Last week marked a turning point.

I enjoyed myself at XTech (as usual), where, as you’d expect, a lot of the talk was about Web 2.0, mashups, and yes, even “Web services”. Thankfully though, it’s not the usual “Web services”; what I noticed (confirmed by others), much to my surprise, was that the users seem to have reclaimed the term from the enterprisey architects, and, at least in Amsterdam, were using it to refer (almost) solely to RESTful (or “REST-like”, ala Web style) Web services!

I have to admit, when I hear it used this way, I was taken aback, and it took me more than a few double-takes before I caught on that I really could let my guard down; these were friendly folk.

I didn’t see that coming.