Web 2.0, the new (or not so new depending on you you look at time) way that the web is beginning to work. For those still trapped by the old way of things, Web 2.0 is a much more social and interactive place. We have tagging, being able to lable things the way you think they should be and using that type of indexing to find things - kind of a collective intelligence saying what things are... so if you and a lot of other people think that a picture should be labled "Katrina" instead of New Orleans... maybe you're right. Try it on Flickr (www.flickr.com), see how it goes.

Of course I'm an online gamer, and role player even - not quite as unusual these days - you can check out our World of Warcraft community portal (http://shadowcouncil.realmportal.com/) to look at some of the other features of Web 2.0, RSS, Podcasting, Tag Clouds. The content may not be for everyone - and even then it's only geared to a small subset of the server anyway - but the concepts are still a good illustration of Web 2.0.

There are some drawbacks to Web 2.0, most notably everyone gets their say - even if we'd prefer not to hear it. It's weakness is also its strength so that it is open to all. Take a look at what's out there now: Youtube (www.youtube.com), MySpace (www.myspace.com), VOX (www.vox.com) - many great things to see.

Second Life, something new presented, is a whole online virtual world, free and available through the web. It seems like an older generation MMORPG, without the quests and monsters of course, but the potential in the future for such a thing is immense. The interface and graphical content is pretty close to the 3D gaming that we had 7 years ago - so in another 5-10 years it could be something very pretty. The interactivity though is they key to the whole thing.

And now for some sleep... and maybe WoW...