Lisa Padilla on Media and Culture

Mashery made headlines last week at Web 2.0, not by presenting but by being present. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=10700 Mashery launches with two versions of it's service, "free" and "pro". The free version offers a place online for people to find a company's API, along with documentation and peer support. Also cool, this version includes an integrated forum, wiki, and blog (and you only need one login). The pro account, which typically runs around $1000/month, includes extensive metrics (such as precisely who is using the API and how much), issuing of developer keys, security features and server load protection. You can, however, sign up developers for your community with the free version. I think this service has so very much potential in aiding companies in being successful, in fact, if it had been around in 2000 I bet there would be fewer professionals returning to the Midwest waning "I used to be in that th

When asked about the latest trends of hosted office applications and how they are built, Marco Boerries (SVP Connected Life, Yahoo!) said at the DowJones VentureWire Consumer Technology Ventures Conference ( pics ) this morning that he did not think it mattered whether these were built in AJAX or Java, what was important was the “openness” of these services. For the office, things like open document formats and rich text editors would continually grow in importance whereas consumers will be mostly about getting media and being able to open it. His response to a question from the audience about open source applications and their future was tepid. Boerries feels that the value chain created by companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Dell is a huge inertia to overcome but the fact is that we do use fewer Windows applications than we did 10 years ago and he looks forward to more Linux-based solutions. “Less time in front of the PC, more time in front of the phone,” says Boerries. Time that