I smell a rat - one of a somewhat self-serving nature.

Over on ZDNet, Harry Debes, CEO of non-SaaS provider Lawson, has given SaaS just two years to live. OK guys, time for us all to pack up then.

At least, that is, until Cloud Computing takes over…

Meanwhile perhaps Mr Debes thinks he can still shift a few units before the next acronym/buzzword hits…

Tags: Cloud Computing, SaaS

Seems to be a day for death-knells to be sounded.

Over on ClickZ, Rebecca Lieb just blogged about the death of Dot-Mobi (as she spells it). Will anyone notice?

I remain frustrated when I surf from my mobile by sites that insist on showing me a ‘mobile-friendly’ (for which, more often than not, read ‘hobbled’) site. Hands up BBC, amongst others. Actually Vodafone aren’t much better - they keep trying to ring fence me into a WAP environment which really doesn’t suit my semi-clever mobile phone.

Rebecca says it’s all over for .mobi because of the iPhone - I can’t disagree with that… other than to say those of us who’ve been using (love the phrase:) smartphones over the past couple of years have so moved past it.

To my earlier point this week, this is one of the main drivers behind what I think Web 3.0 is about: getting the proposition right for surfing in the open. Thanks to Steve Jobs for getting enough people using the web on the go to make this finally bubble up to the surface.

Tags: iphone, mobile

Here’s one example.

And it seems we’re all reading much the same source material (Wikipedia, TBL etc) but coming up with very different interpretations. Hardly surprising given… see more that:

• there’s still room for debate about exactly what Web 1.0 and 2.0 are/were
• Web 3.0 seems to exist mainly as a wireframe to hang speculation from.

HOWEVER, my twopenn’th is that, through Web 2.0, we’ve witnessed a significant change in the way events and relationships are formed and developed - we’ve moved from a broadcast/publishing world to one where everyone can have their own voice - the democratisation of the means of creation and dissemination of content.

That’s a huge shift… it’s meant that ‘opinion formers’ can affect not just those in the immediate area, but anywhere in the world.

The traditional media channels are still struggling to cope with the changes this has brought on, witness editorials from the likes of Andrew O’Neill pleading for us to believe that the public will always put more trust in Broadsheet Newspapers (like the ones he has edited or written for) rather than blogs and social networking. Um… Hitler Diaries anyone?

So where to next? For me it’s a couple of main things:

• ubiquity: Web 3.0 will refused to be caged inside a computer monitor or the screen of a mobile/PDA
• relevance: e.g increased ability to get results that are personalised to location/observed past behaviour to provide a more intelligent response

Of course, it also entails much more usable data being collected by those guys who ‘don’t do evil’… but consumers have proved again and again that they’ll make that sacrifice if they get something they value in return (c.f. Tesco Clubcard).

Tags: engagement, web 3.0

I