It may be a little late to be news, but the web *is* cool. I write his mostly because as someone constantly entwined in the web it can be easy to forget it.

In fact, I think I may have written this post before. But still, it *is* cool whet the web allows us to do. This weekend I fly off to Paris for a fast tour of a few major European countries. This morning, to prep for the trip, I was able to get train times for a Paris transfer, find detailed mapping of a hotel in a small Swiss town and stay in contact with a friend from Yorkshire who’s birthday was today. All that between working on a couple of deadlines.

Now this stuff is pretty common place to anyone reading this. But I don’t think it’s a bad idea to stop and realise what we have and what potential is still there in communications technology. We’ve all heard the various stats about the 67% (or 94 or 78 or whatever) of the worlds population that haven’t made a phone call. What would that number be like for people who don’t have access to Google maps yet?

All this by way of saying that I’m going offline for a couple of weeks. When I get back I’m going to try to spend some time doing good stuff of my own, not totally get caught up in paying the mortgage (though that’s important too). I may not be able to get those 98% of people good Ajax powered map access, but something.