You don't have to be a genius to build web applications -- that is, if you use a Caspio. The system has drag-and-drop simplicity but the results are truly cool.

In fact, Caspio has customers like General Electric (NYSE: GE), Office Depot (NYSE: ODP), and the American Red Cross.

Interesting enough, Caspio is getting lots of traction with the newspaper industry. Nearly 60 daily newspapers use the service, such as the San Jose Mercury News, Detroit News, Daily News of Los Angeles, and Denver Post.

"Newspapers are now able to serve their readers with hyper-local databases without the high costs of hiring programmers and consultants," said Frank Zamani, the founder and CEO of Caspio.

Take a look at The Arizona Republic. Using Caspio, the newspaper was able to build a search engine for the annual compensation levels of Arizona executives.

There's also a database that has the enforcement actions against licensed long-term facilities in Arizona.

"The belief is that newspapers are on the way out," said Zamani. "And that players like Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) will dominate. That may be the case on a national level. But the Web is also a big opportunity for newspapers to capitalize on their local capabilities. And, with tools like ours, it's a lot easier to deploy the applications."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Can Caspio's 'hyper local apps' save the newspaper biz? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 10 Jun 2007 08:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.