Overall, I was not terribly impressed with what was on display at the Web 2.0 Expo. However, one piece of technology did catch my eye, the Kapow Mashup server. They can explain it more effectively than I can, so watch their demo movie where an oil rig information application is created by harvesting data from 4 public websites and presented using Google Maps as a user-interface.

Gripes: I downloaded this “alleged Java application” yesterday and had two problems: it won’t run on my Mac (it’s Java, write once, run anywhere, remember?) and the company has to decide if I’m worthy to receive a demo key to enable the application. They say they’ll get around to it in 3 days! Software I can’t run due to license key issues is useless.

Update: 04/19/2007 9:00am - The license key arrived. Less of a gripe, but it still took a day.

All that said, it looks interesting and I have high hopes for this sort of technology.

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