This should be an interesting week for the Web 2.0 and tech worlds. Let’s start off with Palm. I remember getting my first palm pilot years ago, and I still have one, umm, somewhere. And that seems to be the way a lot of people think of Palm, so they are in the midst of a $325 million reorg that includes getting Jon Rubinstein (who ran the iPod division at Apple) to get them on track. Good luck with that. Source: NYT
Speaking of “oops”, Amp’d mobile, which had cool commercials and just got here to Canada, filed for Chapter 11 on Friday. Ouch. Hmm, wonder about all the subscribers.
On the search engine front, since everyone is trying to nibble at the edges of Google hoping the “pecked to death by ducks” theory works, TheStreet.com has launched a search engine targeted at financial blogs (I wonder if it’s doing gray flannel or blue pinstripe) and Microsoft is supposedly working on a “next generation search engine”…maybe one that gives you what you’re searching for before you’ve started looking?
Circle June 29th on your calendar. Maybe a day to stay away from electronics stores, since we learned that June 29th is iPhone Day. In the US at least.
Panama isn’t just for canals or retiring, it’s the much ballyhoo-ed online ad system from Yahoo. It’s been in closed testing for months and finally is opening up to developers and others. Will it give Google, and Microsoft, a run for its money or just drain Yahoo’s?
There is an undercurrent to many of these announcements, however, (like the purchases I talked about on Saturday) the fear of a Web 2.0 bubble. Given that there are probably going to be more companies like RSSCalendar hitting the deadpool as well as the FeedBurners and StumbleUpons who cash in, the topic is going to keep coming up like a bad lunch. Marc Andressen is one of many of us who think the bubble hype is overblown. These are exciting times and new technologies are emerging constantly. Emerging technology means excitement (well for geeks) and that also means new ideas and new companies. Some will work out, some won’t. Those that work out might be acquired by bigger players and those that don’t influence and inspire (and serve as a cautionary tale) the rest of us.
So this is my take on the week that will be. I’ll check in on Wednesday and see how well I picked the hot news.
