I will be in San Francisco in two weeks (April 10 – 13) at The Gilbane Conference San Francisco and will be speaking on a panel “Web 2.0 Technologies.” My presentation “Watching the Web Take Shape” focuses on emerging trends in structured content delivery in the browser. How does this relate to Web 2.0? Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a number of interesting trends that point to a web that incorporates structure in the browser a more significant way than we’ve seen before. Although its not at the forefront of the Web 2.0 discussion, in many ways it provides the underpinnings for things like mashups and social networks.
WikiCalc is the latest spreadsheet software from Dan Bricklin, the creator of the first spreadsheet, VisiCalc. WikiCalc, no suprise given its name, is a social spreadsheet application (wiki meet spreadsheet). I saw him give his WikiCalc demo last night in Boston during the Web 2.0 Technologies session he and I presented at Gilbane. From a feature perspective, what impressed me most was its ability to link cells to live services (such as stock prices), but its most distinguishing feature when comparing it to Google Spreadsheet and Zoho is that it isn’t a hosted service, so you own your data.
Related links:
At Gilbane San Francisco this week, I was asked what the differences between a blog, a discussion board, and a wiki are. The title pretty much gives away where the discussion went… but here was the thought process:
For many of the people that came by, this metaphor seemed to help clarify things. It focuses on the mode of communication and can easily be conceptualized.
Cool! I was just invited to speak at the Gilbane Conference on the future of blogging in San Francisco this coming April. Not too sure of the format at this point, but in any event, it’ll be fun.