Richard MacManus

Hitwise has released data that suggests Bloglines is still the clear leader in the RSS Reader stakes, with 3 times more US visits than its nearest web-based competitor Rojo. I don’t think a lot can be gleaned from this data though, as it misses out desktop-based RSS Readers, start pages and a number of other … Read more

sphereit start I’ve been impressed with the amount of Mobile Web action we’ve seen already in 2007. With Apple’s iPhone, Google doing deals in Asia, Yahoo ramping up its Go platform, Microsoft hyping up Windows Mobile, small players like Dada doing good business, and innovative startups like Sharpcast and Smartpox, things are looking very bullish … Read more

Carole McManus (no relation) has a great post on the Yahoo! Messenger blog about the innovations we saw in IM over 2006. She says that 2006 was a “watershed year” for IM innovation, citing a Nick Gonzalez post on Techcrunch last November. The features that Nick highlighted then were: interoperability, flexible identities, rich media chat, … Read more

Social networking was King (or Queen) in 2006 and mobile is often seen as the heir to that crown for 2007 and beyond. So what better way to hedge your bets than with a mobile social networking service? We’ve discussed the potential in this market before, specifically noting that Google owns such a service already: … Read more

Well our poll asking whether Ajax is a Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology resulted in 70% of you saying YES, it is a RIA technology. 22% said no and 8% admitted they don’t know. Total poll contributers was 560. The conversation in the post was revealing though – i.e. it revealed it is a very … Read more

John Milan wrote an excellent two-partarticle for R/WW this week, about the future of software. Because it was a very long article – filled with John’s trademark nature metaphors – I thought I’d pull out a few of the highlights. The question addressed was: what will the software solutions of tomorrow look like? In Part … Read more

Disclosure: One of the products listed in this post, Digication, has been a recent R/WW sponsor. One of the more active markets for web 2.0 is e-learning; for example we’ve written before about ChinesePod (learning Chinese) and Elgg (social network software for education). Also last August Steve O’Hear wrote a very insightful introduction to e-learning … Read more

Interesting new directory of “music 2.0” services, which includes the following useful categorization: Music Services – places like iTunes and Rhapsody where you can purchase or subscribe to music Music Discovery – places that help you find music – these fall generally into 3 subcategories: Social – wisdom of the crowds sites like last.fm, iLike. … Read more

The latest browser stats are causing some discussion – mainly because of this article by InformationWeek, which pours water over Microsoft’s claims about IE7: “Although Microsoft recently touted the 100 millionth installation of Internet Explorer 7, Web measurement firms said that the new browser is simply being swapped out for older editions and hasn’t had … Read more

Spotted tonight by John Milan, Google has a promotion for its online shopping product Google Checkout on its homepage – probably the most traffiked web page in the world. Also there’s some interesting speculation over on the Cost Per News site that Google Checkout is set to ramp up: “I’ve heard rumblings from my sources … Read more

I was reading a post by Ryan Stewart, who is my main source of news and information about anything to do with RIA (Rich Internet Applications). Wikipedia defines RIA as “web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop applications.” When I think of RIAs, I usually think of Adobe’s Flex or Microsoft’s … Read more

Twango is a new media sharing service, for video, photos and other media. It’s similar to eSnips, Multiply and PeopleAggregator, in that it combines media sharing with social networking. Twango was founded by a group of 5 ex-Microsoft employees in fall 2004 and officially launched in October 2006. I spoke to co-founder, Randy Kerr, yesterday … Read more

I am always one to promote the ‘read/write’ meme and today I noticed a post by Rod Boothby, on what he’s calling the read/write Intranet. I didn’t see a definition for what this is exactly, but in any case Rod’s asking people to vote for the best read/write intranet systems. In the interests of finding … Read more

We’re starting to see a lot of startups either shutting down, fading away or being put up for sale. The latest is Talkr, an automated text-to-voice service that we actually use here on Read/WriteWeb. At the bottom of each R/WW post, you’ll see an Audio link – click on that to hear a computer-generated female … Read more

I’ve been following usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s annual Best Intranets column for as long as I can remember. This year Nielsen specifically mentions web 2.0, albeit in a very condescending way. The summary is just the start: “This year’s winners emphasized an editorial approach to news on the homepage. They also took a pragmatic approach … Read more