What's In a Name?

Optaros calls it "NGI" – for "Next Generation Internet" – and Nexaweb calls it "EW2.0" – for "Enterprise Web 2.0" – but one this is certain...whatever you call it, the next iteration of the World Wide Web is not just on its way: it's already here.

If you have any doubts about the arrival of the New Web, then you've either been asleep in a cave for the past two years, which is exactly how long it has been now since Jesse James Garrett coined the term "AJAX" for the approach to users' experience of the Web that freed them from the tyranny of page-refresh, or you've not ever visited Google Maps, Del.icio.us, 24sevenoffice.com, or Basecamp.

As the recipient of the Roundarch 2006 Interactive Experience Award, as well as Chairman of a group of companies pioneering an "all-media" approach to communicating the future, I feel it behooves me to do whatever I can, whenever I can, wherever I can – in the best Web 2.0 spirit, though avoiding that label – to help instil a sense of perspective about the New Web, a sense of excitment anchored in reality.

Please join me here, and my co-author Charles Fiesel, as often as you can.