After a couple pretty long posts, I’m taking it easy tonight with the first One Thing New Web 2.0 Linkfest. These are links to some interesting stories I’ve come across in the last few days.

• Bokardo posted a great response / analysis of the report in The Economist magazine claiming that traffic to social networking sites will outstrip traffic to porn sites. If that happens, it will be the first time that porn on the Web has fallen to #2 behind anything.
• Apparently at last weeks Web 2.0 Expo, Google might have tipped off some of their future plans in a survey they gave to their Google Apps Premier users. Web Worker Daily discusses this and predicts eight Google Apps in our future. I know folks already use Gmail for storage, but a Google online backup app would be awesome.
• A friend of mine who has very solid traffic on his Blogspot blog is going to be switching to stand alone hosting sometime in the next couple of weeks. Darren at Problogger.net posted an “open mic” about hosted versus stand alone blogging. Problogger is a great resource for bloggers of all kinds, but he has some particularly awesome posts about this topic.
• I was searching Technorati for some good posts about writing and found a great guide to writing for the Web. Writing for the Web is just as much about organization and marketing as it is about good grammar, and Kevin sums it up very well in his article.
• Finally, Wired magazine’s story about the lamest technology mascots will remind you why you hated Clippy so much.

The other day, I mentioned a particular idea in this article by Joshua Porter at Bokardo: Everything is beta. In his terms, he means that his blog is an arena where unrefined or partial thoughts can gel into more cohesive ideas and arguments. I’ve been thinking a lot about that idea this week, and I think that this concept can be applied to everything everything and not just to blogging.

Traditionally, a beta release was a step in the release cycle of software. When the developers of a particular piece of software decided to stop adding new features, they would release a beta candidate for users outside of their development group to kick the tires and make sure everything was working properly. With the advent of the open source movement and the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, a more collaborative, dynamic publishing platform for applications surfaced, and some companies chose to make the software release cycle transparent, leaving their applications in a state of perpetual beta.

Google’s Gmail is a great example of this. Gmail is a fully functional application for the Web, but Google constantly adds new features and refines existing ones. They’ve had the “beta” tag on the Gmail site for years, but the service isn’t unfinished or unpolished. With Gmail, Google has skipped the traditional model of software release and acknowledged that their application will continue to evolve and grow. Gmail will never be finished, and because of the capabilities of Web technology, it never has to be.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. Life is in a state of perpetual beta release, too. Think about who you were a year ago and think about who you are now. Chances are you don’t think of yourself as Me 1.0 and Me 2.0. More likely, you see yourself as the same person now as you were then but with new experiences: Me_beta.

So, how can some of the themes of Web 2.0 help your Life 2.0 in its state of perpetual beta (bullet points are borrowed from this excellent article by Tim O’Reilly)?

1. Trusting users as co-developers
Now more than ever before, humans are constantly connected to each other. We’ve got cell phones and text messages, emails and blogs, and a plethora of Web applications created to keep up the conversation. (I’m looking at you Myspace.) As you interact with people, you learn and grow in ways you never could on your own. So don’t shy away from these services. Start participating and change the folks you come in contact with as much as they’ll change you.

2. Software above the level of a single device
Don’t be limited by one track. For example, I’ve got an English degree, and I’ve managed to become a Web developer. Specialization is still necessary, but let yourself become conversant in other disciplines. Become cross-browser compliant!

3. Lightweight user interfaces
At its most basic, Google is a logo and a search box. But beneath that simple surface is a devastatingly complex core. Translation: don’t be lured in by the trappings of the superficial. Look beneath the surface of things for their value. And conduct yourself in the same way. Be direct. Be simple. And be amazing.

4. The Perpetual Beta
This one is simple: try new things. You are you. That is your core service. But you should continually add features. Develop a love of French cinema. Learn how to sail. Start lifting weights. Or, in a business context, voluntarily add skills to your basic skill set. The beta testing of your life should continue until you die (Me 3.0?). Otherwise you’ll wind up just another stale version of MS Office languishing on a shelf at Staples.

Life is a precious gift, but it’s also a responsibility. If you live in a state of perpetual beta, you’ll be able to squeeze every ounce of worth out of it.

Apparently, Google’s Gmail service experienced a fairly significant outage today. Fortunately, I wasn’t affected, but I started thinking about how much of my Internet life is tied up with Google. If a more widespread outage of their services occurred, to what degree would my daily routine suffer?

Before Google, I was a Yahoo! man through and through. While I still use Yahoo! for a few things (like fantasy baseball), my online experience has shifted almost entirely to Google.

Google’s minimalist user interface is what attracted me to the company initially. When they were just doing search, and you surfed to google.com, all you saw was their logo, the search box and the submit button. I like that they’ve maintained the spirit of that aesthetic throughout their massive diversification. Their layouts are primarily text-based and very clean.

On a daily basis, here are the Google services I access:

• Gmail - It’s my main email account. I have forwarders on my other addresses pointing toward Gmail. For me, it’s Google’s killer app.
• Analytics - I’ve activated analytics for all of the personal sites that I operate (including onethingnew.com) so I can monitor traffic and make sure that my content is user friendly to my visitors.
• Personalized Homepage - I’ve got widgets for local weather, RSS feeds, Wikipedia search, and a few others. I check the headlines, get my word of the day (profligate!), and play with my Google Eyes.
• Adsense - I’ve just started using Adsense on onethingnew.com, and I love how non-intrusive it is. I think it’s fun to see some of the ads that get generated for the blog. I’m not sure Adsense knows what to make of me yet.

Besides those, I have dabbled with Blogger, orkut, Google Groups, and Google Docs. When we were house hunting, Google Maps was indispensable. And I haven’t even mentioned the myriad searches I do throughout the day. In any given day, I’d say I spend about 20-30% of my Web time on Google-related sites. That’s a lot. And I’m sure there are folks who spend more.

So what happens if Google crashes? Until today, I wasn’t sure that was possible. Seems like we all take for granted just how reliable they are. We also take for granted that the majority of their services are free to the end user. What obligation does Google really have to provide uninterrupted service?

I’m not saying the sky is falling, but I think these are valid questions to ask. It’s never smart to keep all your eggs in one basket, even if it’s the biggest basket around. And I fear that I’ve done just that.

I’m still going to use Google’s services, but my confidence in them has been shaken a bit. I will proceed with caution, and you should, too.