Web 2.0 - highlighted by web services, mashups, the explosion of leveraging Google Maps, Wikis & Blogs, RSS/ATOM feeds, REST, etc - presumes that an application is the value-add portion of lots of reusable services. In most cases, the resources are remote and may or may not have had the expected usage.

Moore’s Law assumes compute power will double every 18 months (at least as it relates to the processor chip).

Typical computer applications like word processing, graphics editors, presentation packages, etc. are gobbling up more and more computer resources including CPU and memory. It’s ridiculous to think that a 1.5GB memory machine with a 1.83Ghz Duo-Core chipset crawls with some of today’s applications.

I don’t expect Web 2.0 to deliver an equivalent to Photoshop CS. At the same time, I don’t do a lot of high end image editing. I need some simple web graphics and there are websites like Adam Kalsey’s Button Maker that make this possible.

Will we finally see useful Internet service based applications ? Will Moore’s Law shift importance to mega servers “out there” somewhere ?

Will we trust Internet applications ?

Gmail, Flickr, and others are banking on the answer being “yes”. I think these services are amazing but I *don’t* use them. I am having trust issues - will my personal privacy remain intact ? What will Google and Yahoo (the owner of Flickr) do with all of our data ? Will we end up with something like the extreme targeted advertising we saw in Minority Report ?

Related tangests ...   Using Prism to access web applications   Social software does not mean "public"   How much do you pay for the pipe ?

Posted in Blogs, Gmail, Hosting, Privacy, Web 2.0, Wikis |

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