It's hard to find a job today where someone isn't logged on to the Internet, so it may seem silly to ask this question: Is the World Wide Web dead? But that's the question asked in the recent issue of Wired magazine.

Certainly the Internet is not dead--we need a way to connect to each other--but the Web is a different story thanks to the rise of applications that connect us directly to companies without surfing the Web.

It's interesting that applications for the iPhone, Black Berry, and Android have risen to such prominence in the last year just as the insurance industry is finally making a dent in the World Wide Web. If there's one catch-phrase for every application in the insurance field today it's "Web-enabled."

Wired is more out in front of the technology world than the insurance industry, but pronouncements of the Web's death might be premature. At least some in the industry are latching on to the application environment that might change how we all communicate with each other.

There's not a week goes by that one insurer or another isn't announcing its new app for one of the smart phones or the iPad. After getting burned by a restrained approach to the Internet back in the 1990s, you can't blame carriers--particularly the large ones--for jumping onto something new.

What's fascinating about these apps is it appears we have finally found the elusive "killer app" that the insurance industry has been searching for in the mobile arena for years. Tech Decisions annually covers mobile technology in the magazine and earlier this decade it was a running joke over when a killer app finally would appear.

In those days, we all thought it was going to have something to do with laptops and obviously that was wrong. It's the smartphones that have carried the day.

During a recent Webinar I hosted for Tech Decisions on core systems, I asked Karen Pauli, research director of TowerGroup, whether the mobile claims apps that personal lines carriers have introduced to their policyholders will eventually improve claims automation for commercial lines insurers.

"Mobility is really a clear trend for most carriers," said Pauli. "The service capabilities of personal lines immediately transfer to commercial lines. [The apps] have some capabilities for the claims administration vendors who are proficient in personal lines. They can probably--and many have--driven that over to the commercial lines area. It's quite compatible."

What's your view of the smartphone apps? Is this the killer app for insurers?