As many of of you guys know I’m entirely obsessed with Ajax as well as entirely not qualified to talk much about it. . .so I’m going to rely on linking to other people’s posts on this one. . .

Moving Beyond the Basics: Scott Isaacs on AJAX Design Patterns

Whats interesting in the above post is Microsoft’s attempt to take the “J” out of Ajax by actively participating in the dialog and contributing to design pattern creation process. Certainly somewhat self-motivated but not at all evil. (BTW what happen to MSFT people calling it ATLAS instead of Ajax? . . . is that dead now?)

Slow postings last week mainly because I was on a business trip in Phoenix as part of the US Postal Service and eBay small business tour. Spent most of my time teaching “the web” in general and eBay in particular to whoever happened to come to the seminars. Whether it was because the location (Phoenix) or the time (weekdays) most of the people that came to the seminar was of the over 50 retired crowd.

I should not have been surprised, however, given that most of the analyst reports I’ve come across forecast that the fastest growing segment of the internet population is the “over 50″ population given the aging of the baby boomer crowd and the stage of the internet diffusion curve we are on. Looking at the increasing complexity of the web 2.0 experience (think RSS), I am certainly becoming concerned that as we chase after the latest and the greatest features and services for the early adoptor crowd a huge segment of the overall population might be left behind.

Some of the very basic Internet functionalities that we take for granted are not very intuitive nor very useful for the novice users. I can certainly see this as a variation of the Innovator’s Dilemma creating opportunities for companies that are willing to focus their energy on usability rather than “innovation for innovation sake.” In many ways, isnt this the Apple formula? There were plenty of MP3 players that came along before iPod, but Apple is now dominating the industry not in a small part because instead of focusing on OPENESS (a key part of the web 2.0 meme) it chose to focus on usability foremost.

Certainly openness is a noble goal but many times usability requires companies to sacrifice openess to create an integrated solution (itunes + ipod), at least initially. As technology improves and integration standardizes, openess can and will become an key lever for increasing usability of a product or service. But in the early part of the technology life cycle, too much complexity exists in implementating an open solution. (certainly the recent brohaha over RSS is an example, see Bill Burnham, Fred Wilson) As much as Microsoft is getting flak (see here and here) for its RSS strategy, I understand where it is coming from.

For many companies in the latter part of the adoption curve (such as Microsoft, Apple, and eBay), creating solutions suitable for the “main street” out of the latest and the coolest technologies is not only good customer centric business practices its actually a defensible strategy for building barriers to entry. Not every company is Google (or a startup), and not every company should compete on “pure innovation.” Its about picking the right activity systems and making sure those activities (user centric design?) are what your target segment desires.

For those who grew up on the Internet, like me, the “other side of the web” is ironically our brave new world.