While we were at South by Southwest (a new media conference) this year, we had a chance to talk to Dan Fost of the San Franscisco Gate.

Apparently, Fost doesn’t completely buy the whole Web 2.0 meme:

I sure drank a lot of Kool-Aid 2.0 at South by Southwest last week. I don’t know what was in the stuff, but I’m catching some of the excitement that’s coursing through the Internet again.

The whole Web 2.0 thing, though, is asking for ridicule. Even most of the companies that fit in the Web 2.0 category aren’t crazy about the phrase (perhaps because it invites the moniker Bubble 2.0). But at least it’s a handy rubric.

It makes me realize how tribal the chatter is at these tech conferences. Linguists would probably love them, if they could understand them.

James Lewin, who runs Web publications on podcasting and other topics with his wife, Elisabeth, in Des Moines, Iowa, heard enough of the blather at South by Southwest to string together a typically meaningless pitch: “We’re monetizing the long tail globally and impactfully in the Web 2.0 space with tags.”

To come up with your own pitch, try this Web site from blogger Andrew Wooldridge and you’ll be streaming RSS-based widgets via Shockwave in no time.

For the record, we are monitizing the long tail globally and impactfully in the Web 2.0 space, with tags.

via SFGate

Tags: conferences, fun, internet, jargon, podcasting, web 2.0

In case dealing with Internet security issues and staying current with Internet technology is not enough to worry about, a new study out of the UK suggests that using the Internet can reduce your intelligence.

The study, sponsored by Hewlett Packard, finds that two-thirds of adults are “addicted” to checking their email and electronic messages, even outside office hours and on holidays. Half of those surveyed will respond to email within 60 minutes, and one in five are happy to interrupt a business or social meeting to respond to email or phone messages.

The study characterizes this messaging addition as “info-mania”. The most worrisome finding of the study, though, is the effect that “info-mania” has on workers’ measured intelligence.

Offsite Link: Does using the Internet reduce your intelligence?

Tags: fun, internet

The dot-com world can be a strange one. It’s a world where people wonder what their cookies know about them. It’s a world where privacy policies tell you how companies are going to use your personal information. It’s even a place where your backend does all the work!

One of the strangest things in the strange world of e-business, though, is the concept of sticky web sites. Why would anybody want their site to be “sticky”?

Offsite Link: Is your site sticky?

Tags: ebusiness, fun