New Release 2.0: The Web's Edge

We're only a few hours away from the beginning of this year's Web 2.0 Summit. It's a good time to note the publication of the new issue of Release 2.0, which shares its topic with the conference: The Web's Edge.

The Web has become mainstream, like it or not. As the Web moves closer to the center of our businesses and our lives, it's important to step back and consider what isn't yet anywhere near the center. What areas haven't yet been discovered by the masses? What's happening at the Web's edge -- and how might it redefine the mainstream? That's what we hope to offer at the conference and in this issue: a guide to recognizing what's next before it's too late to do anything about it. So much is filtering in from the Web's edge that we can only address a handful of an infinite number of discrete points in the new issue of Release 2.0. But we've identified several pressing topics in which ideas from the edge are moving toward the mainstream:

In "New Structures of the Web," we examine the promise of an orderly Semantic Web. It's been talked about for the better part of a decade, almost always as something that is going to happen, maybe, sort-of, someday, really. But recent developments suggest that Tim Berners-Lee's dream is getting closer to reality and the Web may grow out of its gangly adolescence.

In "Zillion Dollar Bash," we consider one of the most contentious and fluid of businesses, the recording industry, and how it is trying to use the Web to right itself. Music will always be an important part of the Web, but it's less clear who will be selling and profiting from it.

In "Workers on the Edge," we step back from the conceptual and consider the professional lives of people working along the Web's edge. What can we learn from them? What is going on inside the Web sausage factory?

Also in this issue, we include our usual features. The Number examines the Facebook Application Platform (the subject of a recent O'Reilly Radar report). The Canon celebrates a textbook for programmers that's far more than a textbook for programmers. And The Calendar offers some recommendations on how best to get out of the office over the next few months.

And now I'm out of the office, too. I look forward to seeing you at the Summit.