Registration is open and the program set for this premier event

Sebastopol, CA — Registration is now open for Ubuntu Live, the first official conference dedicated to Ubuntu, the Linux-based operating system that’s gaining momentum and notoriety in the worldwide technical industry. The conference will showcase a wide-ranging program of expert-led sessions and tutorials to inform and inspire the growing Ubuntu community, from power users to the Ubuntu-curious. The three-day conference launches July 22-24, 2007 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, in conjunction with the O’Reilly 2007 Open Source Convention (OSCON).

Co-produced by Canonical, the official commercial sponsor and distributor of Ubuntu and related projects, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., a longtime champion of and participant in the open source community, Ubuntu Live will provide an interactive, in-depth, and comprehensive educational experience for all participants. Attendees will include IT professionals, government and business leaders, educators, community leaders, and enterprise users.

Read the full announcement on O’Reilly.com.

Sebastopol, CA — Registration is now open for OSCON, the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. This year’s program will examine how open technologies are making breakthroughs in the mainstream IT community, and delve into the advances on the open source horizon. Now in its ninth year, OSCON is the annual gathering of developers, hackers, visionaries, and alpha geeks who are driving the open source movement. OSCON returns to the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon July 23-27, 2007.

OSCON will feature more than 400 sessions and tutorials in fifteen tracks that will cover Administration, Business Databases, Java, Linux, People, Perl, PHP, Programming, Python, Ruby, Security, and Web Applications. Also happening concurrently will be the O’Reilly Radar Executive Briefing, a full-day discussion and debate that will give attendees the opportunity to take part in the conversation between Tim O’Reilly and the innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders who are fostering the evolution of computing via open source technologies.

Read the full announcement on O’Reilly.com.

Stephen Shankland writes: MySQL, purveyor of the open-source database of the same name, is on the road to becoming a publicly traded company, bolstered by $50 million in revenue in 2006.

“It’s still in the pipeline,” Chief Executive Marten Mickos said of the plan to hold an initial public offering of his company’s stock. He declined to discuss when the company planned to go public, but said, “We’re making good progress, doing all the things we need to get done.”

During the days of dot-com mania, companies would go public without being profitable and in some cases without much in the way of revenue, and with investor enthusiasm bubbling at the time, many of them raised millions of dollars during their IPOs. MySQL, though, is working on building its business first.

The company garnered about $50 million in revenue in 2006, Mickos said in an interview at the MySQL Conference and Expo here. That compares with $6.5 million in 2002 and about $34 million in 2005, according to earlier figures Mickos cited in a speech two years earlier.

Read the complete article on CNet News.

It may be an ideal solution for Web companies with multimedia files

Eric Lai writes: An independent developer has created a free plug-in for the open-source MySQL database that lets users inexpensively store their data on Amazon.com Inc.’s Web storage service, S3.

Mark Atwood, a Seattle-based developer, said his plug-in would be ideal for Web-centric companies that need cheap, reliable storage — Amazon Web Services charges 10 cents per gigabyte per month — over fast performance. For instance, companies operating Web sites that store “huge quantities of images that are only accessed occasionally” might find the technology ideal, Atwood said.

Atwood presented the still-in-development plug-in, which has been eagerly anticipated online, at the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., yesterday.

Read the full article on Computerworld.com.

Stephen O’Grady writes: In an event short on bottled water but long on reliable wireless, MySQL proved much to this first time User Conference attendee. Not that I came in as a disbeliever, of course: even before they (smartly ;) became RedMonk clients, MySQL impressed me as a project that possessed that rare awareness not only of where it was but where it could get to. The past three days have nothing but reinforce that assessment; it’s tough to disbelieve, after all, when all you hear from its developers, partners, hell, even competitors, is that the product is, to borrow Dan Patrick’s words, en fuego.

Find out the five things that Stephen learned on RedMonk.com.

MySQL Cluster Carrier-Grade Edition Scales to 100,000 Transactions per Minute in DBT2 Benchmark

2007 MySQL Conference & Expo, Santa Clara, Calif. — April 26, 2007 — MySQL AB, developer of the world’s most popular open source database, today announced the results of recent DBT2 benchmarks of its MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition database. The announcement was made this morning at the 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo. Tests were conducted in collaboration with Intel Corporation and Dolphin Interconnect Solutions.

The benchmark results show the very high scalability of MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition, attaining a rate of 100,000 transactions per minute (TpM) using an 8-node cluster. In this benchmark, the latest generation of the Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processor family provided a significant step forward in scalability, showing a 75-percent speed improvement over tests run on previous generation Intel Xeon processor systems.

Read the full announcement on MySQL.com.

Deal will make DB2 a certified storage engine for MySQL apps on System i servers

Eric Lai writes: MySQL AB and IBM announced Wednesday that users of the latter’s System i hardware line will be able to run the MySQL open-source database on the midrange servers.

The System i version of IBM’s DB2 database, which is integrated with the midrange line’s operating system as a standard feature, will serve as a certified storage engine for MySQL, the two companies said at MySQL’s annual user conference here.

MySQL claims that its namesake database is being used in 11 million active installations worldwide. The software is based on a modular architecture that lets users swap in different storage engines tuned for different application scenarios.

Read the full report on Computerworld.com.

Tim O’Reilly shares the comments he heard while mingling with the attendees at the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara yesterday. While admitting that the O’Reilly team co-produces the show and that he is also on the MySQL board, Tim can’t help but say that this event, ” is a darn impressive conference. The depth and breadth of the sessions truly is remarkable.”

Read Tim’s full post on O’Reilly Radar.

John Koenig writes: At the recent OSBC conference in San Francisco, Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, delivered a thoughtful presentation on the popular topic of software stacks. Mickos used the Swedish word “Lagom,” meaning somewhere in the middle, to define a “well-tempered stack” that can deliver a number of benefits.

Read Koenig’s report on the presentation along with an interview of Marten Mickos on Itmanagersjournal.com.

Solid Information Technology, the leading provider of fast, always-on and affordable databases used in more than 3,000,000 mission-critical deployments worldwide, and Proven Scaling, a consulting firm specializing in MySQL technology, today announced the launch of DorsalSource.org (http://dorsalsource.org), a community-focused website whose goal is to provide builds of MySQL Server, solidDB for MySQL, and other MySQL-related products. The site will be showcased this week at the 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo in Solid’s booth #401.

Read the full announcement on WebKnowHow.net.

Eric Lai reports: Digg.com credits two particular features of its LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) server cluster for helping the news aggregation site maintain speedy performance in the face of high growth.

The site, which lets its users vote on, or “digg,” their favorite news stories hosted on other sites, recently passed the 1.2 million-user mark according to Elliot White III, an engineer at San Francisco-based Digg Inc. He spoke at MySQL’s annual conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Tuesday.

Today, Digg.com boasts 100 servers scattered in multiple data centers that host a total of 30GB of data, but the site started off in late 2004 as a single Linux server running Apache 1.3, PHP 4, and MySQL 4.0 using the default MyISAM storage engine, White said.

As more users dug Digg, the site moved to an architecture that uses a load balancer in the front that sends queries to PHP servers, MySQL slave servers that feed the PHP servers, and a MySQL master server that feeds data to the slaves.

That’s a fairly standard setup. But to get away from “sending raw queries against the database,” White said Digg.com uses a software called Memcached.

Read the complete report on Computerworld.com.

Official questions database giant’s motives, saying it merely wants to contain open source and push its own OS

Paul Krill writes: Oracle’s venture into the Linux market was called “a bit disingenuous” by a Red Hat executive speaking at the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. on Tuesday.

The executive, Michael Evans, Red Hat vice president of corporate development, speculated that Oracle wants to contain open source.

In the midst of his presentation on the One Laptop Per Child initiative, Evans noted mainstream adoption of open source with companies like Oracle participating in the Linux space. Oracle, however, is “a bit disingenuous in their intentions, if you ask me,” Evans said.

Read the full report on InfoWorld.com.

MySQL AB and IBM today announced a joint technology and reseller agreement to bring support for the MySQL open source database to the IBM System i business computing platform.

The two companies will work together to offer the MySQL Server for i5/OS, the flagship operating system for System i, and plan to deliver DB2 for i5/OS as a certified MySQL storage engine on the System i platform. This will allow System i customers to implement online and transactional MySQL applications while storing all data in a single, easy-to-manage DB2 database.

In addition, MySQL Enterprise subscriptions — a comprehensive offering of MySQL database software, services and support — will be made available to IBM clients worldwide through IBM’s reseller network and System i sales team. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Read the full announcement on MySQL.com.

Microsoft Corp.’s announcement last week that it will sell a $3 software bundle to students in developing countries is a positive move that won’t hurt the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) effort, said a member of the nonprofit group’s board on Tuesday.

“For the good of the world, it’s a positive thing,” said Michael Evans, vice president of corporate and business development at Linux provider Red Hat Inc. and a director of Cambridge, Mass.-based OLPC, which is building what is widely known as the ‘$100 laptop.’

Computerworld’s Eric Lai took the opportunity to interview Michael Evans yesterday at the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara.

Read Lai’s insightful report and analysis on Computerworld.com.

Unisys Corporation has worked with news and information leader Reuters to help upgrade the underlying platform for Reuters.com and transform its global news websites to provide next-generation capabilities and news delivery.

The enhanced Web sites have yielded major improvements in performance by reducing U.S. page load times by 75 percent and allowing advertisers on Reuters.com and Reuters mobile sites to more effectively and creatively target their messages to the growing audience of Reuters global network of news and information sites.

Solution Initiative to Be Featured at MySQL Conference April 24

Unisys and Reuters architects will present a case study on the Reuters implementation today, April 24, at the MySQL Conference. The presentation will be at 5:30 p.m. PDT in Ballroom H of the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Read the full post on CRM2day.com.

Want to know where the US Navy, Flickr, United Online, NASA, Facebook, Ticketmaster, Google, and others are going to be hanging out April 23-26 in Santa Clara, CA? The MySQL Conference & Expo. I’m not normally one for conferences (which sounds strange, given that I started one), but this is one of those foundational events that it’s important not to miss. (I’ll also be at the Red Hat Summit for the same reason.)

When Tim O’Reilly is on the board, MySQL must be doing something right. What it’s doing is making lots of money, providing lots of free downloads, to lots of mission-critical applications. And if you want to grok how and why, it’s good to be there and learn from those that have scaled-out their own applications (Flickr, Navy, etc.).

MySQL is a serious geekfest, so I’ll be spending my time treading water in the Marten Mickos, Eben Moglen, and Guy Kawasaki keynotes. See you there.

To read this post and Matt’s other “Open Sources” reports, visit Infoworld.com.

Popular Open-Source Database Integrated with Leading PHP and Windows Development Tools

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–CodeGear, a leader in developer tools, today announced it has partnered with MySQL AB to provide integrated solutions that will give developers more flexibility in quickly developing rich, database-driven Web applications.

Announced at the 2007 MySQL Conference in Santa Clara, CodeGear and MySQL AB said they have collaborated on integrating the MySQL open source database with CodeGear’s Delphi® Integrated Development Environment (IDE) product line, including the new Delphi for PHP and Delphi 2007 for Win32 products, as well as Delphi for .NET.

Read the
entire announcement on BusinessWire.com.

Solid will Preview solidDB for MySQL High Availability Option at 2007 MySQL Conference

CUPERTINO, Calif., (April 18, 2007) — Solid Information Technology, the leading provider of fast, always-on and affordable databases used in more than 3,000,000 mission-critical deployments worldwide, today announced that it will deliver advanced high availability functionality as a pre-packaged option for users of its open source database — solidDB for MySQL. For the first time, MySQL users can rely on a ready to install product and avoid the risk and complexity of custom-made solutions which require assembling several different components, and thus are costly to implement and maintain. Solid will demonstrate a prototype of the solidDB for MySQL high availability option at the annual 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo, April 23-27 in Santa Clara, Ca. in Booth #401.

Read the full announcement on Solidtech.com.

Infobright today announced the general availability of BrightHouse Version 2.3 with enhanced support for complex and ah-hoc queries across very large amounts of data.

Toronto, Canada (PRWEB) April 24, 2007 — Infobright today announced the general availability of BrightHouse Version 2.3 with enhanced support for complex and ah-hoc queries across very large amounts of data.

BrightHouse helps data warehouse managers meet increasing user demand for broad, unpredictable access to information for business analytics. BrightHouse can efficiently compress and store terabytes of data and make it immediately available for complex analysis. Infobright’s unique approach uses knowledge about the data to efficiently resolve queries minimizing the need to decompress or scan data. Self-managing and automatically indexed, BrightHouse requires very low administrator overhead and BrightHouse’s industry leading 10:1 data compression allows for very large amounts of data to be easily stored on low cost, commodity hardware.

BrightHouse ships with commercial technology from MySQL and is a member of MySQL’s recently announced MySQL Enterprise Connection Alliance (MECA) partner program. Bright-House marries terabyte scalability for analytics with the ease of use, reliability and manageability that has made MySQL the world’s most popular open source database.

Find the full announcement on eMediawire.com.

Join more than 2500 open source developers, gurus, experts, and users at the ninth annual O’Reilly Open Source Convention–five days of wall-to-wall sessions, tutorials, and events, plus one of the best open source show floors around and the O’Reilly Radar Executive Briefing.

Reserve your place now for OSCON 2007, happening July 23-27 in Portland, Oregon. Save $200 when you register by June 4.

Open Source Database Vendor Recognizes YouTube, Amp’d Mobile, Adobe, HP, Red Hat, Carahsoft and Top Community Contributors with Annual MySQL Awards in the Opening Keynote of the 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo

Santa Clara, Calif. — April 24, 2007 — MySQL AB’s CEO Marten Mickos kicked off the opening day of the 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo this morning with a keynote exploring the phenomenal momentum of open source software as both a disruptive force on the traditional enterprise software industry and a positive communal movement among individual software developers.

“Open source is simply a smarter method to develop and distribute software — a way to promote software users’ freedoms in addition to protecting its creators’ rights,” Mickos noted. “By lowering the cost of entry for start-ups, and removing the obstacles to explosive growth, open source software is also having a wonderful impact on empowering users to build a new generation of more agile products, Web sites and companies. Perhaps the next Microsoft, Yahoo, Google or YouTube is sitting in this audience today.”

Throughout this week, more than 1,400 attendees and 66 exhibitors will participate in over 140 technical and IT business sessions at the annual MySQL event being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center. It is the world’s largest gathering of open source database experts.

Read the full announcement on MySQL.com.

Get the inside scoop on the Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions scheduled during the MySQL Conference & Expo, on Kaj Arno’s blog on planetmysql.com. Birds of a Feather sessions are the informal evening sessions where people sharing an interest meet face to face. You can still organise your own BoF. There are sixteen BoFs already.

For more information, visit: http://www.planetmysql.org/kaj/?p=106

ZRM for MySQL Now Supports the Demanding Data Backup Requirements of High Availability Applications

MySQL Conference & Expo, Santa Clara, Calif. - April 24, 2007 - Zmanda, the leader in open source backup and recovery software, today announced that its Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL - the only comprehensive, enterprise-class backup and recovery solution designed specifically for MySQL ­- now supports MySQL Cluster databases. ZRM for MySQL Cluster Edition is the first backup and recovery solution designed for the stringent demands of MySQL Cluster and MySQL Cluster Carrier-Grade Edition, a real-time, shared-nothing clustered database system that has been designed to meet the high availability, scalability and low latency requirements of telecom applications.

Read the full announcement on LinuxPR.com.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Talend, the first provider of open source data integration software, today announced that Fabrice Bonan, chief operating officer, will lead a session at the MySQL Conference & Expo, an annual event that brings together more than 2,000 MySQL developers, users and database administrators.

Bonan’s presentation on Wednesday, April 25, titled “Leveraging Open Source for Operational Data Integration,” will address key issues surrounding the synchronization of data between MySQL and other operational systems. It will also outline the advantages of Talend’s open source data integration solution, Talend Open Studio, and the ways in which developers and enterprise information management teams can best leverage the open source alternative to traditional proprietary data integration suites.

For more information, read the press release on BusinessWire.com.

Continuent, Inc., the leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high-availability and scalability, and MySQL MECA partner, today announced the new version of its Continuent™ uni/cluster software, Continuent uni/cluster 2007 for MySQL Enterprise at the MySQL User Conference & Expo.

San Jose, Calif. (PRWEB) April 24, 2007 — Continuent, Inc., the leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high-availability and scalability, and MySQL MECA partner, today announced the new version of its Continuent™ uni/cluster software, Continuent uni/cluster 2007 for MySQL Enterprise at the MySQL User Conference & Expo.

Continuent uni/cluster 2007 is a suite of middleware software that delivers high-availability and scalability clustering for virtually any mission critical database application.

By joining the new MECA partner program, Continuent can receive easier access to MySQL sales, marketing and technical opportunities directly from the developers of the world’s most popular open source database. These benefits can help ISV partners like Continuent to better attract and support their current and new customers.
The newest release of Continuent uni/cluster for MySQL Enterprise sets the middleware gold standard for high-availability and scalability for MySQL users.

Read the full announcement on eMediawire.com.

The MySQL Enterprise Connection Alliance (MECA) Makes it Easier for Companies to Reach & Interact with Millions of Open Source Database Users

MySQL Conference & Expo 2007, Santa Clara, Calif. — April 24, 2007 — MySQL AB, developer of the world’s most popular open source database, today announced the launch of a new business partner program designed to make it easier for resellers, software vendors, hardware companies, and IT service providers to offer their database-related solutions to the millions of MySQL users worldwide.

This morning’s announcement was made on the opening day of the 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo being held this week at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Over 1,400 attendees and 66 exhibitors are participating in the annual event — exploring and celebrating the phenomenal momentum of open source software such as MySQL.

The MySQL Enterprise Connection Alliance (MECA) is a multi-tiered partner program with compelling benefits for differing type and sized companies — from hardware and software vendors to resellers/distributors, training providers, hosting companies, systems integrators and consulting firms. MECA offers members special access and discounts to MySQL software subscriptions and support, joint marketing and sales opportunities, as well as assistance in assuring their commercial solutions work well with MySQL Enterprise and other MySQL database tools.

Read the full announcement on MySQL.com.

RippleTech Informant provides comprehensive database security for high-transaction environments such as ecommerce, telecom and financial services.

MySQL User Conference, Booth 412 - April 24, 2007 - RippleTech, the data access intelligence provider, today announced the availability of Informant for MySQL, the industry’s only dedicated network appliance to monitor MySQL database applications. Informant empowers MySQL users to protect against costly security breaches, demonstrate compliance and improve availability and reliability through detailed database traffic audit analysis that captures the entire user session without any negative impact on performance or service.

To read the full announcement and download detailed data on RippleTech Informant, visit RippleTech.com.

Alfresco Continues OEM Momentum with FileMark

LONDON–April 24th, 2007–Alfresco Software Inc., the first and leading provider of an open source enterprise content management solution (ECM), and FileMark, a leading provider of document processing, archiving and records management solutions, today announced the availability of the first open source ECM system with integrated COLD (Computer Output to Low-cost Disk) and image capture.

FileMark’s SMARTi Imaging and SMARTi COLD modules seamlessly integrate with Alfresco to create a production class ECM solution for mid-market and large scale organizations.

The result is a highly versatile, easy to use, open source ECM system, offering both mid-market and large scale enterprises significantly better value than can be found with proprietary solutions.

Read the full announcement on Alfresco.com.

SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–BakBone Software® (Pink Sheets:BKBO), the leading provider of Linux data protection solutions, will demonstrate its business continuity solution for MySQL and present a technical session on protecting mission-critical MySQL data at the upcoming MySQL Conference & Expo. This event takes places April 23 to 27, 2007 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif. BakBone’s NetVault®: Backup Application Plugin Module™ (APM) for MySQL is the first enterprise-class business continuity solution for MySQL.

Read the full release on BusinessWire.com.

HAMBURG, Germany, April 23 /PRNewswire/ — SNAP Innovation GmbH, makers of the PrimeBase XT (PBXT) storage engine for MySQL; has announced plans to lead the development of a scalable BLOB streaming architecture for MySQL, the popular open source database. The new technology will transform MySQL into a scalable media server capability of streaming pictures, films, MP3 files and other binary and
text objects (BLOBs) directly in and out of the database.

Official kick-off for the scalable BLOB streaming project is the MySQL Conference & Expo 2007, in Santa Clara, California, April 23. - 27. SNAP will be providing more details of the project during the conference week.

Read the full announcement on PR Newswire.

Network World lists Alfresco in 2007’s Top Ten Enterprise Software Companies

LONDON–April 23rd 2007–Alfresco Software, Inc., the first and leading provider of open source enterprise content management solutions, today announced that it has been named by Network World as one of the top ten enterprise software companies to watch this year.

Read the full announcement on Alfresco.com.

Three days in Portland–July 22-24–will be the center of the Ubuntu world, as Ubuntu Live convenes at the Oregon Convention Center. Register before June 4 and you’ll save $150.

Co-sponsored by O’Reilly Media and Ubuntu parent company Canonical Ltd., this inaugural conference will provide a meeting place for Ubuntu users, contributors, and partners, as well as the Ubuntu-curious. Learn how Ubuntu can make a critical difference in your business or project, as you meet and mingle with the global open source community at the largest Ubuntu gathering yet.

Rafe Needleman writes: When you go to this site you’ll think I’m covering the company because its homepage says, “Join the Webware revolution.” But Coghead is more than just a slogan I can get behind. It’s a clean online application builder that takes the complex job of creating an online database and makes it almost simple.

No matter how straightforward the development tool, creating a database application is hard intellectual work. Coghead does a good job of getting out of your way so you can focus on your data structure and entry forms. It will still be intimidating for a database newbie, but if you have a smattering of experience with creating your own databases it should make sense.

Read the full post on Webware.com, Hands On.

Michael Singer writes: Microsoft may not have been at the forefront of creating social networks, but the Windows company is ready to lift the lid on a conversation with the new architects of Web 2.0.

The company is launching PhizzPop.com on April 30. The site will serve as a place where companies that build Web 2.0-enabled software can network, exchange ideas, learn about events, browse job postings and even learn a thing or two.

Of course, Microsoft will invite people to show off their stuff, but not in a Channel 9 or 10.Net kind of way. Consider it more like a forum or online conversation where you can show off (or find out who is a show off).

Read the full post on InformationWeek’s Microsoft Weblog.

Barry Levine writes: On Tuesday, Google took another step closer to offering a complete alternative to Microsoft Relevant Products/Services’s ubiquitous Office suite of desktop productivity applications. Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman and chief executive, announced that the search giant would add presentation software, dubbed Presently, to its emerging lineup of online office software.

“Collaboration is a killer app for how communities work,” Schmidt said in his keynote presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. His presentation was made using Presently, the new software designed to enable presentations to be made and shared over the Web.

Read the full article on Sci-tech-today.com.

Leading Event Series to Bring Together Europe’s Rapidly Growing Web 2.0 Business and Developer Communities

SAN FRANCISCO — O’Reilly Media, Inc. and CMP Technology, co-producers of the annual Web 2.0 Summit and the global Web 2.0 Expo event series, today announced the launch of a new conference and tradeshow that will bring together top leaders and technologists who are building, leveraging, and driving the European web economy. Web 2.0 Expo Berlin, scheduled for November 6-8, 2007, will be held at Fairground Berlin, Germany.

Read the full announcement here.

Marc Orchant reports: I’ve been test driving LeapTag, a new browser add-on for finding content related to topics of interest to you that combines a number of unique ideas I’ve not seen in similar tools. LeapTag, as the name implies, uses tags you define to conduct searches for related content. To help understand your interests and readng preferences, LeapTag can import tags from your del.icio.us account to build a keyword list and allows you to select blogs from your RSS subscriptions to establish a baseline for the kid of news and opinion you like to read. You can import RSS subscriptions from Bloglines, NewsGator Online, or Google Reader in the current beta version.

Read the report on ZDNet.com.

Michael Calore reports: Today’s keynote presentation session at the Web 2.0 Expo kicked off with the Launch Pad event. New companies, hand-picked by the conference organizers, are given five minutes each to demonstrate their products and ideas.

Vidoop’s Luke Sontag stole the show with his demo of his company’s secure website login technology. The Vidoop system is innovative but simple. When a user sets up a Vidoop login (using OpenID if they want), they pick two categories that interest them. Say, “horses and food” or “airplanes and beer.” Every time the user logs in using Vidoop, they see a grid filled with nine images, and each image has a letter associated with it. Two of the images fall within the categories the user picked, so they find those category images and enter the letters in the images. The letters associated with each photo change at each login, defeating keystroke logging.

Read the full post on Wired’s Compiler.

Michael Singer writes: The Web 2.0 Summit was so popular last year that we decided to team up again with O’Reilly and get jiggy with the start-ups. Time to polish up your elevator pitch and don’t forget your score card.

My compatriots and me are hunkered down at the Web 2.0 Expo, which is in San Francisco this week. What strikes me most about this show of 10,000 attendees is the number of people who are passionate about mashups and ubiquitous software… although cooperation is not always the rule of the day. You should see the look on Microsoft’s face when you talk about Adobe’s rich Internet application platforms. It’s not for the squeamish.

Read his article on InformationWeek.com.

The DoubleClick acquisition, Schmidt said, will benefit both Internet users in the form of more relevant ads and publishers in the form of technology to serve relevant ads.

Thomas Claburn writes: At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco Tuesday morning, Google CEO Eric Schmidt presented his company as everyone’s friend, an enabler of communities and an amiable business partner rather than a would-be monopolist of advertising, online software, and user data.

Google’s capacity for evil, or at least monopolistic dominance of the Internet, has long been a concern raised by competitors and pundits, not to mention human rights and privacy activists.

Read the full article on InformationWeek.com.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt just took the stage for a sit-down interview with Federated Media’s John Battelle as part of today’s keyonote presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo. Schmidt started the talk by announcing that Google is releasing its long-awaited spreadsheet application for Google Apps. The slide-show tool is Google Apps’ “missing link” that finally empowers the company to fully compete with Microsoft Windows as a full-featured office productivity suite. Battelle pressed Schmidt about the threat against Microsoft, which Schmidt denied.

“I don’t think we compete with them. We’re not as fully functional as MS Office — we’re more in line with how people use the web than how they use the desktop.”

Read the full article on Wired’s Compiler.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, relaxed in a pink tie and blue V-neck sweater, jousted with John Battelle on the Web 2.0 stage this morning.

He started off with a little bit of news: Google will add presentation software to its suite of Google Apps.

One would think that’s the PowerPoint piece completing the suite’s ability to compete with Microsoft Office, but Schmidt denied it. “We don’t think” it’s a competitor, he said. “It doesn’t have all the functionality, nor will it ever have all the functionality, of products like Microsoft Office.”

Instead, it’s just a way for people to collaborate. “We have concluded that collaboration is the killer app for how communities work,” he said.

Read the full article on SFGate.com.

CNET has conveniently posted a roundup of Web 2.0 Expo coverage from all their sites on one page on CNET News.com.

Reveling in their success
Thousands converge on San Francisco for Net confab

Dan Fost & Jessica Guynn report: It seems that every official Web 2.0 event brings with it the notion that a new bubble is in full force, and that the increasing success of each conference only proves that the end is near.

If that is so, then the apocalypse is surely upon, as this week’s Web 2.0 Expo is the biggest yet, with 11,000 people converging on Moscone Center West to hear what today’s Internet giants have to say, and sell.

Read the full article on SFGate.com.

JS-Kit launches “JS-Ratings” service to complement existing 2.0 web services.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) April 17, 2007 — JS-Kit today announced release of its much-anticipated “JS-Ratings” service, which lets web sites add the universally recognized, 5 star-scaled feedback feature to any site simply by pasting two lines of HTML, available at http://www.js-kit.com, into their web page or site template.

Offered completely free of charge, JS-Ratings is available as a stand alone service or integrated alongside the existing JS-Comments service. Both versions drive traffic, stickiness and community by encouraging users to offer their considered (and valuable) opinions on virtually any object, whether a pair of shoes, a restaurant or a blogger’s most recent musings. With several off the shelf configurations available, the service is also easily customizable to complement a site’s existing look and feel at http://www.js-kit.com.

Read the full release on emediawire.com.

Marc Orchant writes: It’s been a pretty action-packed day here at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco between a full slate of sessions and a number of briefings with companies who are announcing interesting new or improved products and services here at the event. One of the trends I see is that there a number of companies here that also appeared at DEMO 2007 in January in Palm Desert who are now announcing significant new milestones for the services and products they launched at that event just a few months ago. Web time is indeed becoming increasingly accelerated.

Read Marc’s full post on ZDNet.com.

Zoho Highlighted at Leading Software Events as Company’s Growing Array of
Office 2.0 Offerings Earns Industry Respect

PLEASANTON, Calif., April 16 /PRNewswire/ — As Office 2.0 continues
its evolution from novelty to necessity, Zoho continues to earn industry
respect, building its reputation as a leading provider of Web-based
applications for collaborative business. This month, the company will speak
and exhibit at Web 2.0 Expo and SaaScon, showcasing its growing Office 2.0
suite and sharing insights gleaned from its experience providing customers
with the industry’s broadest set of affordable, high-quality Office 2.0
services.

Find the full release on PR Newswire.

myConduit breaks the download barrier and bonds users with multiple communities in a single click

Redwood Shores, CA — April 16, 2007 — Conduit, the leading platform for building online communities via community toolbars, today announced myConduit, a breakthrough solution for publishers to acquire new community members with just one click. To-date, Conduit has connected over 130,000 publishers with more than twelve million users, and is growing at the rate of a new user every two seconds. myConduit is the breakthrough new channel for publishers to acquire users, and for community toolbar users to connect with tens of thousands of new communities in the Conduit Network. With myConduit users can subscribe to multiple publisher communities without downloading additional community toolbars or sacrificing real estate on their browsers.

Read the full release on conduit.com.

Open API Enables Developer Community to Earn Shares in Cambrian House

Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco, CA -Cambrian House today announced a partnership with Mashery that will enable developers to access Cambrian House’s API, develop mashup applications and, in turn, become owners in Cambrian House. The partnership will help Cambrian House track developer activity and reward them with shares accordingly.

Read the full release on cambrianhouse.com.

Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco, CA - Cambrian House, an online crowdsourcing community that enables members to collaborate around ideas and business, today proclaimed themselves the first Web 2.0 company to be owned in part by its members. Starting today all existing members, and anyone who joins Cambrian House from this point forward, will earn a share in the business. The more engaged they are as members, the more shares they will earn over time.

Read the full release on cambrianhouse.com.

Dan Farber writes: I got a preview of Spock and liked the concept. The software is still under construction, and while it can do some nice tricks, it also demonstrates the difficulty in building a specialty search engine. In addition, I see Spock as more of community site, which starts with people profiles but extends deeply into the social networking sphere, similar to LinkedIn or Facebook but with data gleaned from the entire Web and user inputs.

Read Dan’s preview of Spock on ZDNet’s Between the Lines.

Ryan Stewart reports: Earlier this week, Curl put out a press release that talked about their pending relaunch into the North American market at Web 2.0 Expo. Curl was one of the very early Rich Internet Application players, but they were ahead of their time so didn’t see massive adoption here in the US. In Japan, however, Curl did quite well and has been providing applications to some big clients including Toyota and the bank of Tokyo. The “relaunch” means that Curl will once again bring marketing and sales resources to the North American market. It also coincides with the 5.0 release of the product.

Read Ryan’s full report on ZDNet.

Brady Forrest clues you in on a efficient new tool to plan your days at Web 2.0 Expo:

ExpoCal has all of the views and pivots that you want for figuring out what is happening at a conference. It provides views of sessions by day, tag, and speaker. If you create an account you can make your schedule. People can also share their calendars (here’s mine for the first couple of days). You can see who else is attending a session and what its tags are.

Read Brady’s full report on O’Reilly Radar.

Mike Gunderloy writes: With the Web 2.0 Expo upon us, you’re going to see a lot of site announcements in the next week or so. One that look immediately useful for the web worker is Egnyte, which just went into beta. They’re playing in the same general space as Microsoft Groove or Tubes: applications that let you designate information for sharing on one computer, back it up into the internet cloud when it changes, and then pull it down on to multiple computers when you want it.

Continue reading the post on Web Worker Daily.

Josh Lowensohn reports: Several of the exhibitors at next week’s Web 2.0 Expo have taken it upon themselves to re-create the desktop workspace experience using new Web technologies like Ajax and Adobe Flex. This isn’t a new idea, but what is interesting is how many of them have forgone creating their own tools, and stuck to integrating existing Web services in a stylized portal platform.

Find out what Josh has to say about ZCubes, G.ho.st, and Sparc on Webware.com.

Tim O’Reilly writes: Michael Arrington wrote the other day about spock, the new people search engine, but I have to say that I don’t think he did it justice. Spock is really cool, and performs a unique function that is well outside the range of capabilities of current search engines. What’s more, it’s got a fabulous interface for harvesting user contribution to improve its results.

You can search for a specific person — but you can do that on Google. More importantly, you can search for a class of person, say politicians, or people associated with a topic — say Ruby on Rails.

Continue reading Tim’s post on O’Reilly Radar.

Ulrike Reinhard reports: For the first time Web 2.0 Conference will open its doors tomorrow. Close to 10.000 attendee from 57 countries! Today I had the chance to speak to Brady Forrest, co-Chair for the conference and also responsible for the O’Reilly Radar Blog. Just listen to the attached podcast.

Download the podcast interview on the Who is Who blog.

Brady Forrest, conductor of Ignite, has just posted the Ignite Expo schedule. Eclectic, intriguing, as you’d expect. All are welcome–you can register for a free Expo Hall only pass on-site.

Kristin Edelhauser writes: If you’re interested in learning how to integrate Web 2.0 into your company, this expo’s for you. Web 2.0 Expo is being held April 15 to 18 in San Francisco. It’s a conference for web professionals, marketers and entrepreneurs hoping to learn, network and share ideas with other members of the Web 2.0 community.

Keynote speakers include Jeffrey P. Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, and Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board of directors for Google Inc. Jennifer Black, vice president of marketing for Local.com Corporation, a rapidly growing local search engine, will also be a featured presenter at the expo.

Read Kristin’s full post on Entrepreneur Magazine’s Business Blog.

Rafe Needleman writes: I got a chance to sit down with the founders of the people search engine, Spock, in advance of the company’s grand unveiling, which will be during the LaunchPad sessions at the Web 2.0 Expo. Spock is Yet Another Search Engine, but it’s an important one — it searches for people. You type in a name and it will show you everything it knows about that person and where it found the data. Or, if you search on a term, it will find people that match it. For example, search for “boxer,” and Mohammed Ali shows up, not underpants or dogs.

Read Rafe’s full preview on Webware.com.

Dylan Tweney reports: It’s not too late to get on the “web 2.0″ bandwagon, says publishing magnate Tim O’Reilly, who coined the term. And if you’re wondering what it takes to build a web 2.0 startup, O’Reilly has just the conference for you — the Web 2.0 Expo.

O’Reilly Media and CMP are co-hosting the conference, which runs April 15 to 18 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Organizers expect between 7,000 and 10,000 people to check out the conference’s 120 exhibitors and seven educational tracks, covering topics from the elementary (web 2.0 fundamentals) to the complex and critical (web operations). O’Reilly describes it as a “how-to conference for web 2.0 developers.”

Read the full report on Wired.com.

If you haven’t made plans for Santa Clara, you are advised to do so now: the 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo is filling up!

What’s on tap for this year’s event? Four days packed with hundreds of sessions in a dozen tracks; a couple of thousands of fellow developers, DBAs, and other open source professionals; a great big Expo Hall (have you seen the exhibitor list lately?); several opportunities to get MySQL Certified; and events and networking galore.

As Tim O’Reilly wrote on the O’Reilly Radar, “Every web 2.0 company is ultimately a database company. Some roll their own, a few, a very few, use proprietary commercial databases. Most are running on MySQL.” So register now and scale to new heights with MySQL.

Noted OSCON program co-chair Nat Torkington on the O’Reilly Radar recently:

The last two years, Google and O’Reilly have presented a set of Open Source Awards at OSCON. For the first time, we’re opening the nominations up to the entire open source community. The award will recognize individual contributors that have demonstrated exceptional leadership, creativity, collaboration, in the development of open source software. The nominations process ends on the last day of April, 2007. Valid nominations will need to include the name of the recipient, any associated project/org, title, and a description of why you are nominating the individual. Google and O’Reilly employees cannot be nominated. Nominations to be sent to osawards AT oreilly DOT com.

Good news!
The call for proposals for RailsConf Europe 2007 has been extended to April 19.

The program is starting to shape up, but we’ve decided to extend the deadline for submitting a proposal to present a session or tutorial at RailsConf Europe in Berlin, Germany, happening 17-19 September, 2007. If you have information of value to share with the active Rails community, we look forward to reviewing your ideas soon.

For more information or to submit a proposal, visit the web site: http://www.railsconfeurope.com/

Rails practitioners should make plans now to attend RailsConf Europe. Registration will open in June.