Everyone wants to define Web 3 - well the marketing folk do. So I'll define my own Web 3.

We'll have more and more tools to help us with making decisions, and getting on with things. If Web 2 was community and social networking, Web 3 is about AI and emergent phenomena from web 2, and getting stuff done (finally!).

I get a weekly email with the cheapest Petrol prices locally from petrolprices.com. My browser and email client are both trying hard to stop me being scammed, or abused. My online vendors are trying hard to profile me, and match my interests to things bought by those like me. Google will do less search, and more recommendations. On-line shopping service mysupermarket.co.uk is already offering you the option to buy from different supermarkets, or to switch products to save money.

http://www.petrolprices.com/
http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/
http://www.google.com/history/items?hl=en

Okay - it isn't a dramatic revolution from web 2, but I think it is a discernible trend.

My latest find in this field is:

http://www.quackometer.net/?page=quackometer

Which I suspect is doing little more than counting phrases, but hey it saves over exercising the grey cells.

http://www.quackometer.net/faq/2007/06/science-of-quackometrics.html

Of course by this definition web 3 was probably here before the web, but trends are trends.

Google so needs just a little bit of skeptical weighting. I suspect a little bit of skeptical know-how in the search engine weightings of links, and they might be able to stop doing a lot of those hand finished results for medical terms, and it might even spot a little more spam, come on Matt Cutts give me the job!