The Internet is not the Web except to the unwashed masses but it sounds like that's what you're discussing: the Web.

I expect platforms like Adobe AIR to gain prominence because they escape the tyranny of HTML and can be more responsive. This seems to be doing pretty well right now for things like local, home network, and Internet-connected media players. They should also lend themselves well to things like Twitter, email, newsreaders, chat/IM, RSS aggregators, etc. - as well as low to mid-performance games. Java has made a comeback here as bandwidth has increased beyond the stilfing 1998 levels and PCs have gotten more powerful.

Hulu Desktop, DeskTube, and Acer Clear-Fi show what can be done here for media.

SilverLight was yet another try by Microsoft that's dying off now. The world just doesn't need a second Java or Flash and Microsoft ought to be getting the message by now. It still exists in vestigial form in Win8 Metro but I suspect we'll see HTML5 with the new JScript engine eating .Net's lunch there... assuming they don't pull Metro before Win8 leaves the barn.


The better blogs are actually fairly useful. These tend to be treated as a place to self-publish things the author knows about, much like vanity Web sites of yore but based on a standardized pattern with less effort expended on site plumbing.

Ads tend to be between non-existant to minimal, unlike "fake blogs" published on mega-corporation sites that are low in content, shallow, and heavily ad-laden (see my current Blade Runner Blimp avatar). This is something a lot of Microsoft folks are actually getting right. One sample: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/

But there are few blogs worth revisiting for every post, I agree. I only have two bookmarked myself. I see them more as useful search hits when after details on some topic.