Many of our discussions about the implementation of Web 2.0 tactics for b-to-b marketing communications revolve around what is appropriate for the target audience and our client’s brand. But beyond using Web 2.0 tools as methods for messaging and building customer relationships, there’s often another beneficial aspect to explore: productivity and efficiency gains.

Having evolved beyond its initial definition, the Web 2.0 term covers a variety of implementations—Ajax applications, blogs, mashups, social networking and more, but they are all, in theory, aimed at helping people collaborate and communicate better. Looking beyond external communications, there are huge opportunities for companies to use these tools internally too.
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Don’t believe the hype John.   I understand and empathize with a number of your complaints about CSS but as anyone who has been in the IT field for any length of time will tell you, reality rarely if ever matches the hype.  Hyping is part of the business but we as users/consumers/developers (pick any) at this stage in the game should know better than to swallow the hook.

CSS is a standard written by the W3C for to help with the layout of web sites and applications.  I look at the use of CSS for web development like delivering a ham sandwich to a starving man.  No, it’s not a nourishing meal but it’s a damn sight better than what
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With the release of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005, we’ll be getting some interesting new tools for application development.  The most interesting of these from my point of view will be the tight integration between the two with the use of the common language runtime and the flexibility that should be provided.  We’ll just have to see how much promise has actually made it into final product.

By and large we don’t tend to do much with betas and will wait until production quality product is released.  There aren’t enough hours in the day or projects to experiment with to justify spending much time with stuff that won’t be ready for sometimes years into the future.

Based on the successes we’ve had with SQL Server 2000 and Visual Studio
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