Richard MacManus

Today we published a detailed analysis of search innovation techniques by Nitin Karandikar. The post is long, but well worth reading if you are interested in where search is headed. To complement the post, we’re running a poll asking which of the 4 categories of search innovation that Nitin identified, do you think is key … Read more

Last week’s Read/WriteWeb poll asked what you thought of Silverlight, Microsoft’s newly improved rich internet app plug-in that was launched to (unusually) rave blog reviews at MIX on Monday. Some people even said that Silverlight leaves Adobe’s Flash technology in the dust, which is a big claim to make given that Flash is still extremely … Read more

Well it’s been another great trip to the USA! I’ve visited San Francisco (for Web 2.0 Expo), Las Vegas for MIX (courtesy of Microsoft New Zealand) and finally a couple of days in Los Angeles (just to see the sights!). Tonight I head back to New Zealand, getting set for full-time blogging again on Monday. … Read more

All the buzz here at Microsoft MIX in Vegas is rightly about Silverlight, but one other impressive demo I came across was a Vista gadget (a.k.a. widget) for Disney. Entertainment and Devices Division President Robbie Bach was on the main stage yesterday, talking about marketing Microsoft’s connected entertainment services. One of the case studies wheeled … Read more

The announcement last night of iGoogle (the new name for Google Personalized Homepage), Gadget Maker and other localization features, shows that Google is ramping up its personalization efforts once again. Google Blogoscoped has excellent coverage from the Google Personalization Workshop, held yesterday at Mountain View for a select group of local bloggers. In this post … Read more

As noted in our coverage of Ray Ozzie’s MIX keynote this morning, Microsoft has released a number of significant upgrades to its Silverlight product. Silverlight is essentially a competitor to Adobe’s Flash, in that enables developers to create interactive web apps. It’s officially described as “a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of … Read more

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a blogger lunch with Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and General Manager of Client and Web Platform & Tools Scott Guthrie. The discussion was mostly developer focused, but right at the end I managed to get a question in about Microsoft’s strategy for IE and live.com. … Read more

I’m at the MIX conference in Las Vegas, courtesy of Microsoft New Zealand. Ray Ozzie has just completed his keynote speech, in which he delivered a more refined version of his ‘integrated Web/Desktop’ vision. He talked about how the best solutions are “integrated solutions”, meaning integrated Web, desktop and mobile. He talked about RIAs and … Read more

I’m on holiday all this week and during that time Josh Catone will be Guest Editor of Read/WriteWeb. You may remember Josh from such posts as Internet Killed The Television Star and Crowdsourcing: A Million Heads is Better than One. Josh is a talented writer, as well as being co-founder of the web’s largest community … Read more

Yesterday, 20 April, was the 4th anniversary of Read/WriteWeb’s first official post (although I first tinkered with blogging in March 2002). It’s amazing how much has happened in the last 4 years. A common question I get when I meet industry people is: how did you start R/WW? The short version is I started writing … Read more

Post Web 2.0 Expo, time to get back to work and thank our sponsors. Also of course thanks to our readers and writers! Read/WriteWeb’s sponsors are: Wild Apricot is bringing web 2.0 to non-profits. It offers membership database, event and website management for non-profits, clubs and associations. Zoho is a leading Web Office suite. I … Read more

Just as it’s become the custom for Tim O’Reilly to open the Web 2.0 conference keynotes with a fireside chat with Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, and then later for John Battelle to interview a Google exec (it used to be Sergey Brin, but now Eric Schmidt has taken over that task), it’s becoming Read/WriteWeb’s custom … Read more

Yesterday in the Web 2.0 Expo booths, I checked out Bungee Labs – an ambitious new on-demand, web-based development environment that enables developers to build and deploy web apps that utilize the large variety of APIs and web services out on the Internet. The platform is very broad, but if I had to boil it … Read more

Today at Web 2.0 Expo Google CEO Eric Schmidt publicly announced that Google will add a presentations product to its Web Office range of apps, thus completing a Web Office suite and ending (many) months of speculation. It was soon confirmed by the official Google blog, where the Google Docs & Spreadsheets team informed us … Read more