I read a nifty piece by Wikinomics authors, Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams, this morning on the Guardian's website about some of the future uses of the internet. The article focuses on how business can use the power of the internet to dramatically improve their bottom line. Most of the examples given strive to harness a large user base to solve complicated problems. The computer industry calls this kind of stuff, 'Web 2.0'.

Some highlights.

• The 'self-organizers'

China's burgeoning motorbike industry isn't dominated by a handful of corporate behemoths employing thousands of employees, or outsourcing tasks to smaller subcontractors. Instead, a self-organized system has emerged in which many smaller companies collaborate to share the risks and the profits - often, admittedly, by copying Japanese designs.

Michael Enzi, of Wyoming, is one of America's esteemed Senator's pushing to tax the internet. Sales Taxes, Access Taxes, and email tax? Evidently the US Senate is tired of the Internet stealing revenue from local governments. You terrible internet users!

The CNet article explains that this isn't the first time such legislation has been proposed, however this is the first time that a Democratic Majority has been seated in congress to view the proposal. From the article, "the political dynamic appears to have shifted in favor of the pro-tax advocates and their allies on Capitol Hill."

I was reading about a new semantic search engine called Hakia. Titus Hoskins wrote an article on Site Pro News about how semantic search could be the death of Google. I'm not trying to preach about how google is the enduring world champion of the internet. Eventually Google will slide into the background of the popular imagination, eventually. However, Hakia is not going to precipitate that slide. Why do I think so?

On the topic of semantic search, Titus overlooks Google's own efforts in this arena. The admitted Google efforts to develop AI are likely based upon semantic recognition. Google is not being blindsided by the efforts of startup's like Hakia or similar semantic search companies.

Boing Boing posting this slashdot piece about internet routing in space (IRIS). The Defense Department launched their first 'IP-aware' satelitte this month. The satellite is able to send and receive IP packets without sending information to earth. This will enable satellites to communicate with each other, and effectively make them another network resource.