The IS/IT industry pundits have it that we’re now entering the age of Web 2.0, a rebirth of the Internet, spiraling up from the ashes of AD.2000’s Internet-Bubble explosion, rising on the buoyancy of the AJAX web-applications programming platform.
Note that unlike, say, Tide®, Ajax® is not supposed to produce bubbles — at least not the bleach. So the metaphor is with the program, though reality may still leave AJAX frothing in its own hype — that is, if Colgate doesn’t find a way to sue profitable AJAX operations.
Fortunately, the hordes burned by the hot air of tech marketeers have not forgotten and voices of reason are already spotting tiny bubbles in the AJAX broth and raising the alarm. See, for example, AListApart, Web 3.0.
Back in mid-1998 in SaiGon, though, the bursting of the Dot-com Bubble was still not on the radar. So, when i started writing a one-page weekly feature called “byte soup” providing Net news bytes and commentary it understandly upbeat on “getting wired”.
The main issue, instead, was limits on access. At the time, SaiGon had officially had Internet access for only a year, dial-up only, busy signals from the ISP all the time and, having a monopoly, that ISP could hardly care less.
But you can read that yourself if you’d like. Next are thumbs of timeout’s 2006.Jun.01-07 cover, one of their best, and the premier edition of byte soup “1.0″. Click on the byte-soup thumb and a massive (1224×1632) but readable image will pop-up in another window or tab, unless you download it (372KB).
Re-reading that eight years later was actually almost painful and almost justifies the time i’ve holed away grundgingly nursing a case of writer’s block. But it really was not that bad. If badly written, it was at least far ahead of it’s time, especially from a SaiGon expat’s perspective.
But that was the problem then and may well end up being a pitfall yet again: being too far ahead of one’s time and place to be of any use to mortals here and now.
But it seems i’m going to risk it — if for no other reason, to at least keep my sorry butt from being thrown out onto the streets of SighGone™. Indeed it doth verily seemth Byte Soup 2.0 is about to meet Web 2.0. I already have two yarns ready to write up that may very well sell beyond VietNam’s borders. Stay tuned.
Hilton outside court 
New York, NY - The Linux world grew by yet another distribution this summer, as Paris Hilton announced the release of Tinkerbell Linux.
