Listening to Mike Rhodin, General Manager, Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software, and getting a new appreciation of the implications of Web 2.0. I think Web 2.0 is the new definition of the generation gap. Those of us over 40 are used to document centric collaboration - creating documents and sending them around for comments. The 20-30 somethings are more used to people centric collaboration. Rhodin calls this the generation of the cell phone. This is a type of interactive ad hoc collaboration but you know who you're talking to on the other side. The next generation - the Facebook generation, are more comfortable with community centric collaboration.
This impacts the way we will develop interactive applications.
WebSphere Portal Server directiona for the second halve of 2007 will focus on blending back end operational capabilities with the cool now user interface capabilities. IBM is now doing experimentation with what he called a "Mashamatic " what we have been calling mashup IDEs. Rhodin said he is not sure yet whether this will become part of WebSphere Portal or will become a new product. But IBM certainly recognizes a market need.
Lastly, Rhodin mentioned the upcoming release next month of Lotus Quickr, which will be IBM's answer to MicroSoft's Sharepoint.
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