Whoa, that was a lot to dump on in two comment posts. In retrospect to your comments, I see and understand a lot of what you’re saying. Using “applications” to describe Web 2.0 has come from talking to people in the field. Oddly enough, folks I’ve talked to locally in DC, and abroad, make note of using the “applications” monicker in describing Web 2.0.

I think the cool over the smart is pushing a little too much these days, especially with AJAX. Folks in DC have been saying things like, “can I AJAX that?” I come back with, well, maybe you can, but should you? A lot of what we worked on in the past couple of years has shown me that structure comes first and foremost, but getting that structure, although easily attainable in my eyes, is a tough sell, especially to those sub-sub-sub-sub agencies you were talking about.

It’s hard being the little guy with no authority trying to sell a point. Buzz words are important, but so often technology looks cool and they go after it before focusing on the important things, such as structure.

It was cool to watch on some of the projects at my past job how things would come together with structure. I wish more now I would have documented some of those projects better so I could present what happened and how things unfolded over the course of the project. It really would be easier to sell the right way to do things.

I feel there is so much to do in making the web push in a better direction. The “cool” sort of ruined things for a lot of people because developers and business folks didn’t focus on the important things first, such as structure and the truly important element in design, which is the user.

With innovation comes not only the understanding of the technology but the intelligence and willingness to constrain yourself when and where you use it.