Goodness, the number of technologies in development and in use today is simply overwhelming! What's worse, knowing what this stuff is and how it can be used isnt just for geeks and developers anymore. Business people need to understand this stuff more than ever because it affects business models, products and your company.

Even for someone like myself that enjoys tech, trying to keep up with all these innovations is a full time job. Whenever I start to feel like I have a handle on things, I meet someone who makes me feel like a buggy-whip salesman.

Here is a quick list of topics I have run across in the past 2 months.

PHP
I learned old-school computer languages lik C but applications today are often web-technologies and more and more websites are being built with PHP (not to be confused with PGP, which is a type of encryption). For someone wanting to try their hand at web creation, this is one of the tools to pick up early.

AdSense, AdWords
Does Google do search? Not so much. Google made $4B last year by connecting businesses with customers, ie advertising. While it is not obvious to most consumers, Google is an advertising innovator with programs like AdSense and they continue to push their creative business models into other advertising venues including radio, TV and print..

AJAX
Not quite Web2.0 but this technology promises to make websites more interactive. You can see AJAX in action at Amazon and Netflix who already have AJAX features such as mouse-overs that give you product descriptions. I think Google Maps is another example.

Google Maps
Speaking of Google Maps, would you like a free service to present your own data in a map form? How cool is that! I am a map junkie and this is a terrific tool that Google is literally giving away, presumably for the good of the Internet.

"Mashups"
Imagine taking someone's boring text data, combining it with Google Maps and presenting the whole thing on your own website. If you can picture that creation, you understand a 'mashup'. A friend showed me two sites that combine public data to provide an interactive, real-time map of the bus routes and bus positions here in Seattle. Not necessarily a big money maker but expect to see a lot of these mashups because they are very powerful/useful. Power to the people!

Tags
That computer from Star Trek, the one that answers questions in English, is still the stuff of science fiction not science fact. In human terms, computers are still pretty stupid; they simply cannot read or understand things the way we do. One way to help computers make "sense" of data is to mark or structure that data and one of the ways to do this organization that is getting popular is tags. Take a photo of angel cake and tag it <cake> so that people searching for faeries and angels wont find it while searching. Expect to see more tagging..

podcasts
This technology has been around for a long time but it seems to be taking off, thanks in large part to Apple's iTunes store. A podcast is simply a recording you can download and listen to on a computer or iPod. One interesting note is how podcasts are taking off in China, where the media is highly censored (and podcasts are hard to sensor because computers cannot understand recordings they way they can words).

iTunes (PPV video)
$60+/mo for cable TV or $2/episode for your favorite TV shows? People have been talking about downloadable music and video for some time (and running 'pilot' programs in mass-market hotspots like Idaho) but iTunes is the first successful mass-market product of this type. Whether it is a song, a TV show, movie or podcast, pay-per-view content is only going to get bigger. There are a lot of companies trying to get into this space, including Disney and Google, but iTunes seems to have the lead.