Internet Evolution site editor Nicole Ferraro shares a compelling story from the floor of the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Nicole reports that Morgan Stanley‘s managing director, Mary Meeker says that over the next few years the mobile Web will be “bigger than most people think.” In fact, she’s calling it “the next major computing cycle,” and says mobile-related technology shifts will change all the dynamics between incumbents and attackers, and will create a wide range of winners and losers.

Meeker presented 68 slides, starting with an economy update / dashboard. Included were positive leading indicators like rebounding global stock markets, narrowing credit spreads, reduced market volatility, and rising earnings estimates.

The technology sector (as has been previously noted in this blog), Meeker says, is leading the charge back to financial health as the largest sector measured by S&P 500 market capitalization (19%). She also showed how global technology revenue estimates mimic the 2002 recovery that followed the tech nadir of 2001.

Now granted, when Meeker turns to domestic GDP and consumption, she is only able to call the trends “less bad,” and she does say that low capacity utilization in manufacturing, horribly low home sales, rising consumer credit and mortgage defaults, and high unemployment all imply economic weakness.

But unemployment peaks are typically key for economic turnarounds, Meeker says, and global GDP growth forecasts, led by China and India, are positive for 2010. Advertising spending, too, should grow in 2010, and consumer confidence seems to have bottomed out in February and has been heading up all year.

Then Meeker turned to the promise of the mobile Internet. And Meeker is bullish like crazy about mobile Internet! Driven, she says, by unprecedented next-generation-platform-induced changes in communication and commerce, mobile-related share shifts will “create/destroy material shareholder wealth.” YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are well noted. And not shockingly, the poster child for the uptake of mobile devices on IP-based networks is iPhone/iTouch usage (“fastest hardware user growth in consumer history” ).

The next big thing in computing follows a logical evolution, Meeker illustrates by slide 32. Increasing levels of integration will provide an incredible opportunity in semiconductors, hardware, software, and services as the rate of mobile Internet adoption makes desktop Internet adoption look so last-century. This statement I particularly loved: “Mobile devices will evolve as remote controls for ever expanding types of real-time cloud-based services…empowering consumers in unprecedented and transformative ways.”

Quoting from Mathew Honan in Wired magazine’s January issue, Meeker shares this: “Millions of people are now walking around with a gizmo in their pocket that not only knows where they are, but also plugs into the Internet.” Heavy mobile data users will triple to more than 1 billion by the end of 2013 (AT&T alone has had a 50x increase in mobile data traffic in the past 3 years).

These are exciting times for technology makers, marketers, and users. My passion for, and faith in technology has kept me bullish throughout the downturn, and I can hardly contain my enthusiasm for what’s coming as we turn this innovation economy skyward once again.

The full set of slides from Meeker’s presentation are available here, and are worth going through in their entirety.

New York Times technology writer Steve Lohr makes a good case for a recovering economy, led by increasingly good financial performance in the technology sector.

Lohr gathers optimistic chief executive quotes from Google, Intel, I.B.M., Dell, Cisco, plus a supporting cast of economists and analysts. The pervasive spread of computing across industries and society, they tell us, means the long-term growth trend in the tech sector is as much a mirror of the economy as an engine of economic growth.

Just as there was some serious psychology behind the economic collapse, rising confidence at the executive level will translate into investment in growth, including hiring. Lohr says that phase has just begun and that the steady march of digital technology is pushing a renewed and broadbased demand for information technology.

Oh, and by the way, check out the image associated with Lohr’s article – a dollar bill made from a circuit board. Another interesting statement relative to my blog post from yesterday about images of technology…

Read Steve Lohr’s entire column here.

I’m one of those computer-savvy geeks who’s absolutely awful about backing things up. But I think I’ve finally seen something that will change those bad habits. We launched Vembu Home today, and I think it’s a really usable backup application.

Clearly there’s no shortage of on-line backup solutions on the market, but our assessment is that Vembu has done a great job taking things to a new level. This isn’t just a blatant endorsement of a Rainier client – I’ve downloaded the product and am using it (to try it, go to Vembu Home and enter the limited invitation code: BACKMEUPSCOTTY).

Both in terms of flexibility and the user interface (it’s the first backup application built using the Adobe Air+Flex platform) Vembu’s come up with a good solution, in my opinion.

First of all, this is the first and only unified backup product, meaning you can backup locally or to the Amazon (web services) Cloud, or to both, from one user interface. Second, the user interface is gorgeous. Finally, the product is based on Vembu’s company’s StoreGrid technology, which already runs on something like 100,000 enterprise computers worldwide.

Basically Vembu Home is enterprise grade stuff repackaged and priced for home users who never back their stuff up. Until now.

According to a study released Wednesday by Forrester Research, that which used to be the pursuit of a few on the lunatic fringe has become mainstream. As Jenna Wortham puts in her her New York Times article, “We’re all gadget geeks now. ”

The study found that  half of all American adults are gamers now, and 63% of U.S. households have a broadband connection. Plus 3/4 of American households have cellphones and PCs.

A few other interesting general insights cited in the report:

• Young singles and couples are the most connected to the Internet. They are more likely to goonline in places other than home or work, these consumers tend to carry the Net with them. About half has send a picture from a cell phone in the past month, and a quarter has accessed the mobile Internet.
• Young families are heavy tech adopters. This group owns the most devices overall, but they especially lead the adoption of family-friendly devices like Blu-ray players, DVRs and game consoles. A high 93% owns a DVD player, 76% has some type of game console at home, and 39% has a home theatre system.
• Older families have the most digitally connected homes. As already shows from the graphic, families with older children live in a ‘wired’ home. Their average spend on connectivity is highest across Internet, TV, and phone. They have on average 3 mobile phones at home, and more than 2 PCs.
• Older consumers spend most money online. While lagging on the adoption of many technologies, these consumers are the leaders when it comes to online spending. They spend on average $560 dollar online in the past three months, and about one in five spent more than $1,000 online.

Read Forrester’s blog about the report.