While alarming to many, this consolidation serves as a fundamental benchmark to change. Or a wake-up call for your company. The scope of countryside is changing, not only in focus but in infrastructure and applications. So how are companies who find themselves pinched in saturated landscape suppose to survive, much less thrive? A look at future of Internet should provide some insight.

VoIP - Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a simple idea: utilize inexpensive infrastructure of Internet to create a convergence of voice and data. Already, you can make free long distance phone calls on web via freephone.com or visitalk.com. Soon, you'll actually be able to call Internet from any telephone and ask for website information, stocks, weather, make reservations, etc. The system searches Net for information you seek and reads it back to you in a calm, friendly voice. While both fast emerging industries, VoIP will not achieve critical mass until a few kinks are worked out.

For long distance, unreliability of Internet and instability of browsers and applications are concerns. Consumers will likely still be willing to pay 5 cents a minute for something they KNOW always works way they need it to. We've used telephones all our lives and that will be difficult to change especially if it sacrifices reliability. For voice portals, question is not only who wants to surf net on a phone but of security issues involved. V-commerce or Voice commerce will likely replace e-commerce but, again, bugs are in need of innovation but implications are tremendous. Imagine asking your database a question while conferencing with a partner on your mobile phone. Or visitng a website and asking product questions or ordering.

A few of more common technologies are listed below.

ASP - Active Server Pages are used to perform server-side scripting. This is a way to get things done on web server, as opposed to, say, JavaScript, which lets you get things one on client (browser). Although there is a Unix and Linux version of ASP, it is primarily intended for use on Microsoft web server based systems.

ASP is useful for tasks such as maintaining a database, creating dynamic pages and respond to user queries (and many other things as well).

CGI - Common Gateway Interface is one of older standards on internet for moving data between a web page and a web server. CGI is by far and away most commonly used method of handling things like guestbooks, email forms, message boards and so on. CGI is actually a standard for passing data back and forth and not a scripting language at all. In fact, CGI routines are commonly written in interpreted languages such as PERL or compiled languages like C.

CSS - You use Cascading Style Sheets to format your web pages anyway that you want. CSS is complicated, but complication pays off by being able to create web pages that look much better than otherwise. One very nice feature is ability to define formatting commands in a single file, which is then included in all of your web pages. This let's you make one change to modify look of your entire site.

HTACCESS - The .htaccess file allows you to set parameters for your web site and folders (directories). The most common use is to protect directories by defining usernames and passwords. Htaccess can be used for many other things as well, including denying access to specific addresses, keeping out hostile spiders and redirecting traffic transparently to user. The downside of htaccess is language used is often extremely obscure, difficult to understand and extraordinarily precise. A small error in your htaccess file can disable your entire web site until error is fixed.