Facebook has just launched a neat new trend mapping tool, called Lexicon. Similar to Google Trends, it allows you to create a trend graph for different words and (two-word) phrases on Facebook Walls. It has a surprisingly slick UI too, with the scroll bar enabling you to zoom in and out to get different views … Read more

Just launched today is a new Twitter mashup called Twitlinks. This one aggregates the latest links posted to Twitter by tech industry pundits. The end result is a homepage that kind of resembles Techmeme, only without the threading of topics. It may even be the only news aggregator that is faster than Techmeme in delivering … Read more

April is usually a busy month on the Web conference schedule, with my personal highlight being the Web 2.0 Expo. Since 2005 I’ve never missed a TechWeb / O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference; and this one will be no exception. In fact there will be a number of ReadWriteWeb authors roaming around, with Marshall Kirkpatrick, Josh … Read more

Our network blog AltSearchEngines is holding an invitation only gathering of search engines on Monday 21 April, in San Francisco. This private event, called simply the AltSearchEngines Get Together is being held the day before the Web 2.0 Expo. The event is targeted at the hundreds of alternative search engines that Charles Knight covers, so … Read more

Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. The big news was Google App Engine – we provided extensive coverage and analysis. Also this week we looked into further use cases for Twitter, we analyzed the pros and cons of offline access to web apps, as well as why … Read more

Music futurist Gerd Leonhard has just released an informative video explaining what music 2.0 is and how the music industry should change to adapt to ‘web 2.0’ principles. The video is embedded below. Some of the themes are that control doesn’t work (e.g. DRM and trying to control networking) and that music is meant to … Read more

Today there’s been a sensational claim by 2 Gartner analysts that “Windows is collapsing”. In Computerworld, Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald are quoted as saying that “Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of … Read more

The Economist published a short article about the Semantic Web today, picking up on apps we’ve covered here many times – like Reuters Open Calais, Twine, Hakia and AdaptiveBlue. But one app right at the end caught my eye, as I’d not heard of it before: Qitera. Its homepage describes it as “a next-generation information … Read more

There has been a lot of talk on the web over the last few days about Google App Engine. We’ve analyzed it here on ReadWriteWeb. Now it’s your turn to have your say. We’ve created, via a new app from Impact Games, an interactive game that will let you model Google App Engine’s impact in … Read more

One of the big trends in 2008 has been the emergence of what I call Semantic Apps – a kind of ‘Web 2.0 Meets Semantic Web‘ app typified by startups like Twine, Hakia, Quintura, Powerset and others. Another growing trend is health 2.0, web-based health apps and services. What’s interesting is that those two trends … Read more

Earlier today our Josh Catone interviewed 37Signal founder Jason Fried about the striking similarities between one of Google’s App Engine demos, HuddleChat (a real-time chat application) and the Campfire app from 37Signals. Fried told RWW that “we’re flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product, we’re just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically … Read more

Google has just launchedGoogle App Engine, “a developer tool that enables you to run your web applications on Google’s infrastructure.” This will allow startups to use Google’s web servers, APIs, and other developer tools to build a web app on top of. Google clearly has the scale and smarts to provide this platform service to … Read more

The latest ReadWriteTalk podcast is up and it’s a chat with Eric Gilmore, Senior Product Manager for Office Live at Microsoft. In particular Eric talks about Office Live Workspace, a free web-based extension of Microsoft Office that lets you access your documents online and share your work with others. Our own Sarah Perez recently compared … Read more

Thank you to our sponsors, for supporting ReadWriteWeb’s mission to provide in-depth coverage of Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking & Social Media. To enquire about sponsor slots on ReadWriteWeb, please email us for a Media Kit. We also have opportunities on our network blogs last100, AltSearchEngines and ReadWriteTalk. Here are our current sponsors: … Read more

Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. This week we brought you ‘The Definitive List of the Top Twitter Clients’, we explained why Seesmic + Twhirl is a Vision of the Web’s Future, we analysed the latest developments in MySpace music and Flickr, and we peeked into the … Read more