Today's column is about the Web 2.0, an era that's just getting fired up. It will be the subject of my talk tomorrow night at the Napa Valley PC Users Group at the Napa Senior Activity Center, 1500 Jefferson St. The meeting starts at 7 p.m., and I'll be on about 8.

When I last wrote about Web 2.0 -- the next-generation iteration of the World Wide Web as always-on, Web-based applications that don't necessarily require a download and may eventually not even require an operating system -- I offered the opinion that the "big guys" like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and America Online were going to be the major players.

I got a pointed rejoinder that I shouldn't forget or ignore the little guys in this initiative when Fara from gOFFICE.com e-mailed me to draw attention to her project, a San Francisco-based startup hoping to crack the Web.

I appreciate anyone who alerts me to new features on the Web, and I'll spend this column passing on some of the smaller names in the burgeoning enterprise known as Web 2.0.

To clarify, however, why I stressed the major sites' role, I'll simply say that the last time we had a major breakout on the Web it wasn't called the dot-com crash for nothing. Still, I wish the little guys all the best, recalling quite clearly that Google used to be a couple of hungry grad students with one smart algorithm.

gOFFICE is a Web-based, office productivity suite in the making. Its word processor is off the ground, allowing for either PDF or HTML documents that can be stored online and accessed anywhere. You'll also find a business card maker that has many other features in the development stage.

Finally, gOFFICE has a PowerPoint-like presentation program and Excel-style spreadsheet poised to break out, as well.

Fara was nice enough to point me to more Web 2.0 startups, so let's take a whirl through them:

* 2ndSite -- This Toronto-based firm offers online invoicing, employee timesheets, document sharing, recurring billing, customer support tickets, and management reports. If you're a home office, you can "on-shore" a lot of your paperwork here. The service allows your customers to pay by credit card through PayPal, VeriSign and other online services, or off line if they prefer. It's free for small businesses, with fees increasing as you grow.

* Backpack at backpackit.com -- This free get-it-together site helps you stay organized with to-do lists, notes to self, calendar reminders, and online files, all update-able from the site or remote e-mail. You can even share your entries with others for collaboration or notification. The site lets you post images for a small fee and send e-mail or text-message reminders if you subscribe to certain services. The site may work nicely as an alternative to a business collaboration blog.

* Basecamp at basecamphq.com -- A more business-oriented collaboration tool than Backpack, Basecamp is designed to help business projects get on target and stay that way. Its free offering will do for simple projects, but getting down to real business will take bucks. When you pay, you get cool tools, such as file sharing, time logs, and more.

* Bla-bla List -- A nice to-do tool like Backpack, simple and straightforward. Share your lists with family, friends and colleagues, online or by e-mail. Lists without all the bla-bla.

* Blinklist -- There are all kinds of lists, and one is an online list of your favorite Bookmarks, or bookmarked Favorites. At Blinklist, you can organize them and share them online, as well as find out where others are going online. Within seconds of just trying out the samples, I found sites I never knew existed. Another example of bookmark-sharing is del.ioci.us, a site I discovered at Blinklist.

* Blinksale -- Like 2ndSite, Blinksale will handle your invoicing online without software. Blinksale stresses it handles both product and service invoicing, including the time-billing needed by attorneys, accountants, etc. You can also design your own individual invoices. Payment reminders and thank-you notes are automated.

* Blogpulse -- One of a number of sites that sift through posts in the blogosphere looking for the best, the brightest and the most popular. I was ready to dismiss it from my story until I realized I had just spent the last 45 minutes traveling from link to fascinating link, originating from Blogpulse. This stuff is addictive.