Web Technology Trends for 2008 and Beyond

This is a great presentation of some of the key developments that have already arrived or are on the horizon. It's clear that they will have an impact on the online travel industry, with search being one area in particular where innovation will happen based on what's called the semantic, or intelligent web. Another area will be recommendation systems where things are moving ahead with improved results noticeable to users.

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Yahoo Search Casts Lots with Semantic Web Technology

reports MarketingVOX. This is further proof of improved search becoming a reality in the not too distant future and here's a quote relevant to travel

For example, instead of searching for hotels in Miami and having to sift through results that include hotels, travel vendors and hotel deals, one could query for Miami hotels that allow pets, are five minutes from the beach and cost no more than $150 per night.

It will be interesting to observe how the travel meta-search companies will react to the major searchers offering more relevant results.

Web 3.0 or the Intelligent Web

as defined here by Eric Schmidt, Google, CEO is just around the corner, with implications that we can't quite comprehend today, but it potentially will be a bigger jump than what's today described as web 2.0

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Credit Kevin at Travolution for bringing it up first.

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How 7 Basic Human Needs are Driving the New Social Web2.0

is the title of an excellent blog post in Influential Interactive Marketing. It touches on a number of key aspects in the fast changing web landscape described today in its many manifestations under the catch-all term of web 2.0.

As the hype surrounding it seems to peak, the inevitable evolution of technology is already moving in the direction of an ever more "common sense" web or the "semantic web" which involves the use of software agents to collect natural language information from disparate sources throughout the web and then puts those elements together in various ways for people to use that information more effectively and extract greater meaning from it.