Last week was all about OpenSocial, Google’s project that will tie together Google, MySpace and many other social networks in a common developer environment. The goal: one common set of code to create widgets from. This strikes at the very heart of Facebook’s platform, which is not open and forces developers to use proprietary languages … Read more

Our network blog AltSearchEngines reports that Google has around 90% search engine market share in France (well, 89.98% to be exact!). The next biggest is Yahoo ! (3.17%), followed by MSN (2.33%). Over the past year, between August 2006 and August 2007, Google has gone up by 3.76%. Whereas its 4 main competitors have all … Read more

We’re honored to be nominated for Best Technology Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards. Voting closes November 8, 2007 and you may vote once every 24 hours, determined by IP address. R/WW is up against some very strong competition: Engadget, Gizmodo, Lifehacker and The Apple Blog are all a long way ahead of us at … Read more

Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email. Note: If you would like to sponsor the Weekly Wrapup – which gives you a banner … Read more

We’re hearing of more and more startups using Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) for their storage needs; and this stat will please both them and their users. Webmetrics reported today that Amazon S3 maintained more than 99.99 percent uptime for the month of October, exceeding the performance requirement of its recently introduced SLA. Webmetrics monitored … Read more

NYTimes.com has today launched a new version of its technology section, which includes more aggregation of news from around the Web. Of most interest perhaps is that its Techmeme-like news aggregator, Blogrunner, has been fully integrated into the Tech frontpage. It has the headline “Technology Headlines From Around the Web” and is positioned in the … Read more

The big news of the day is that MySpace, the leading social networking platform, has joined Google’s OpenSocial project as a partner. OpenSocial is a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web – and it will be officially released tonight here. The press release today states that the MySpace/Google partnership “spearheads … Read more

Semantic search engine Hakia has just released a new social networking feature, called Meet Others (MO). The basic idea is to “meet others” who asked the same query. This is something I’ve never seen in a search engine before – and actually I’m not convinced that social networking is a good fit with search. But … Read more

Techcrunch has sniffed out details on Google’s new social network project, named OpenSocial (set to go live Thur US). OpenSocial is not a social network itself, rather it is a set of three common APIs that allow developers to access the following core functions and information at social networks: Profile Information (user data) Friends Information … Read more

Steve Rubel has written a post bemoaning the lack of innovative Web products these days: “…I miss the days of 2004 when the class that includes Flickr, del.icio.us and others started. They really were about changing the web, not making a quick buck (they did so only because they added value). There are companies still … Read more

We’ve written before about PlentyOfFish, a leading online dating site that is run by a single person and is raking in money. Markus Frind is the singular force behind PlentyOfFish. At the time of our last review, June 2006, PlentyOfFish was earning $10,000 per day from Google Adsense (around $3.5 M per annum). I caught … Read more

Image credit: Newsweek A Newsweek article makes the case for an alternative search engine to usurp Google and become the dominant 3rd generation search engine. Our own Charles Knight, from R/WW Network blog AltSearchEngines, features prominently in the article: “If Google has been able to crush its search competition, it’s not because it has perfected … Read more

ActionThis, a Wellington, New Zealand based startup, today launched a “Get Things Done” task management app. It enables people to create and track project management items and tasks, either using a browser interface (free) or within Microsoft Outlook (premium, subscription-based). Note that at the bottom of this post, there is a special offer for R/WW … Read more

It’s conference season for the Web and below are some upcoming events that may interest you: Defrag – 1 free ticket available to R/WW reader; discounts too Defrag has been sponsoring our Weekly Wrapups for the last few weeks; and we are a Media Sponsor for the event. The focus of Defrag is ‘The Implicit … Read more

Sponsor: Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups – either via the special RSS feed or by email. Web News Microsoft Invests in Facebook The week was dominated by the news that … Read more