Services, not products - With emergence of Application Service Providers or ASP's and downfall of e-tailer, it is becoming increasingly clear that Internet will primarily provide services and applications in three areas: information, entertainment and communications.

Despite its flaws, Internet still serves as best way to find and collect information on any topic. Currently, this is primary use of Web, but for entertainment, we still rent videos or turn on TV, for communications, we still pick up phone.

In communications, growth of VoIP, v-commerce and wireless Internet technologies will ultimately pull us into using Internet as our primary source of communication. For entertainment, Internet already offers gaming, streaming video and downloadable audio, but these suffer from slow download times and Internet, application or browser bugs. Yet, higher bandwidth and broadband will ultimately make them as smooth and quick as a broadcast signal. Further, with merger of AOL and Time-Warner along with proliferation of cable modems and set top boxes, Internet will consume a greater chunk of entertainment pie. On demand movies, games, music, even Internet "television" shows will rival networks, video stores, satellite TV, merchandise, etc.

Simply understanding emerging trends in technology can be a competitive advantage. But building that knowledge and further applying it to your strategy, website or company can help you adjust, position and succed in changing, chaotic landscape.

JavaScript - This is a scripting language which is interpreted and executed by browser. It is very useful for getting tasks done on client, such as moving pictures around screen, creating very dynamic navigation systems and even games. JavaScript is generally preferable on internet sites because it is supported on more browsers than VBScript, which is chief competitor.

Office - The Microsoft Office suite includes a number of tools, including Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint. Each of these tools has ability to save in HTML format and has special commands for internet. This is especially useful, for example, if you work in an office where people are trained in Excel and you don't want to retrain them to create web pages. On other hand, if you are creating internet web sites (as opposed to intranet sites) you probably would be better off using web specific products to edit your web pages.

Perl - A great scripting language which makes use of CGI standard to allow work to be done on web server. PERL is very easy to learn (as programming languages go) and straightforward to use. It is most useful for guestbooks, email forms and other similar, simply tasks. PERL's primary disadvantage is overhead on server is very high, as one process is created each time a routine is called, and language is interpreted, which means code is recompiled each time it is run. For complex tasks, a server-side scripting language such as PHP or ASP is much preferred.

PHP - This language is, like ASP, used to get work done on server. PHP is similar in concept to ASP and can be used in similar circumstances. PHP is very efficient, allows access to databases using products such as MySQL, and can be used to create very dynamic web pages.

SSI - If your site is hosted on a typical Apache server, then you probably can use something called Server Side Includes. This is a way to get web server to perform tasks before displaying a web page. One of most common uses us to, well, include common text. This is great when you have, for example, a navigation system which is common to all of your pages. You can make one change in an SSI file and thus change your entire web site.

SSI is very common but has really been superceded by languages such as PHP. The overhead of SSI on server is high as each page is scanned for SSI directives before passing it to browser.

VBScript - Visual Basic Scripting was Microsoft's answer to JavaScript. VBScript is a good tool for any site which is intended to be only displayed by Internet Explorer browser. In my opinion, VBScript should never be used on a web site - JavaScript is preferable due to a wider acceptance among browsers.