Tris Hussey of Larix Consulting wrote a little piece yesterday about Yahoo! 360 (which I also spoke on yesterday) and Skydasher, the new “ OEM/private label hosted start page service” released from Tucows. He did a great job connecting the dots towards the trends of portal sites that connect people with blogs in new ways.

These two announcements mean two things to me. First, the "portal" isn't dead, it has just morphed into something that is far less corporate and more personal and more high tech too--listening to podcasts from within Skydasher...how cool is that! Second, I think we are beginning the move into the Blogosphere 2.0 (1.5?).

The blogosphere has been around for a long time, just under the radar of most folks. Now, it's on everybody's mind (and eyeballs). But the paradigm of blogs is moving, shifting, into more of a way to receive dynamic, expert commentary on the topics you're interested in. It started with myYahoo allowing RSS feeds to be added to your page. Now with Skydasher and Yahoo 360 both having RSS feeds as integral parts of the information flow, not just an also ran, blogs are moving into this new realm. Blogosphere 2.0. We're moving towards not only blogs being mainstream, but blogs being just another kind of website. Who cares if it's published with Frontpage (yuck!), through a web-based interface, or Qumana :-)...it's published. Publishing. Publishing is what the Blogosphere 2.0 is all about. [Tris Hussey]

I definitely agree with Tris here – the blogosphere is evolving quickly into a stage where we can focus on the content and not the tools. As the tools become more seamless, more attractive, and easier to use – we will forget about the tools and find new ways to advance the community aspect of blogging in general.

About Skydasher – Skydasher looks to me like a great new portal entry as well – even though it is still in early beta. Tris has started to play with the program by creating myQumana. I really think it has the potential to be a great hub platform – one that is perhaps easier to set up and maintain that other such programs. In this way, you can share not just your blog with others, but offer feeds off your favourite blogroll links, local weather and much more. I particularly like the media centre portion that does a good job archiving specific content to one easy area.