It is the most inspid, empty buzzword to which I’ve been subjected for a long, long time. I think the main reason it annoys me is the conflation of two nearly orthogonal technology developments into a single meme by a bunch of vapid digirati pundits. They seem to have convinced themselves that “THE INTERNETS ARE ON A WHOEL NOO PLANE” and promptly write dozens of the particularly nauseating sort of technology “news” puff pieces that somehow remind me of a skinny latte with saccharine vanilla syrup — annoying, expensive, calorie-free, and completely missing the point.

We have two cool things happening right now in web technology, which are each the result of a convergence of multiple trends.

1. Companies that provide services on the internet (like photo hosting, web search, and product reviews) are letting other companies expose these services.

   This is happening because:

   1. The dot-com bust is far enough in the murky past that companies are brave enough to try non-traditional business models again. Only this time, they’re doing them cautiously and correctly.
   2. There’s a standard, thanks to the W3C, for ways to expose and access these services.
2. Internet Explorer has stagnated for the past couple of years at version 6. This is actually a good thing, because it means we’re starting to see convergence on a single set of browser features for a large proportion of Web users.

That’s all. That’s it. That’s “Web 2.0″. The hype is mainly due to a bunch of designers who have never done anything other than the web, and find their minds completely blown by the idea of multithreaded UI or service-based architectures. Which tells me that, perhaps, we ought to have a bit more computer science education beyond “Intro to Programming 101″ in the standard interaction design curricula.

I’ve finally started to post some photos from this past summer in Seattle. Fear the cute fuzzy marmot.

My housemates’ Memorial Day BBQ was a rousing success. Four grills, about sixty-odd people, and an ark or two of edible animals made it meateriffic. Four kinds of wings, three kinds of hamburgers, untold varieties of sausage, marinated chicken bits, steaks, a leg of lamb, tempeh kebabs, marinated garlic shoots, ribs n’ collards, king salmon with dill, tiger shrimp, and a lot more. I died five times of joy before I had my final slice of plum pie.

I’m falling in love with Seattle. After a great first week at Amazon, my future cousin-in-law Keith invited me out to go sailing with his friends Friday evening. We just went for a few hours out to Bainbridge and back, but it was gorgeous. Almost no other boats out on a perfect evening before Memorial Day weekened, which of course adds to my suspicion that the world is, officially, retarded.

This is our house, in the First Hill area of Seattle. It’s a pretty nice, non-ritzy neighborhood, and I’m feeling a mild kick of culture shock. Most of the houses are attractive, and a lot more architecturally daring and eclectic than what I’m used to. A house painted iris-purple with dark blue accents next to a reproduction of a Parisian apartment building. Lots of lush foliage and exotic plants growing in yards. It’s a lovely place to walk around, if a bit damp at the moment.

To my friends who aren’t invited: my sincere apologies. Unfortunately, it’s a small town, it’s very far away, and we had a strict limit of 120 people (including both of our sizable groups of friends and my gigantic Catholic family). Unfortunately I had to be somewhat arbitrary when deciding who to invite. My parents will be hosting another celebration in DC some time in November, and I’ve been thinking about having a big party around our first anniversary next year.

In general, planning for this has been a spiky roller coaster with flames shooting out the sides. I just didn’t have much time to devote to it earlier in the Spring, and it caused Alison and I quite a bit of tension. Now that I’m done for the semester I’ve had a burst of productivity on wedding stuff, and of course next week I start work at Amazon. Feh.

My apologies if the RSS feed on LiveJournal floods your friends list. Sadly, there’s not a whole lot I can do about that — blame LJ.

Justin Alexander, another activist for Iraqi civilians who “walks the walk”, has some personal memories to share.

Unlike Justin, I can’t say I sympathize much with Ms. Ruzicka’s politics or choice of heroes. However, the fact remains that she did more for our efforts in Iraq than the entire 101st Fighting Keyboarders combined.