Richard MacManus

With all this talk of the Web as a platform, it’s worth taking a closer look at what web apps are using Firefox as their platform. Firefox is regarded as the best Web browser in terms of extensions – i.e. small browser add-ons which modify or add to existing functionality. It has hundreds of add-ons, … Read more

Recently a new personalized start page product was announced, Webwag. In the comments to my post about Webwag, several people expressed their view that start pages are not a viable business. Personally I think start pages have plenty of opportunities to make money, despite (and sometimes because of) competition from Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. An … Read more

Turkey is next in this R/WW series on top international Web apps. It’s the 9th country I’ve profiled so far – the others have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain and China. For the following information on Turkey, I have Emre Sokullu to thank (also Honor Gunday for info on his web … Read more

Lately there’s been an increasing buzz about Web Office, something which I’ve been writing about for some time now. Red Herring magazine wrote an article with the provocative headline 17 MS Office Killers. While it would be quite a story if Microsoft did get usurped by a Web-based Office, the reality is that Microsoft will … Read more

Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus. In this post, we survey a range of client applications which utilize the new web platform. This is a follow-up to our Web Platform Primer post a few days ago, in which we explained the building blocks of the new Web infrastructure: The Web Computing Platform … Read more

Despite all the broohaha over whether Spaces is the biggest blog service on the planet, it’s apparent that Windows Live is making an impact on the Web. After being around for less than a year, Alexa now ranks Live.com (and all its sub-domains) as the 10th biggest property on the Web. And yet it doesn’t … Read more

Amazon has just released a companion product to its online storage solution S3. With a name almost as surreal as Mechanical Turk (which is Amazon’s collective intelligence service), the new ‘compute’ service is called Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. It all sounds like a Terry Gilliam movie, but it is Amazon at its innovative best once … Read more

China is next in my series on top international Web apps. If you haven’t been following, the other countries I’ve profiled so far have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia and Spain. As this series has gone on, the comments have become as important as the posts – perhaps moreso. I’m hoping this … Read more

At the Microsoft TechEd conference in Auckland on Monday, I got a chance to sit down with George Moore – GM for the Windows Live Developer Platform. He is of course based in Redmond, but was over in NZ for TechEd. I started off by asking George about the “largest blogging service on the planet” … Read more

I can’t resist posting an excerpt from the Tim Berners-Lee podcast with IBM. This should hopefully put the matter of ‘what is web 2.0’ to rest, permanantly: LANINGHAM: “You know, with Web 2.0, a common explanation out there is Web 1.0 was about connecting computers and making information available; and Web 2 is about connecting … Read more

Google’s just announced a potentially significant update to its Google Base product, by releasing a data API for it. This essentially means Google is opening up Google Base, their database of structured content and home for many different verticals currently (jobs, vehicles, classified). The official blog post states: “We’re excited to announce the availability of … Read more

IBM has a podcast with Tim Berners-Lee. In a conversation with Scott Laningham of IBM developerWorks, Sir Tim discusses his early history with the Web, opportunities and challenges of the present, emerging technologies, and of course the semantic web. Reading news on your mobile device – Another Web inventor, Dave Winer of RSS fame, is … Read more

Webwag is a new personalized start page set to be released at the end of this month. According to E-consultancy.com, it’s the latest creation of ex-Google France chief Franck Poisson – who says it “will move out of beta on August 28” and be officially announced in early September. More from E-Consultancy.com: “According to Poisson, … Read more

68% of New Zealand’s Internet traffic is to online auction site TradeMe, CEO Sam Morgan and Development Manager Rowan Simpson told me when I visited their Wellington office last Thursday. TradeMe is New Zealand’s version of eBay, even down to the color scheme. But it’s more than just an auction site now – over the … Read more

Today George Moore, GM of Windows Live, announced the Windows Live Contacts Gadget beta at the Microsoft TechEd 2006 conference, in Auckland New Zealand (I’m here at the conference courtesy of Microsoft NZ). Live Contacts provides programmatic access to a user’s contact list, providing secure access to 400+ M active users with 12B contact records. … Read more