Richard MacManus

Well not really, but it seems you can’t get much attention these days without using a controversial headline 🙂 Yesterday I live-blogged the Webstock conference speeches of Ben Goodger (Lead Engineer on Firefox who also works for Google) and Tony Chor (Group Program Manager of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team). I published them on my ZDNet … Read more

Today I had the pleasure of attending a web conference in my own hometown, Wellington. The conference is the fantastically named Webstock, a two-day show finishing tomorrow. The Webstock organizers managed to secure some great talent from the other side of the world – including Joel Spolsky, Doug Bowman, Dori Smith, Kelly Goto and others. … Read more

Recently I posted a meta-list of Web 2.0 lists. My current favorite list is the eConsultant’s Web 2.0 Directory. It has “1007 Web 2.0 sites/services/links in 50+ categories”. Sacred Cow Dung’s is another easily-scannable catagorized list. As I scrolled through these lists today, I wondered which categories are currently underserved by products/services… We all know … Read more

The Microsoft VC Summit 2006 happened a week or two ago, but I’ve only just had a chance to review the posts that came out of it. If you’re interested in where Microsoft is headed with its product range and general Web strategy, there are some nuggets in the coverage. Don Dodge from the Microsoft … Read more

You know when Gartner and IBM pontificate on Web 2.0, that we’ve reached a point where the term has become generally acceptable – mainstream even. Well-known research firm Gartner has drunk the kool aid: “While Web 2.0 offers many new opportunities for companies to grow their business, few enterprises realize how to implement the full … Read more

Bit of admin: Stowe Boyd, Umair Haque and I have set up something called Advisory Capital Network. Stowe explained what it is in his intro post: “…a loose federation of strategists to help Web 2.0 start-ups and established players trying to move into the Web 2.0 arena. I’ll provide more details of my advisory roles … Read more

A few weeks ago it was revealed that Microsoft had acquired online gaming advertising platform Massive for “between $200-$400 million”. Now I’ve discovered that a kiwi (from Wellington of course!) was one of the co-founders. According to this NZ Herald story, 31-year-old Wellingtonian Claudia Batten founded Massive Inc four years ago with two expat Australians … Read more

One more quick post for the day, before I go and watch the rugby (go Canes!). Hitwise has done a table showing relative popularity of the Google properties: Compare this to Alexa’s breakdown: – google.com – 75% – mail.google.com – 8% – images.google.com – 8% – groups.google.com – 2% – video.google.com – 2% – news.google.com … Read more

Mark Fletcher in many ways embodies the successful Web startup entreprenuer, having created and sold two multi-million dollar companies – ONEList to Yahoo (via a merger with eGroups) and Bloglines to Ask Jeeves. Niall Kennedy has notes, audio and a transcript of a talk Fletcher recently did. This is pretty much required reading for budding … Read more

Yesterday Yahoo! held their Analyst Day – the 188-page slide presentation is here (12MB). There’s too much in the preso for any one mind to fully comprehend, but here are the things that stood out for me… Yahoo’s Big Bets for the Next 5 Years See slide 16: 1. Next Generation Experience –> a.k.a. a … Read more

Google has just released its Ajax toolkit, called Google Web Toolkit: “Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don’t speak browser quirks as a second language.” Also an interesting rumor is swirling around that Google either partnered with, … Read more

Eric Weaver has come up with a very useful list of web/media conferences for this year, something which I was looking for a couple of weeks ago but couldn’t find. I’m travelling to Silicon Valley again in June and will be attending Supernova, Bloggcon and maybe Gnomedex. I’m looking forward to my next trip to … Read more

Feedburner has been running ads in feeds for a little while now. They have a slick self-service system for publishers to select which ads run in their feeds, which personally I’ve been happy with (it allows me to delete any ‘offers’ of ads with a $1 CPM gross – there are surprisingly a lot of … Read more

The world’s most visited webpage, Yahoo.com, has just had a major re-design (available for now at yahoo.com/preview) and Read/WriteWeb has the inside story. As well as the first in-depth look at the new yahoo.com, I have for you an exclusive podcast interview with Yahoo! Chief Product Officer Ash Patel and Vice President of Front Doors … Read more

Tim Bray in a post entitled What Matters: “Every day that goes by I believe more and more that the only important new thing is that the Net is read-write. Everything that matters follows from that.” I came across this the same day that I noticed a newround of ‘defining web 2.0’ posts popping up … Read more