I stumbled on a blog last week that was waxing lyrical about “Web 3.0″ – one of those I-know-its-gotta-be-hype terms that you don’t need to follow up to know its gotta be hype. This is because Web 2.0 was itself a meaningless term, which was initially invented in an effort to describe new fabulously valuable companies (Google being the prime example) that emerged despite the dot com bust, or possibly to indicate a recovery from the dot com bust. All the valuable social networking sites can be included under this technology-free definition, so most commentators now use Web 2.0 to indicate “social networking”. Others have decided that it means Ajax and more interactive web technology, when in fact it only means “the bust is over”.

As for Web 3.0, it’s been suggested that it’s “avatars in virtual worlds”, or its the “mobile web”, or its the “semantic web”.

No it’s not, it’s hype.

SAP and Business Objects

News just broke that SAP wants to acquire Business Objects. The market reacted unfavorably, marking down SAP’s shares a little. However, I’m not convinced it’s a bad move. It would give SAP a big foot print in the BI market and it would probably be able to grow revenues quickly from that foot print, within it’s customer base. However, I expect that Cognos, Business Objects’ main direct competitor, will take it as good news. It can now position itself as being “independent”, the “BI company”, etc.

Internet Politics

If you are interested in knowing who you’d support among the US presidential candidates if it were all a matter of policy positions then go to this Quiz. Most people doing the quiz find themselves aligned with a different candidate than the one they are inclined to vote for.

We’re done here.