Internet world 2007 came and went and i must say i’m glad i went but
might skip it next year… Yes i know it sounds confusing but i was
confused too – looking at the list of exhibitors made me wonder who the
target audience was.
Half companies seemed targeted at Web Managers
and industry professionals: hosting, payment processing solutions,
analytics and such. Half companies our direct competitors: off-the
shelf CMS systems and e-commerce applications, people selling to an
audience who have their own product. Then the seminars – i cannot
comment on the Google academy, as i haven’t managed to get in, but from
the turnout it looked like the most interesting thing in the whole
exhibition. However every time i went past they seemed to be discussing
screenshots from Google local. I have sat in on a seminar on ‘The
ROI of Usability’ and popped in on a number of seminars on Web 2.0. And
it all seemed like preaching to the converted – everyone who’s in the
industry would be clued in about these issues already, they would form
our working practice, so my overall impression is – nothing new. But
it’s still good to see Web 2.0 finding its way into all online
solutions.

However i did pick up a couple of interesting leads for SME companies:
Payment processing: eKashu – looks to be affordable and easy to set up for SMEs, SecureTrading – bit higher prices but definitely good value for money
Product presentation – brandsauce - 3D modelling of your product to any specs – and the price seems really affordable.
And postcode anywhere – a solution we’ve integrated for a client before, and seems to work
like magic, so will look into providing it for other clients.