Here is an excellent list of current Office 2.0 applications that are around, it's a pretty extensive list.

User Interface design is something we all have an opinion on. We all know what we like, we know what works and what doesn’t. But very few of us can actually put that into practice and design a functionality user interface, whether that be client side or a web interface in various forms.

There are also times you need someone to push the limits and barriers to what is next, while still keeping the interfaces useful.

Rich Internet Applications, RIA, have been around for a while and they are built using a variety of technologies and some of them are very good and practical. Things are moving forwards and some ideas do take time to get used to.

OK so the title is a little harsh I think but the link below is a very good and simple way to put across what Web 2.0 is. It's all very well for companies to jump on the bandwagon and say that they have a Web 2 solutoin but you ask many of them what they mean by it and very few will have an idea.

Anyway have a look at this link, click here.

This link takes you to a presentation which gives a pretty good overview of things mobile web related.

This is a good reminder of the importance of password encryption, click here.

Came across this article which compares a Thanksgiving meal to SOA.

Here are the 10 items,

1. Like a Thanksgiving meal, it takes a lot of work to put together an SOA … and no one wants to clean up the associated mess that comes with it.
2. Reuse, the next round of Web services you build are the IT equivalent of next week’s turkey sandwiches and soups. You should be getting a lot of meals out of this feast.
3. Unless you find a way to spice it up or make it savory, SOA can be dry and a lot of people around the table may quickly lose interest. Also, like a big turkey meal, too much SOA can put you to sleep.

When UDDI first appeared it was thought that everyone would be looking up services on the internet to consume. For various reasons this has never happened. In fact today it is more likely that a UDDI registry will be used for design time discovery and not the runtime discovery that was originally envisaged. The design time discovery is certainly the area that I have been looking at in more detail and within the internal corporate, not a public facing registry.

Here is an article that covers the same area regarding Systinet.

Came across this article about the real world implementation of SOA at Standard Life. It was posted back I 2005 but demonstrates that this is not something that is new and it can certainly work.

This second article from 2006 goes on a little further by explaining that while SOA is used a lot throughout the group the bulk of the systems are still running on non-SOA systems.

There is a lot to cover when discussing what SOA actually means, how do you explain it to someone in just a few words? Not an easy one.

However one thing that constantly comes through is that SOA Governance, in particular Policy Management, can make a huge difference to the success of an implementation.

Here is a blog entry about this topic, which is extremely interesting considering that at the moment I am looking into more detail about the offering from WebLayers. This is a tool that can assist with the automation of policy checking. It comes with a large number of out of the box policies which will get you going from day one and this is something that can benefit the whole group.

Sometimes when talking to people they will just say that SOA is just EAI rebranded and exactly the same underneath. When confronted with these types of comments I will spend the time explaining why SOA is different and at the same time explain that it is not something that is new.

Came across this article today saying the same sort of thing.