Information mining has become a big industry, not only in direct marketing but also in market research, opinion gathering, competitive information gathering and other new business disciplines.

Canny e-commerce companies are realising that bringing together two powerful hi-tech forces can create an ideal shopping experience for customers. The Web and a call centre provide an ideal world of convenience and content, with a human interface to answer questions and discuss options.

One of the really cool, quiet revolutions in Web content that I`ve come across lately has been The Mining Company, an American-based content provider.

Another great convergence is on the horizon. So far, nobody has really spent a lot of time thinking about the issue of mobility of the network - we`re wiring up everything that can`t be moved, but other than the cellular telephony guys, nobody is really thinking much about making our data mobile.

Java has found its way into the senior ranks of organisations and has popularised the notion of a completely new development approach. It is universally seen as the language of the Internet.

That the Internet has had one of the most remarkable growth rates in the history of any technology (and that includes paper) can`t be called into question. But I do marvel at the figures and how the research houses got to them.

One of the oft-overlooked features of the SA Internet industry is its relative youth. In some quarters, this is seen as a weakness; it`s interpreted as making Internet companies unfit to compete with more established IT or telecommunications firms due to the young age and 'immaturity' of the staff who make the operations work.

So you think that spam, opting out of junk mail and the OSI protocol stack have nothing to do with each other? I think there are a lot of areas where they affect each other, especially in the SA Internet arena.

The political changes that have swept (and continue to sweep) the country have caused a complete about-face in our country`s censorship politics: while previously, we censored everything, now we censor nothing.

While the popular press still hasn`t gotten its mind out of the 'reliability gutter' and still thinks that credit card transactions aren`t safe on the Net, the rest of us know that technologically, we`re beyond the infant stages and we can properly secure credit card numbers and user details.

There is a divide between the different types of Internet sites. In the past, it used to be the grand canyons between the good, the bad and the ugly. But today, as both technology and design mature to meet the expectations of an increasingly Web-literate viewing population, a much more fundamental divide is beginning to show.

Putting the latest technology through its paces results in a disappointing run-in with a voice recognition program.

Strategy, sadly, is often not the guiding principle of an IT department`s activities, but rather a grudging after-thought when management requires annual budgets and an IT 'strategy document'.