web 2.0 expo 2008

Netvibes, a developer of customizable start pages, plans to make its widget platform, application programming interfaces, and iPhone version open source, according to CEO Tariq Krim.

"We want to compete with Google widgets," Krim said. "Our container supports Google widgets and every other platform. If we release our code, people will leverage it and grow the reach of our platform."

Krim hopes that supporting a broad range of platforms, including Windows Vista and Windows Live, Mac OS X, Opera, Yahoo, and Google, will inspire the developer community to adopt and innovate on the Netvibes platform.

Netvibes … Read more

During a post-keynote luncheon with a few reporters, Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh and Yahoo Open Strategy (Y!OS) chief architect Neal Sample shared more details about the inside-out rewiring of the Web giant.

Balogh said that co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang is taking a personal interest in the project, which began in earnest as part of Yang's 100-day plan, which he created when he took the helm of the company from Terry Semel in September of last year. He noted that Y!OS was started before Microsoft came knocking on Yahoo's door. Balogh joined Yahoo from VeriSign just … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--In return for the huge amount of work Flickr users do to tag photos on the popular photo-sharing site, they should get the benefit of the algorithms the service uses to bring meaning to the data.

That's how at least some at Flickr feel, according to Kakul Srivastava, the service's director of product management said in her talk, "The next generation of tagging: Searching and discovering a better user experience," at the Web 2.0 Expo here Thursday.

The idea behind that theory is that as Flickr users proactively add tags to countless millions of … Read more

In Web 2.0 conference culture, a wheelchair becomes an ad platform, and the letter "X" serves as a mascot. So why not celebrate SWAG?

A group of Los Angeles friends who work in social media were kvetching earlier this month about the mountain of waste--such as branded T-shirts, stress balls, key chains, and other giveaways--that pile up at tech conferences.

They decided to turn that into an opportunity to sweeten the convention party circuit while benefiting charity.

Michael Liskin, Marjorie Kase, and David Preciado decided to cruise the Web 2.0 Expo in a "Schwaggin' … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--So there was Marc Andreessen, scaring the bejeesuz out of the crowd at the Web 2.0 Expo here with talk of a "nuclear winter" descending upon techdom. Maybe it was the Lex Luthor resemblance that made it seem extra sinister.

For the record, this line is becoming old hat for Andreesen--in a blog post he wrote after Ning raised $60 million net in a private round of funding, Andreesen said the money would "enable us to keep scaling given our accelerating growth (more than 230,000 networks on Ning now, growing at over 1,000 … Read more

As I've said previously, the Web 2.0 Expo show features a lot of products for developers. But there are still cool new Web apps to find--especially at the Launch Pad, a rapid-fire demo session featuring six relatively new companies. It's kind of like a mini-Demo.

Acquia sells a commercialized version of Drupal, the open-source content management (and Webware 100 winner). If you buy the open-to-commercial model, as executed by RedHat (Linux), and Trixbox (Asterisk), this business makes a lot of sense. I'm glad to see the platform get some business attention.

Chirpscreen is a fun … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Max Levchin made a name for himself as the co-founder of transaction system PayPal, one of the Web's foremost utilitarian services. Then he made a name for himself again at the helm of Slide, which isn't exactly in the same space. Its flagship product, "SuperPoke," has become the poster child--er, poster sheep--for criticism of social-networking developer applications as a silly fad.

On Wednesday, after his keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, I asked Levchin if he thought there were actually a chance for some social applications to emerge that … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Jonathan Zittrain recently published a terrific book with the suggestive title The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It. But as I settled into my seat to report on his talk at the Web 2.0 Expo here Thursday, the Internet stopped me.

Dead in my tracks.

It was a confluence of events. In a switcheroo, what we witnessed was actually "virtual Zittrain." The good professor--he teaches Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University and is the co-founder of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society--appeared on the big screen in a … Read more

The Web 2.0 Expo is really a show for developers. Most of the exhibits are developer tools and platforms, and the pitches I'm hearing in the hallways are for tools, not applications. Case in point: Rambla, by Piria, a Flash-based Web site builder that president Bob Lang is building to sell to hosting sites, so they can rebrand it and sell it to their customers.

In this very early stage, it looks like a very usable tool for building flat sites. The templates are attractive and flexible, and it's easy to select and move text and art … Read more