I’ve started a new conversation about the Web 2.0 moniker here.

The main reason is that I’m a bit annoyed by all the hostility 2.0 is getting at the moment. Yes it is hype and no it’s not revolutionary, but it is here and it’s real.

I look at it as going back to the original ideals of the Web back in the mid 90’s.

I believe that Web 1.0 was great. But when the suits and cool kids came in and started creating Web 1.1, Web 1.2 etc. they lost all the ideals that made the web cool.

Unfortunately as us developers know to move forward it is often times easier to start a fresh without having to manually clean up all the old junk that featuritis added.

I think an example is better than anything. I was the web master at AltaVista back in 1996. When I started it was as simple as google. I remember how the marketing heads (much to the collective groans of the engineering department) kept adding more and more junk to both the search and corporate pages.

First we were happy to provide search for people as well as branded search for other companies such as Yahoo. But of course with 600 mouths to feed they tried to be a fully fledged Yahoo competitor instead.

A rough overview of the process was:

• 1.0 Louis Monier a researcher at Digital releases Altavista and it took off within a few weeks of the official launch
• 1.1 The corporatization of AltaVista. I was hired to do this.
• 1.2 Selling of branded versions to clients
• 1.3 Pulling all of Digitals network software and hardware into AltaVista
• 1.4 Selling most of Digital’s network software and hardware out of AltaVista
• 1.5 Partner, Partner, Partner (This is when I quit)
• 1.6 Portalize, portalize
• 1.7 Sold off
• 1.9 Sold off again
• 2.0 Stripped of everything but search

Another example is this post comparing the evolution of Yahoo and Google over the years.

So seriously, is the Web 2.0 term really so bad? Does it even need a definition?

Please voice your own opinions on the Web 2.0 moniker here

Great news for people wishing to startup in an agile way and possibly seek funding later.

Feld Thoughts has discovered new Delaware legislation making it easy to convert an out of state LLC to a Delaware Inc. Delaware Inc’s are the prefered corporate structure of VC’s and wall street alike.

The second innovation allows for the one-step conversion of non-Delaware limited liability companies into Delaware corporations. These conversions/reincorporations have historically required 2 steps – for instance, an Ohio LLC would be merged into a newly-formed Delaware LLC, and then that Delaware LLC would be converted into a Delaware corporation. Now you can go from an Ohio LLC to a Delaware corporation in one step. This eliminates one of my main objections to LLC’s that I wrote about in S-Corp’s vs. LLC’s. (via Jeff Clavier )

I have written many times about the serious benefits in starting up with LLC’s and converting to an Inc. later if necessary. So this makes it all the easier to do this.

Freedom of speech is a very important thing and has been in the news for many reasons recently. Many of us have grown used to it and just think it natural. But Freedom of Speech was something that many people lost their life for. We bloggers depend on this Freedom of Speech and should defend it at all costs.

The same is also true for Web 2.0 services. We should not start deleting things we are not in agreement with on our services or accept harassment by authorities at home or abroad.

As blogs and Web 2.0 applications become a greater and greater part of our free speech we will be hit by more and more attacks on our free speech.

A good example is the current attempt of a NJ legislator to ban anonymous forum posting_. If this became law and spread to other states and countries it would affect all of us bloggers and most Web 2.0 apps that have some sort of content creation or information sharing.

It is very tempting as a bootstrapping micro business under press by death threats, legal action and what have you to buck under the pressure and accept every piece of harassment you might get. Don’t get me wrong the reasons are very good. You are small, you cant afford the lawyers, the Denial of Service attacks the lost sleep etc.

But we are the independent presses of our century. As bloggers we are not just the pamphleteers of this century but also the printing presses supporting them.

I believe it vital that we as providers of Web 2.0 communities and software specifically address this issue.

As an example in my usage agreement I spell out exactly what my stance is on this. I will not go to jail for your beliefs, but I will go as far as I possibly can to protect the rights of free speech for my users:

I will follow the laws of wherever I am legally doing business, which currently is Denmark. As I said above this might change if I incorporate or move elsewhere, just so you know. Luckily very little is illegal in Denmark so you’re safe. We also have very strong free speech here in Denmark and there is little I will do to go against that, even if I am in absolute disagreement with you.

However I do not want to go to jail for something you do, so I will follow local rules. Which is exactly what you need to do. If you do something with WideWord, where you could get in trouble at home please don’t. I can not take responsibility for learning all the laws of the world.

I am a man of principles, but stronger men than me have changed principles with 3 hovering black helicopters over them. If you know what I mean.

As an example of this my site WideWord is currently being used by what looks like a Croatian (I think) group to spread their word. I do not understand Croatian and most likely am not in anyway in agreement with what they are saying judging by the few words I can work out. That said they feel they have something very important to say. People can read it and respond or they can chose to ignore it.

I would encourage other sites that enable people to communicate and publish to publish their stand on this. The whole NJ case has also encouraged me to launch a quick new site soon, where New Jersiites, Saudis and other people who have no free speech at home will be encouraged to speek loudly and freely.

As many of you have seen Amazon has released their S3 file storage webservice. The API is cool and offers both REST and SOAP support.

I discovered that they also have released a Ruby library for the REST API. We might soon see several new rails based services using it.

Ryan has now followed up on his great talk at Future of Web Apps with a couple of blog entries at Signal vs Noise. Read them here:

• The Cost of Bootstrapping Your App: The Figures Behind DropSend
• The Cost of Bootstrapping Your App: The Figures Behind DropSend