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The mini-Demo conference at the Web 2.0 Expo is the Launch Pad, where five start-up companies pitched to a small panel of experts (Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, Matt Marshall of VentureBeat, and Anand Iyer of Microsoft) and a moderate audience spread out across a very large hall. Of the five pitches, I found four very smart (read the summaries to figure out which one didn't get my nod) and of those, one appeared to be a genuinely new idea. That would be the first company in this run-down. (The audience, though, liked Nitobi the best.)

80legs is building … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--The floor of the exposition hall at this year's Web 2.0 Expo has been a little bit lethargic, to say the least. "It's a lot emptier than last year," said one representative from a social gaming company that had set up a booth. "I think the 'Web 2.0' thing has become a bit of a stigma."

Indeed, these days the term goes hand-in-hand with broken business models and overblown expectations, as much as it does with innovation. With the economy in shambles, attendance at the semiannual conference is down. The show … Read more

I'm happy to announce that we have opened the voting for the 2009 Webware 100 awards. This is our annual program in which CNET readers select the top Web 2.0 apps and services from our hand-picked list of 300 finalists.

This year--the third year we've done the Webware 100--we had about 5,000 qualifying submissions from which we selected the final 300. These are 300 very strong Web apps, spread into 10 groups of 30 each. We have a new arrangement of voting categories this year, including the important … Read more

In the run-up to the Web 2.0 Expo, which opens this week in San Francisco, I've heard a lot of doom and gloom about the show, and by implication about every "Web 2.0" company there is. But while the Web 2.0 Expo will be quieter this year than last, it won't be a ghost town. There's life left still in Web startups.

Web 2.0 Expo in 2008 drew about 10,000 people to the Moscone West facility in 2008. This year, according to Expo Co-Chair Brady Forrest, the conference will see … Read more

On Thursday, I put out a call for new Web 2.0 application ideas, telling readers the two best (according to me) concepts would win the two complete Web 2.0 Expo passes I have to give away. And the results are in.

First, I have to say that several of the good ideas have already been done. There are already aggregation services, like PageOnce, that roll up data from personal sites such as banks and social networks. There's an app, OopsImLate, that works with your GPS-equipped smartphone to tell people you won't possibly be able to make … Read more

"One who plants a garden plants happiness." This proverb, of Chinese origin I believe, can now become a reality of sorts without the need for land or even a green thumb. A new app called iPhorest lets you be an electronic gardener.

After downloading the software for $4.99, you dig a virtual hole by creating a digging motion with your iPhone until your seedling appears. Then you plant it.

Not only might the gardening bring happiness to you, The Conservation Fund also benefits. For each virtual tree planted, the fund will plant a native tree in real … Read more

The annual Web 2.0 Expo kicks off at the end of this month in San Francisco. As in years past, it should be an interesting conference with a ton of useful sessions for those involved in the Web ecosystem, as well as an exhibit hall populated by core Web 2.0 infrastructure companies.

You can get a 35 percent off a conference pass to the event by using the code websf09btd45 on the registration site, or better yet, win a free, all-access pass (I have two to give away) by participating in our contest.

Here's the game: Describe, … Read more

The Y Combinator incubator hosted its ninth open demo meet-up today. Fifteen companies presented, most showing off not just strong technologies and concepts, but realistic business models. Here are the highlights of the six best companies (in my opinion), as well as two with good technologies but troubling business models.

Probably the most popular demo company at the event was Wattvision (site not live yet), which is making a whole-house real-time energy-monitoring system. The key is its hardware: a gizmo you literally stick on to your electricity meter that watches the little wheel turn around. The data is transmitted to a computer in your home, or via Wi-Fi to your router and then back to the Wattvision servers, where it's then packaged and delivered to you every 15 seconds, via a Web page or iPhone app. You can see your momentary energy cost with this service, and that's cool. Wattvision doesn't give you granular data: it's whole-house only. There are other issues with this service, but it looks like something that people will instantly understand and want--because you can see in a heartbeat that it will help you save money.

Foodoro is launching an "Etsy of food:" a marketplace that helps consumers and boutique food sellers connect to each other. The market for food and for food gifts is strong, and supports a large community of small specialty food manufacturers. However, the traditional multi-tier distribution channels absorb a lot of the manufacturers' revenues, as well as separating them from their end consumers. Foodoro, while it's a middleman for the transaction part of the sale, does not ship food itself nor hide the customer from the vendor, enabling, the founders believe, better relationships where they count. The company also has a smart widget strategy: There are affiliate widgets that bloggers can put on their sites to promote the food items they like. They get a cut of the sales that Foodoro then manages, but again, Foodoro connects the manufacturer and the consumer directly for delivery of the items. Foodoro could potentially impact the traditional food catalog businesses.

Voxli is a super-simple voice chat product for games that works via a browser plug-in (with a push-to-talk hot key that punches through to whatever game you're using). If you want to set up a team chat room, you just go to the site, name your room, get a URL, and send it to your teammates. Pricing will be $60 per account per year, and an account holder will be able to invite up to 200 people into a room. It's in free beta right now. I think the proposed price is a bit high, but the potential market is very large. … Read more

We managed to get a sneak peek at the iPhone OS 3.0.

It's a beta version, so things could change between now and the official release this summer, but we captured a few screenshots to give you an idea of its look and feel.

Of course, we checked out the biggest additions, such as cut and paste, multimedia messaging, and the landscape keyboard. Yet we also cruised through the "shake to shuffle" feature, the Spotlight search feature, the voice memo recorder, and a few others. We even found something we that we weren't expecting.

So … Read more