As I started planning this post, I read over my notes from the last day of the expo, expecting to write a similar summary to the one I wrote on day 2. But I started boring myself, and I don’t do bored. Instead I decided to take a step back and look at Web2Expo from a more generalized position, forget the specifics. If you want to see the keynotes check out http://web2expo.blip.tv/.

So what did I notice when I took a step back? I noticed a massive progression towards exactly the type of localization of web communities and software that I wrote about in my post “When Bigger Isn’t Better“. Anyone who walked the floor of Web2Expo was overwhelmed with salesmen pitching their platform as a service model. At first all I could think was market dilution but then it hit me. With the growth in numbers of platforms for cloud software, comes massive if not exponential growth of the communities and applications that can be developed and deployed. The more communities and the more applications we see on these platforms, the more localized and niche-specific all of these applications become.

I made the prediction in previous posts that as the internet revolutionizes itself for what some are already deeming “Web 3.0″, we will see an influx of personalized applications tailored for more and more specific needs of the customer. The days of gargantuan all-encompassing web communities and applications are over, and I couldn’t help but feel this was the theme of Web2Expo.

Booth after booth that I visited on the show room displayed how their product met the specific needs of a specific client, and they were never shy on displaying their minute differences from the booth 5 feet down the isle. The sponsored sessions I sat in on constantly brought up concepts like bootstrapping, failing cheap, finding your niche, and simplifying your business model. All of these concepts lead to smaller more specific applications that are able to meet the needs of a customer far more efficiently than previous all-encompassing applications.

The web 3.0 wave if you will, is just gathering its force, and I cannot wait to see its crest. Expect higher quality more useful and efficient software than we have ever seen before. Now the question is, who will surf the wave and who will get lost to the undertow.

I just finished reading Josh Kopelman’s blog post on the Implicit Web, and it got me thinking. This is probably the third or forth article I’ve read on the subject, and not surprisingly it comes from another VC. It seems the VCs are all hyped up about the possibilities behind using our Digital Footprints to better organize our life on the web.

Josh lays out some pretty nice examples of how we can take advantage of the Implicit Web. He uses the example of creating a profile for your Facebook account. Every thing we do on the web from buying Mother’s day gifts on Amazon to signing up for a social network leaves bits of information about us on the web, or in the clouds. When Facebook asks you what are your favorite movies, books, and music, instead of having to answer the questions Facebook should simply ask Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes what you’re favorite music is.

Now I see exactly why the VCs are getting so excited. Someone who could provide either a way of organizing the data from all of these different locations onto one massive database, or provide a way to properly organize and categorize the data from the other locations could really disrupt the way we currently browse the web. Not only the web, but technology tracks and records our actions everywhere in our life. Every time you use your credit card, the store you used it at and your bank has detailed records of those transactions. Organizing this sort of data for benevolent use could make our lives a lot easier.

Note the word benevolent there. For all of the good that can be done by organizing our digital footprints, twice as much bad can be done. And this is where I really start to get concerned. I still can’t understand Twitter, why do I want people to know what I’m doing all the time? I don’t know how I feel about such vast amounts of information about my personal life being organized into a way in which large companies can access it. Do I really want Facebook knowing what my favorites are, and what I purchase the most?

Along those lines, I think it is going to be absolutely crucial for the companies who step up to take advantage of the implicit web to have proper privacy implementations. The ability for the user to control what companies can and can’t record about themselves will be crucial to the success of said technologies. Without such control, we’re talking some major Big Brother issues.

A few days ago I posted a video of Eric Schmidt answering the question “what is Web 3.0?” during a Q&A session at the Seoul Digital Forum. After making a crack at the phrase by calling it a marketing term he went on to discuss Web 3.0 as a “different way of building applications”. He goes into greater detail and his explanation is very concise and elegent, take a look for yourself.

I think that Eric Schmidt hit it right on the head. For years the technogods the likes of Larry Ellison have claimed the desktop is going to go virtual, killing the operating system entirely. This is something we are going to see take place at an extremely fast pace in the very near future. Applications are going to be gradually ported from desktop to web based, as the natural trend through the past year has shown us. I know personally, 3 years ago I was nothing without my desktop, and now I’m almost entirely virtual. Everything important to me is in the cloud, and I can access it on the go, wherever I’m at (with a few small exceptions).

Windows is going to be a thing of the past.  Web based platforms like Facebook have potential to virtually replace operating systems like windows. I’m not sure about you but If you’ve ever heard Mark Zuckerberg talk he sounds a lot like fellow Harvard dropout, Bill Gates. I don’t think that Zuckerberg will every be able to create the same type of dominance Gates was able to because of the infinite nature of the internet. Where Gates made people NEED his product, Zuckerberg will never be able to create that sort of demand. There will always be another startup that can offer an alternative to Facebook, and unlike with Windows the Internet makes it easy for the everyday user to take advantage of these options. This will promote good old fassion capitalistic competition, which will constantly force companies to offer their users a better product. Whoever can provide the most comfortable, convenient, and easy platform for its user will retain the biggest market share.

I think another trend we will see in the next wave of web technology will be a much larger presence of open source technology. Open source frameworks like Asterisk really open the door of possibilities for pioneering major industries such as the future of telephony infrastructure. Open source implementations in major infrastructure industries will eliminate a ton of the problems we currently deal with. The hassles of dealing with the phone company will be a thing of the past with proper open source implementations.

Imagine if MaBell made an effort to progress its technology for the sake of progress, and not financial gain. Maybe we wouldn’t be relying on the same exact telephony infrastructure our grandparents did. Open source communities have shown tremendous potential for advancing technology. I think it will be interesting to watch the progress of Asterisk, it could have some pretty profound impacts on our future.

I think in the immediate future we are going to see some pretty crazy advancements in the way of web-based video capture/conferencing. I remember watching movies 10 years ago where the actors communicated face to face via laptops and it was considered sci-fi and futuristic. Now my 15 year old sister video chats on the norm. iChat has already shown us some pretty amazing implementations of such technology, but I think we can expect a major shift to web based video conferencing software. Check out the Red5 project, it should make some considerable progress in this area. Sebastian Wagner has posted a really  promising piece of software that utilizes the Red5 framework called openmeeting on Google Code. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some Google/Yahoo aquisitions in the way of web-based video capture/conferencing/streaming in the near future.

I just picked up a copy of PC Magazine for the first time in years, and I was very very surprised. My memory of PC Mag is a bloated review magazine full of some great reviews, but impossible to navigate to the point of giving up. I have to be honest with you, when I read through this magazine I skipped the reviews, and instead headed straight for the columns. John C. Dvorak was cover material on the special edition “Green Issue”, and my purpose for picking up the magazine in the first place, so I headed straight for his article “Turn off the Lights!”.

I’m a huge fan of Dvorak so I was a bit biased going in, but after reading/loving his column I skimmed through the rest. First was an interesting article by Lance Ulanoff titled “Can We Stay Green?”. The article discussed the problem of not going green, but staying green. Once the media stops pumping us full of this newest fad we call “Going green”, are we really going to stay green, and follow through in our every day actions? It was a great read that really got me thinking about our culture today. Images of PC Monitor rivers, and landfill-slides like from Idiocracy stained my brain. But more importantly I was hooked, so I read on.

“Whats our 75-Year Tech Plan?” by Sascha Segan was the third article I read. It first proposed the issue of planning ahead by comparing our metro system with the French’s metro system and quoting its President saying something like “you need to plan more than just 5 years ahead, you need a 50, 75, 100 year plan!” Segan then lays out his ideas for an Infrastructure, Wireless, Transformative Technologies, and of course Energy Plans over the next 50-100 years. I love his thoughts, and I definitely recommend you check the article out yourself to avoid me rehashing.

The whole time I read the article I kept thinking about Obama. The things Segan talked about were the exact type of things Obama brings up over and over again. Obama has embraced the need to plan ahead, and the need to overhaul our technology infrastructure as is to ensure a better and more efficient future. Check out his one on one with Eric Schmidt from the @Google Talks. You think McCain knows what wireless spectrums are? Oops, enough political bashing, back to the point.

Those three articles alone was worth the price of purchase. I guess I always knew in the back of my head that Dvorak was a writer at PC Mag, and I guess I could have deduced that that meant PC Mag had some good reads, but I never gave it a chance. Magazine isn’t my medium of choice, but PC Mag just gained a new loyal web customer.