Pipe to the spirit

If the first wave of Web2.0 was creating user-friendly, visual, non-technical passive applications, like word-processor type things; and the second was user-friendly, visual, non-technical set-piece/ slightly tailorable things like rss, widgets, and rollyo search engines; then perhaps the third wave is.. user-friendly, visual, non-technical programming.

Leastways that is the direction I think YahooPipes is heading. It's a big step and still looks a bit complicated, but it's well worth watching the video to get a sense of the possibilities.

Combined with something like wiki-ware or say GoogleSites, which lets you build your own webpage, it's even possible to imagine, one day, being able to chose your own date format. Heaven.