Richard MacManus

Mitch Kapor demos Chandler at the D Conference Chandler is an Open Source PIM (Personal Information Mgmt) app. I’ve been following its progress for at least 3 years now. Progress has been slow, but Mitch Kapor showed off calendaring and some Web 2.0 plug-ins (utilising Amazon and Flickr API’s) at D. Originally published on ReadWriteWeb … Read more

Excellent techie tips from O’Reilly Radar: “A longer-term solution is to build your business model into the API. In my mind the most successful APIs for the company providing the APIs are those from Amazon and eBay.” Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

Always good to read how non techies are using Web 2.0: Teachers need to give Web 2.0 tools “to students and to members of our community, to stop speaking only to other teachers, to stop behaving as an expert class, and to find a way to have a stake in the interests and knowledge of … Read more

kuro5hin.org: “By acquiring a Print-on-Demand (POD) company and an ebook software company, Amazon.com is retooling itself to offer a complete publishing solution to authors disenchanted with the current state of publishing.” Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

NB: This is a re-posting, slightly edited. What would you do if someone was ripping your RSS feed off – that is, copying every single post into their website? And what would you think if some software companies actively encouraged this activity? I call these people RSS Ripoff Merchants. (a sidenote: I’m absolutely not talking … Read more

sponsored by: This week: the future of Web sites in a world of RSS, highlights from ION RSS, new Web 2.0 developments, Techie post of the week. Future of Web sites Matt McAlister, VP & General Manager, Online for InfoWorld, wrote this week that RSS is disintermediating InfoWorld’s Web site. In other words, RSS is … Read more

Google has just released its beta book search product Google Print (hat tip Diablo). The new service lets people search within the text of a book. Interestingly, I note that Amazon has a search inside this book feature too (how long has that been live? first time I’ve seen it). Both Google and Amazon searches … Read more

I have a theory about ads in RSS. It’s based on my assumption that people won’t click on ads in feeds enough for publishers to make much money. So I think we may be looking at the whole ads in feeds issue the wrong way. Allow me to explain… When someone subscribes to your RSS … Read more

I’m on the look-out for more part-time writing, analysis or consulting work. I can’t say too much about it here, but if you have any work opportunities for me – I’m available and I’d love to hear from you. My skillset covers: – Web and technical writing (including software specs) – Social media analysis and … Read more

I was intrigued by this extract from the Headshift weblog: “The new Web 2.0 tools and services help create an ecosystem of connected people and information – as David Weinberger put it this week: The cure to information overload is more information, only it should become more ambient. We need to let people organise their … Read more

Rands in Repose has written the best post about web apps I’ve read this year. I’ll pick out the highlights here and finish with some thoughts on re-inventing the page metaphor. Also you may want to check out the Web Apps Compendium v1.0, a great attempt at listing out all the main web apps on … Read more

Jim Cuene gave an excellent presentation to the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association last week, on the subject of Web 2.0. The accompanying powerpoint presentation (3.2MB) is a nice overview of current Web 2.0 trends, delivered in a down-to-earth and businesslike way. I particularly liked Slide 3, a comparison between Web 1.0 and 2.0 entitled “Web … Read more

Bloglines creator Mark Fletcher opines: “I have over 200 subscriptions in my Bloglines account […] There’s no way I could follow that many sites in My Yahoogle. Sometimes I’m asked if I consider My Yahoogle competition. There’s no way that they can compete without completely changing their interface.” The Big 3 and Bloglines He’s talking … Read more

sponsored by: This week: Summary of Google Factory Tour, Recruitment 2.0, Rollups, Techie post of the week, Web 1.0 Summit. Google Factory Tour The Factory Tour and accompanying webcast received tons of coverage this week, so I won’t re-hash all the details. I’ll simply summarise the new things and add my comments. New? Google Personalized … Read more

I’ve been approved as one of the beta testers for Google’s new AdSense for RSS feeds. So I’m going to be running Google ads in my feed for a few weeks at least – purely for research purposes of course 😉 Now before you get all righteous on me, remember this is a test. If … Read more