Richard MacManus

Widgets (aka gadgets, modules) are mini web apps that you can plug in to a webpage or site such as MySpace, or a personalized start page like Netvibes or live.com. Widgets are becoming more and more important on the Web, so I thought I’d spend a few posts looking more closely at them. Let’s start … Read more

The Diggtrends website has just done some stats relating to the Netscape owner’s offer to buy out digg’s top users. They found that the top 10 users contributed 1792 of the frontpage stories – i.e. 29.8%. The top 100 contributed 3324 stories, i.e. 55.28%. Nearly 30% of frontpage stories contributed by just 10 people is … Read more

This has turned into a very enjoyable series, profiling web products being built all over the world! The latest list is for Poland, courtesy of Sebastian Kwiecien – who runs a blog at web20.pl. Sebastian sent me a very detailed list of Polish web apps, including information about an intriguing social network integrated into Coca-Cola’s … Read more

Nisan Gabbay of Silicon Valley VC firm Sierra Ventures has started up an interesting new blog called Startup Review, which aims to profile Web startups from a business angle. Here’s how he put it in an email to me: “Startup Review will feature weekly, in-depth case studies on successful Internet start-ups. The companies profiled will … Read more

Business 2.0‘s latest print issue has a nice feature on Web 2.0 apps around the world. From Nooked in Ireland to Zoho Writer in India to Gnoos in Australia – it’s an excellent overview of some of the web action happening outside of Silicon Valley. The Business 2.0 article isn’t online yet, but you can … Read more

Following on from my post at the end of last week listing the top German web apps, R/WW reader Mark Schoondorp sent me a list of Dutch web apps. Mark himself is the designer of Wat vinden wij over (meaning ‘What do we think of” / ‘What is your opinion on’ / ‘what do we … Read more

So I promised to start profiling more innovative, boundary-pushing Web tools on R/WW. The problem with this strategy is that a lot of innovative tools are hard to grok – which means more work for me. What have I gotten myself into? 🙂 Recently Thomas Bate of British data visualisation company Visokio contacted me, to … Read more

RealNetworks had their Q2 2006 Earnings Conference Call on Thursday evening (PST) and the transcript from SeekingAlpha makes for interesting reading. The two main points that came out of it, from a product and market perspective, is that 1) RealNetworks is exhibiting very strong growth in the gaming market; and 2) they see Microsoft’s Zune … Read more

The text of Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie’s speech at Thursday’s Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2006, makes compelling reading. To me it sums up why we’ve moved far beyond the Web 2.0 trend and into something much deeper and richer. Web innovation, which is primarily what my blog explores, is no longer just about … Read more

The Museum of Modern Betas is an excellent resource for finding out trends in (beta) web apps. A new list that caught my eye recently was the Beta Quotient for Germany – i.e. a list of 100 web 2.0 apps from Germany (betas and non-betas). Germany has a beta quotient of “more than 50%”, but … Read more

The latest version of Yahoo! Messenger with Voice was officially launched today, a month after the beta was released. This is version 8, which includes plug-ins for the first time. Third-party developers can create plug-ins (aka widgets) for the platform. This has already proven to be very popular – since opening up the plug-in platform … Read more

When I profiled new broadband video portal Gotuit earlier this week, I was surprised by the negative feedback in both my comments section and in the Slashdot story comments. Some of those criticisms were technical – e.g. Mind Booster Noori pointed out that Gotuit requires Flash > 7, which means that Linux users are excluded. … Read more

Community news site Reddit is integrating its software into Slate.com, the venerable Webzine currently owned by Washington Post. The goal is to give Slate readers “a new way to find and discuss its best content.” Slate.reddit recently went live, “as the first step in bringing the reddit format to Slate readers (integration with the Slate … Read more

As Read/WriteWeb continues to evolve and ramp up its traffic, I’ve found that it’s consuming more and more of my time. I love it of course, as this blog is (and always has been) my passion. I’ve recently had a re-design and I’ve been putting a lot of effort into the content – making sure … Read more

The media blitz from News Corp. executives on MySpace is increasing, with two excellent articles on The Hollywood Reporter and Washington Post. In The Hollywood Reporter, Fox Interactive Media president Ross Levinsohn says that social networking is just a platform for “peer recommendation” services: “What’s next for FIM is leveraging MySpace’s online community and communication … Read more