If you won the lottery today would you go to your job tomorrow?

del.icio.us is the social network that everyone seems to forget about, but, to be honest, it’s one of my favorites.

Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc all get a lot of press, but I find del.icio.us to be one of the most functional social networks out there. I also like how incredibly streamlined it is. It doesn’t try to be something it’s not, and it doesn’t have delusions of being the ultimate social network — ahem Facebook.

For those who don’t know, del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, where you can see what other people are reading and share what you’re reading with others. My del.icio.us network is like my own personal Romenesko. In fact, it’s much better than Romenesko, because I get links from people from all different parts of journalism.

Throughout the day I find links to stories from my del.ico.us friends about journalism, tech and other news that interests me. The links are presented in a very Romenesko fashion, complete with little blurbs of text about each link. These links, however, come from a broader swath of people, and they often look at journalism from much different angles than Romenesko.

Romenesko is having on industry news, especially about layoffs and hirings, but with del.icio.us I can get links about the actual craft of journalism and how journalism is created in the 21st century. Basically, if you enjoy Romenesko, I believe you’ll find del.icio.us to be a far superior experience.

You can find what I’m reading at del.icio.us/journalismiconoclast.

The Internet and the Web are here to stay, but how we connect with both will be changing.

The personal computer isn’t going anywhere, but people are increasingly accessing the Internet and the Web via mobile devices like smartphones. The iPhone in particular was a watershed moment for the mobile Web because of the power and grace of its user interface and how easy the phone makes using the Web.

Unlike virtually every other mobile device, the iPhone has a full Web browser, Safari 3. It can display Web content like it was meant to be displayed. Despite lacking 3G support (a much faster data network than what the iPhone uses — EDGE), the iPhone’s Web browser is used a lot more than the browser on the typical smartphone.

In fact Google says it gets 50 times more search requests from iPhones than from any other mobile handset. Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations, told the Financial Times that mobile Internet searches may overtake fixed Internet searches within the next few years. People want access to information from anywhere, not just when they are seated at a desk.

Apple has caused other manufactures to step up their game in order to compete with the iPhone. Samsung has several phones that will operate on their new TouchWiz UI. The interface looks quite similar to the iPhones, and many other handset markers are looking to mimic Apple’s groundbreaking touchscreen UI.

Mozilla announced late last year that a mobile version of Firefox is in development. A mobile version of Firefox, with its strong standards support and extensibility, might be another watershed moment for the mobile Web. Imagine having access to a full version of the best Web browser available wherever you go.
Te iPhone should improve considerably this year when Apple releases its second-generation iPhone with 3G. The EDGE network that the iPhone connects to is alright for surfing Web pages, reading news, checking mail, etc, but it’s not very good for consuming rich multimedia content. 3G isn’t as fast as the broadband that many people enjoy at home, but it still has a good deal of bandwidth (and other data networks will overtake 3G within the coming years).

That’s bandwidth that can support streaming video, audio slideshows and other bandwidth-intensive task. This is the kind of content that newspapers should already have on their Web sites. All those newspapers struggling to get the Web, are really positioning themselves to fall further and further behind.

And, frankly, many of those papers will probably die within the next 5-10 years. I’m continually amazed by how many newspapers have bad Web products that are merely poorly recreated versions of their print products. A lot of publishers, editors and journalists are saying that they finally get the Web and why it’s important for the future for journalism.

The time for getting the Web was 10 years ago. Now you need to get the Web and the mobile Web. People want to consume content on the go.

Why do I need to be by a computer to get access to the information I want? I shouldn’t, and I no longer have to be tethered to a computer to have access to the Web.

Waiting to meet someone at Starbucks? Why not surf over to NYTimes.com and read a few stories? (NYTimes.com looks great on the iPhone by the way. Many Web sites do not because they were not properly coded using Web standards) Maybe you’ve been out all day, away from your computer and you want to be updated with the latest going on in the world.

That’s the power of the mobile Web. A lot of journalists will say, “why would I need the Web when I’m away from my computer?” These are the same kinds of people who have willfully kept newspapers in the dark ages and have allowed for the catastrophic erosion of a cherished institution.

If you don’t get the Web, you sure as hell won’t get the mobile Web. But then again, the kinds of people who don’t get the Web and why it should be our focus are the kinds of people who should be unemployed.

We have to go where consumers are going. They are going mobile.

I’ll meet you there.