EIC Podcast: Wall Street; Sarah Palin's email; Web 2.0

The technology sector took a back seat to Wall Street this week. That's where the drama was. We had meltdowns and bailouts and a lot of volatility only to remain roughly flat. Go figure.

Here's a look at the Dow, which roughly mirrored the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq.

So what does this mean for the tech sector? For starters, consolidation in the financial services sector will have an impact on IT demand and tech workers. But so far it's unclear how big that impact will be. For instance, Oracle said it wasn't enduring any big pain in a solid fiscal first quarter report. Other wild-cards include IT spending, venture capital and whether technology buyers will just be more cautious following this week's volatility.

Dan also riffed on Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, and how her email was hacked. The Feds are looking into the matter, but the larger question is whether you should conduct business on a personal Webmail account, which is easy to hack? Looks like the answer would be no (even though we've all intermingled work and personal emails).

And finally we talked about the maturity of Web 2.0. I attended the Web 2.0 Expo in New York and things seemed very business-like. Dan and I noted that by time we get bored with Web 2.0--right about now by the way--the business case and the mainstreaming of the technology will occur.