World Wide Web's New Horizons: Starbucks and All That

"Most Exciting Part of Web Isn't 'World Wide'"
Epicenter, Wired (June 23, 2010)

"The world wide web removed a sense of space from our lives by connecting everyone on the globe to the same content — totalitarian regimes excepted. But the web's most promising developments of late indicate that we're entering a new phase where place matters as much as reach.

"Perhaps there is a 'there' here after all, in other words, to corrupt Gertrude Stein's infamous aphorism. Craigslist, Citysearch, and other veterans have long profited from acknowledging that web surfers live in geographic locations, but only recently has the shift from globalization to localization become a major driver of innovation...."

The article's about things like "geo-tagging technology" and Starbucks' "plans to capitalize on the rise of the neighborhood wide web with news portals." I'd say that I'm not very interested in the business end of this: but some of my Small World of Websites have a quite local focus. I started my online career by writing about the small town in Minnesota where I live, and never stopped.

There's quite a bit more to the article besides Starbucks: like a 2:53 video interview with Howard Schultz, an ex-AP reporter who's launching The Venice Dispatch, and - come to think of it, the article does talk about Starbucks a lot.

Still - it's a pretty good look at what's happening online. At a Starbucks near you.

What? You're not near a Starbucks?! Isn't everybody near a Starbucks?! (The Lemming firmly refuses to go off-topic. This time.)