For those unaware, O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference is currently underway. I mentioned the conference somewhere in comments a few weeks or so ago because (big surprise) 3D technology was a topic on the event schedule.

This morning, while surfing through the O’Reilly Radar blog (Link), I caught word of Google’s new 2D technology… which is actually pretty neat. There’s nothing to download and you can find a good link on O’Reilly. Not the 3D stuff I was hoping for, but no big deal. I figure the swarmanoids will be here soon enough.

Meanwhile, this evening while surfing through C|Net, I happened upon a gallery of images (Link) showing Microsoft’s new Live Search. I figure this is what came out of the Where conference talk by Erik Jorgensen. The download was a little slow, but it’s not bad. At least it works in Firefox.

Okay. So that’s the news. And while this is nice, what I’m actually finding interesting is what seems to be the slow, steady escalation in the race to 3D; right now mostly between the two behemoth’s, but who knows. With all the come-out-of-nowhere Web 2.0 companies shaking things up in unprecedented ways, this could still get interesting.

Maybe.

Either way, for some reason, today feels to me like the beginning of… something.

{Update: Worthwhile entry on O’Reilly discussing Microsoft’s presentation – “Where 2.0: Microsoft Adds to the 3D Web” (Link) }