Web 2.0 Expo: An “American Idol” for Start-Ups

During the “Launch Pad” session, five start-ups took a grilling from developers, journalists and venture capitalists, then faced a crowd vote at the Web 2.0 Expo’s version of “American Idol.” As attendees texted their votes, moderator John Battelle, founder of Federated Media Publishing, jokingly asked: “Want to have a dance-off?” None were necessary. The techies in attendance were starry-eyed for all things mobile, picking Nitobi’s PhoneGap, an open-source tool for building mobile apps, as the People’s Choice winner. Life-tracking site zeaLOG was a close second.

Pre-Diculous, Redux

Palm’s Michael Abbott delivered more than just the keyonote at Web 2.0 Expo. But not that much more. Absent from his remarks Wednesday evening was any news about the price of Palm’s forthcoming Pre handset or a hard-and-fast release date–two bits of information the industry has been pining for since the device was first announced in January.
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