I love the new excitement and energy that's been around the web lately. Of course at some level it is just another bubble, but there's a lot that seems fresh to me and that really is changing how we do stuff online. One of the things I enjoy about the current mood on the web is that people have become so willing to think of everything as a work in progress. If you're Microsoft and you launch something that isn't quite finished people will hate you for it, but just about anybody else can (and should) get away with it. One of the people who have been willing to take the risk of "launching early and updating often" is James Farmer, whose edublogs is based on the not-yet-quite-finished multi-user version of WordPress. Like almost 2000 others, I signed up for a blog on edublogs and have been happy to go along with the occasional technological glitches and changes to the interface - simply because it is nice to be part of something new and exciting. What also makes a big difference is that the people behind so many of the new online services now communicate openly with their 'customers' about what is going on behind the scenes. If there's some big stuff-up, they'll tell you about it. And they'll try to keep you informed about where they think things are going, as in the edublogs plan for the next year. We have probably already become used to this sort of thing, and it may seem like nothing remarkable now. But when I think about what things were like a few years ago, it feels to me like maybe we now have a better, more open online environment.