Knowledge@Wharton discusses China's leading trade portal:

Alibaba has three businesses, each of which has a distinct target market and portal. Alibaba International (www.alibaba.com) is an English-language website that facilitates business transactions between small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in China with businesses worldwide. It has one million registered users in more than 200 countries. Alibaba China (www.china.alibaba.com) is a Chinese-language site that focuses on buying and selling among small- and mid-size businesses in China. It has more than five million registered users. Alibaba China's subscription fee includes authentication and verification, by a third-party credit agency, of the member's identity. The third business, TaoBao (www.taobao.com), is China's most popular C2C site and is the business that is in direct competition with eBay within China. TaoBao means "treasure hunt."

Alibaba has been successful because it recognized it could fill a gaping market need: China has virtually no printed directories or electronic databases that allow companies to describe their products and help buyers and sellers find one another while providing a certain level of comfort that the firms are on the up and up. Moreover, Alibaba focuses on mom-and-pop businesses in China, of which there are untold numbers, rather than trying to facilitate transactions between multinationals, which often have their own web-based systems for dealing with suppliers, and other big companies.

Alibaba "offered a platform where China manufacturers can reach world exporters and vice versa," says Safa Rashtchy, an e-commerce analyst with the investment firm Piper Jaffray. "It's a pretty inefficient system [in China] right now. The company figured if it signed up all the manufacturers in China and carefully listed their products and made them available to the U.S., Europe or wherever, it could extract good revenue. That's what they're doing."

The Seattle Times writes:

When search engines can change the lives of pastry chefs, a technology transformation clearly is under way. These online guides were once merely the means to a destination, the robots that could quickly fetch a site from the Web haystack.

Now, they are the destination itself, and crucial to fulfilling a basic human need — the quest for information. For many, they have become the first stop in a discovery, the jumping-off point for an increasing number of tasks — such as finding a decent wedding cake in Seattle.

"We have invited them into our lives," said Danny Sullivan, founder of the Search Engine Watch site. "Originally, we turned to them just to locate stuff on the Web. We continue to do that, but they're going through a metamorphosis into being our trusted guide to everything."

Three quarters of U.S. Internet users, or about 120 million people, have used engines, searching an average of 38 times a month. As the technology has taken off, its influence has rippled through other industries.

The online Yellow Pages business is growing each year, while sales in the printed directories have flattened. At the same time, search technology has revolutionized advertising to the point where the businesses are questioning the value of print newspaper ads or television commercials.

Michael Parekh outlines his favourites:

1. Google Preview: shows a tiny preview windows of web pages against the list of search results.
2. QuickNote: allows you to quickly grab pieces of text off other applications, and store it in a small, mini-notebook.
3. ForecastFox: graphical personalized weather forecast display in the lower left side of your browser window.
4. Super DragAndGo: allows you to drag and open any link in a web page, by literally dragging and dropping it onto an open area of the page.
5. Yahoo! Companion: gives you a customized Yahoo! toolbar, just as in Internet Explorer (IE).
6. Bandwidth Tester: quick bandwidth tester for your broadband connection.
7. Dictionary Search: Just select a piece of text and ask for a definition.
8. GoogleBar: your favorite Google tool bar now on Firefox from IE.
9. FireFix: fixes common misspellings in the address bar on the fly.
10. LinkPreview: drag the arrow onto a link and it shows you a quick preview window.

Dan Farber writes: "Gartner predicts that by 2010 three major trends — ubiquitous access, ambient intelligence and semantic connectivity — will converge to create disruptions and opportunities as significant as the Web. It’s not far fetched, but it will happen in ongoing spurts rather than as a big bang culminating at the end of the decade. That’s one of the problems with the use of "disruptive" as an adjective for technology. The expectation is that you will wake up one day and a whole new world order will be in place—free super broadband wireless access everywhere, milk cartons talking to refrigerators talking to stores talking to dairy distributors talking to genetically engineered cows with silicon implants in their udders."

morph has an essay on our world:

Immediacy is gaining speed. Knowledge is gaining ubiquity

Opportunity abounds, faster than ever, to a greater panoply of users. A generation is coming that never knew life without PCs, cellular phones, TiVo and file access. A generation that can IM for hours, talk on cell phones and play interactive games with people all across the globe.

The bottom line is that technical and connected life becomes a bigger aspect of society, but that human interaction on a face-to-face basis cannot be replicated. We do not have Star Trek-like machines breaking down our molecules in order to transport us. We do have all sorts of virtual travel and interaction. Fax machines and scanners have nearly eliminated the need for parties signing contracts to be in the same place at the same time.

Human interaction will not change. Seeing someone in person at the same place will still be more tangible and sensual an experience than IMing, calling on a cellular/landline/VoIP phone, playing a game or sending an e-mail. What many may now consider virtual or abstract may, to coming generations of users of technology, be considered the norm, a regular day-to-day activity or event.

Travel will be sometimes be required to have in-person, breath-taking experiences. Human interaction will not suffer, nor will it become so machine-oriented as to lessen the spirit.

Change is simply a matter of adaptation. In the culture of connectivity and immediacy it is only the speed at which once adapts that effects one's ability to grow, to go with the flow.

Change is a constant. And constantly faster.

Dear Abhishek,

I have compiled my own list of 10 Big Ideas for you. Think of this as my 2005 list. Hopefully, I can keep preparing a list every few years – with my views possibly mirroring not just my evolving thinking but also the changing world.

1. Teleputers, Ubiquitous Networks and Utility Computing

It was only recently that I came to realise the full power and potential of the mobile phone. Even though I had been reading (and blogging) about it for some time, I still used an ancient (3-year-old) cellphone. It was only when I switched to using some of the newer mobile phones (Nokia 6600 and 6630) with GPRS connectivity that I began to better understand what the mobile phone is capable of. It has moved way beyond voice communications and text messaging. When you were born, I took your photo with the Nokia 6630, emailed it to Flickr and within minutes, it was there for anyone to see.

Mobile phones have their limitations – small screen, difficult (for me) data entry on the small keypad, and (still) slow network connectivity. The first two I don’t see changing, though voice is likely to become a mechanism to navigate the phone features. As you grow up, network connectivity will keep improving by leaps and bounds.

In the midst of this, do not ignore the computer. In countries like India, I think it will be the thin clients with their big screens and keyboards which will complement the mobile phone and get past the latter’s limitations. George Gilder’s teleputer will thus not be one physical device but two – the mobile and the computer coming together to make a single logical device.

Combine this with the presence of data networks everywhere – both wired and wireless. Even though today, it is well nigh impossible for me to get more than 40-50 Kbps Internet connectivity at home via the cable connection, even before you learn to talk, this will change. Affordable high-speed broadband will be available over both cable and DSL lines. And then there are the 3G and WiMax networks. By the time you start kindergarten, we will have an envelope of ubiquitous broadband connectivity. That is the world you will grow up in.

What all of this means is that you will have teleputer-like access devices always connected to networks and therefore to servers which will store the content and software you need. The teleputers you use will be two-way devices – giving you the capability to record everything in your life and store it (though for now, I cannot imagine what you will do with it). Combined with sensors and RFID chips, it will make possible what Ramesh Jain has called as the EventWeb – very different from the DocumentWeb that we see around us. It is a world where experience will be the centerpiece of what you see and do.

All the technology work of the past quarter century or so is now coming together to make an amazing technology platform for you. This mix of teleputers, ubiquitous networks, service-based utility computing will create a universe around you which is so different that it is hard for me to dream about. And all of this will happen just in the next five or so years.

Tomorrow: 10 Big Ideas (continued)