Richard MacManus

The next generation Times Reader desktop application, built by NY Times and Microsoft, has just gone live. At the end of August Read/WriteWeb published exclusive pre-launch screenshots of Times Reader, but now you can download the app and see for yourself. Note that it requires a Windows XP machine and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. … Read more

Man about town Om Malik bumped into Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim at the The Future of Web Apps conference in San Francisco. Tariq told Om that Netvibes now has 5 million users, so naturally he is very optimistic of its future. Currently on Read/WriteWeb we’re running a poll asking whether independent Personalized Start Pages (such … Read more

Microsoft has released details of its upcoming Zune product, an iPod-like device that is squarely aimed at challenging Apple’s dominance of the online music market. TechCrunch, Engadget and PaidContent have all the details, so I just want to focus on a couple of interesting Internet features of Zune. 1) Zune will have a social network … Read more

Today Yahoo is releasing the new Ajax-powered version of Yahoo Mail to all users in the US and across 18 international markets. Previously Yahoo Mail Beta (as it is known) was only available to a relatively small group of people. I spoke exclusively to Ethan Diamond, director of product management for the new Yahoo! Mail, … Read more

At yesterday’s Apple Showtime event, Steve Jobs announced upgrades to iPod/iTunes, the addition of movies to iTunes, and an upcoming product called iTV. Movies on iTunes had been predicted and much discussed before the event, so the real interest was in the iTV announcement – which is essentially Apple’s version of Media Center, the Microsoft … Read more

In our latest poll, we’re asking what you think of Personalized Start Pages as an ongoing business. Accel VC Judy Gibbons said in our interview that personalized start pages are under-hyped: “Personal home pages like PageFlakes & Netvibes […] represent the third generation of Internet usage: first portals because there was little content and it … Read more

This is the start of a new interview series on Read/WriteWeb, about venture capitalists (VCs) and their thoughts on ‘next generation web’. The aim is to find out what Web technology trends and products VCs are tracking – and at the same time provide some expert tips and advice for Web developers and entrepreneurs. In … Read more

It’s Apple Showtime today and as usual, plenty of great coverage to sort through. Here is a quick filter of the news, with a focus on Web-related announcements from Apple. iPod and iTunes forge ahead in online media The iPod now has 75.6% market share, according to Apple. The range of ‘devices’ it connects to … Read more

In our post entitled Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps, Sharpcast CEO Gibu Thomas left a comment saying that his company fulfils the ‘webified desktop’ vision: “At Sharpcast, we believe the right user experience is something closer to how in a corporate Exchange server environment, Microsoft Outlook works seamlessly with Outlook Web Access on any … Read more

Smartpox.com is an interesting crossover between the online and offline worlds. The technology allows users to encode URL links, phone numbers, email, and text into 2D barcodes. These codes can then be read using a cameraphone running the J2ME Smartpox reader. So a Smartpox is essentially a 2-dimensional barcode, which contains data that can be … Read more

So far in Read/WriteWeb’s Top International Web Apps series, we’ve covered countries in Europe (Germany, Holland, Poland, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Italy) and Asia (Korea, China). We may have some issues covering certain other regions, as worldwide Internet penetration is still very low – 16% at last count. That’s a concern too for the … Read more

The latest internetworldstats.com statistics show that worldwide Internet penetration has increased to 16.0%, largely thanks to Asia. About 3 months ago when I last posted on this, the worldwide penetration was 15.7%. Since then Asia has increased from 9.9 % population penetration to 10.4%. As a % of world Internet penetration, Asia increased from 35.6% … Read more

There has been a lot of great discussion on Read/WriteWeb recently, so I thought I’d pick out some highlights from a few of last week’s posts… Engelbart’s vision exists! Douglas Engelbart’s HyperScope 1.0 Launched: early this week saw the launch of HyperScope 1.0, an advanced browsing application based on tech legend Douglas Engelbart’s 1968 NLS/Augment … Read more

Given that our post on Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps has generated so much discussion, we thought we’d ask you directly which one you prefer? Although almost everybody uses both types of apps, most people seem to have a preference for using one or the other. Tell us what you think, by clicking one … Read more

This week there’s been turmoil in the Digg world, as the Digg developers strive to reduce the influence of the top users – in other words make the system fairer. As Kevin Rose recently wrote, their aim is that “a more diverse pool of individuals will be need to deem the story homepage-worthy”. However this … Read more