both within and outside the browser - "think iTunes on steriods". Tim asks whether that makes Adobe the "dark horse" of Internet platform players, a question which is left hanging....

Day 2 at the Web 2.0 Summit and Jeff Bezos is on stage, talking about S3 and EC2. He says "we're a small company with big ideas", but they've been surprised at the level of interest in these services. He thinks people are excited because they can see a future where you can go from idea to implementation very quickly - and that it's very empowering. So Amazon is taking care of the 'heavy lifting', which they call "muck". He notes that it's a continuous loop. He says 70% of energy and dollars in web app development by people is in this heavy lifting, so Amazon wants to solve that. He ends with: "we make muck, so you don't have to".

Now Tim is asking questions to Jeff - he starts off by asking why Microsoft isn't in this business (they are a customer of Amazon in these services). Or Google. Why a retailer? Jeff says they've been doing this for 11 years - operating a web-scale business. He says they have to be very efficient at Amazon.com, so they've always operated their infrastructure like that. Tim asks why though? Jeff responds that they've been working on these services for several years now. His definition of web 2.0 is computers talking to computers - which is a lot of what we're seeing with web services. So Jeff says they're doing this because they're good at it, they know how to do it and they think it's a great business.

The Launchpad at the Web 2.0 Summit is a popular event, the venue is packed.  13 companies have 5 minutes each. Here are some quick impressionistic views of how it went....

In the chair is a music-based video game, where people can interact with music - e.g. generate your own content and play along. It's being billed as a music publishing platform, with mashup and remix tools. Today is the launch of their version 2 beta. Seems like a cute tool, not sure how useful it is for most people.

instructables is "step-by-step collaboration" for home projects. It's targeted at "passionate" hobbyists. Again, it's a nice tool... not groundbreaking.

Klostu is positioning itself as "the blogosphere of bulletin boards". Its aim is to connect boards together, by giving you a unique id that you can use across multiple boards. As the presenter said, it "has all the bells and whistles of social networks".

A good concept perhaps, although not sure if it's compelling to bulletin board users - aren't they loyal to their particular boards? Not sure, but I'm curious to know the percentage of people who use multiple bulletin boards.

Sharpcast is next and this is a product I like (we've profiled it before on R/WW). It synchs data across PCs, the Web and mobile. Sharpcast Photos was the first such product, but today Gibu Thomas the CEO is launching a product code-named Hummingbird - which synchs all files. Gibu had some issues with his demo computers, but nevertheless the product is a compelling one I believe.

Rael Dornfest's new company has a product called stikki. He too was initially affected by demo issues. Stikkit is a yellow post-it notes tool. One of the things it does is "make messy data smarter" and allows you to share that data. So it's a very granular data-sharing app. It aims to get as close to paper as possible. Sounds interesting, but it'll have a tough job replacing paper in my life (I still use paper notebooks!).

Turn is a search-like tool for online advertising. It has bidded CPA pricing, for graphical and text ads. The CPA actions could be a sale, a lead or anything. They claim to analyze webpages to determine which ads are suitable for it. They rank all their ads based on the probability of action. They call this "automated targeting". It sounds impressive, particularly as CPA is mostly an unsolved problem right now on the Web.

Sphere is a blog search engine. It's had a lot of blogosphere buzz already, but Technorati still seems to dominate this space. Now they're partnering with mainstream media, starting with MarketWatch. They have also introduced a little clickable pop-up link, which displays related blogs and articles.

Omnidrive is an online storage app, that aims to merge the desktop with the web. It's now positioning itself as a "storage aggregator". It has both a desktop and web interface, which both have an OS style interface. It also has sharing features and a developer API.

Adify enables you to build your own advertising networks - creating "one thousand John Battelles" in the presenter's words. [nb: by this point I'm getting drowsy... not Adify's fault, I should add! But it's a long session and there's only so many product pitches I can bear....]

3B is a 3D social network, that operates from inside the browser. You can use MySpace, Hi5 or Bebo pages or photos you've loaded onto Flickr, Photobucket or any other web service. For example it can spider MySpace, allowing you to add your friends there onto 3B. You can see and interact with your friends with 3B. It's also a visual search tool, allowing you to order search windows in the 3D space. You can change the wallpaper and create "personal 3D spaces". It looks like it uses scraping to put other web content inside this 3D environment. Intriguing product, which I am keen to explore some more. Received a good round of applause from the crowd here.

oDesk is a jobs website and community. It basically matches freelancers (called "providers") with employers. It has some project management tools to complement all this. One of its aims to is to "build trust" between participants - e.g. it can take screenshots of the worker every 6 hours and track their mouseclicks (!!!). How this builds trust I don't know...

Venyo also aims to build trust, by giving blogs and other sites reputations. Includes the Vindex, a "global trust index." Sounds like a little too much work for the participants. It's a nice idea and possibly has a market, but getting take-up will be challenging.

Timebridge is a scheduling and calendaring tool. It works with Outlook and works by proposing meetings to participants by email. Participants reply via a team environment. At this point Timebridge does the scheduling (finds suitable time for everyone, confirms and notifies, etc). Sounds like an interesting value-add for Outlook users, but is it enough to lure Outlook users to try it?

Summary

Phew, that was a long session and everyone is tired now. Of all the ones listed here, 3B was the one that intrigued me the most. But check out the ones that interest you and let us know what you think.

I'm at a session at the Web 2.0 Summit called 'Breaking Free: Working with Real Time Data, Online, Offline, and Outside of the Browser'. The speaker is Christophe Coenraets, a Senior Technical Evangelist from Adobe. He starts off by saying that Adobe is looking for a "high definition user experience". He thinks the following things are still missing from the Web:

• Expressiveness
• Performance
• Rich Media - not just passive consumption like YouTube, but interactive
• Real Time - a rich flow of data between the server and the client
• Desktop/Offline - apps that run outside the browser

Adobe open sources Virtual Machine technology to Mozilla

He then talks about the Flash Player 9, which includes a virtual machine for ActionScript (like Java). In laymens terms, "virtual machine" refers to the software used to run applications.

While I'm no expert in Adobe products yet, I have learned this year that they're promoting a mix of Ajax and Flash technologies for web-based apps - rather than demanding that Flash is best for all interactivity on the Web. Widgets is one area where there is a lot of promise in Flash, because they are mini apps where interactivity is a primary concern.

John Dowdell has an excellent list of links and quotes if you want to follow up on this news, including this great soundbite from Slashdot: "AJAX in Flash, with a Web 2.0 hype engine. May god have mercy on us all."

Apollo Project

Christophe talks about how Apollo will be able to play and render different types of content - e.g. Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax. What this means is that you can take HTML content offline. I'll be finding out more about Apollo during the conference.

This workshop I'm sitting in on currently is a bit developer-focused for my high level brain to process, so I'll follow up with another post later when I've gotten more details of Apollo.

Tomorrow morning I'm traveling to San Francisco for next week's Web 2.0 Conference. I attended it last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Read/WriteWeb's coverage of the 2005 conference is here - and needless to say I'll be pumping out the posts again this year.

"These trends manifest themselves under a variety of guises, names, and technologies: social computing, user-generated content, software as a service, podcasting, blogs, and the read–write web. Taken together, they are Web 2.0, the next-generation, userdriven, intelligent web. This report is a guide to understanding the principles of Web 2.0 today, providing you with the information and tools you need to implement Web 2.0 concepts in your own products and organization."

The report also kindly mentions this blog, Read/WriteWeb, in the Reading List appendix.

If you're at the conference next week, I look forward to meeting you. I'll also be attending the Widgets Live event on Monday. If you're unable to attend either, I will be doing my best to cover the big news and the interesting new technologies here on Read/WriteWeb!

Update: Looks like I jumped the gun on the public announcement of a certain name change. I've updated my post accordingly, but will revert back to the original soon.