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Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, told audiences today at the Web 2.0 Summit that the next stage of the Web will be building apps and mobile UIs on top of our collective data. Some people believe that a big part of that could come in the form of technology platforms that anyone can use to create those apps and UIs.

Cross-platform mobile Web apps may be poised to become a big part of the future of the Web, but they just aren't as powerful as native apps yet. Cabana, a do-it-yourself mobile Web app creation platform first seen at the Launch conference in February, announced a big new step today that will make mobile Web apps far more feature-rich as well. It's called the Cabana Exchange, and it's an API marketplace that allows app builders to incorporate some powerful 3rd party data and functionality.

You may have seen the new web services that make it easy for anyone to create a lightweight iPhone or Android app, just using drag and drop, text entry and feed URLs. The apps are then hosted for a monthly fee. Those are cool but how about an iPad version? If that's of interest to you, check out a new service just launched today by a company called Bizness Apps.

Bizness has an iPhone app creation system similar to Widgetbox or Genwi's iSites (my favorite) but now it lets you create a dynamic and native (not web) iPad app and host it for $39 per month. I tested it out and the Content Management System is easy to use, relatively powerful and rich with features. It's particularly well suited to restaurants and other small local businesses. Bizness also positions itself well for designer resellers.

When you've got just a moment to spare and your brain has a hunger for the freshest good news in whatever field of interest you focus on - what do you do? These days I spend those times perusing hot blog posts, fresh Tweets and great screenshots from the Web's most prestigious designers. I've been enjoying a mobile Web app I built with help from a service called iSites.us and I thought I'd share with you details about how I put it together. You could really do something like this on any topic.

To check out this app yourself, navigate your phone to the URL designnews.isites.us. Read on for screenshots and a description of the geeky fun behind this little creation.

Even though last night's big contests in Kentucky and Oregon ended in a split decision, with big wins for both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, most pundits now agree on who is most likely to be the Democratic nominee for president when the convention rolls around in August. Hint: it's the candidate who has dominated nearly every method we could think of to measure election momentum on the web. We got some data last night from widget-provider Widgetbox that shows the same trend for viral widget installs.