RicMac’s Top 10 Tech Of 2015

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Every December, I do a year in review of Internet technology. It’s a tradition going back to 2004, when I posted my first annual review of technology onto ReadWrite. This year I’m doing it slightly differently. I usually pick out ten Internet products that I personally use a lot and enjoy. This year, however, my selection … Read more

Top 5 Consumer Internet Trends of 2015

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The consumer facing Internet has always been where online innovation first happens. The Consumer Internet, as I’ll call it here, is where experiments are conducted. It’s where trends are born. Sometimes these trends move into the enterprise world (like cloud computing), sometimes they become a part of mainstream media (like blogs) and sometimes they change … Read more

Isolation

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ocean

I was at a reception last week at the home of the US Ambassador to New Zealand, Mark Gilbert. The event was in celebration of innovation in New Zealand. “We share an ocean,” joked Ambassador Gilbert, as he listed some things America has in common with New Zealand. He meant the Pacific Ocean. New Zealand’s Minister … Read more

Why Following People On Twitter Is Broken (And What To Do About It)

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Most social media products rely on the ‘friend or follow’ model of connecting to other people. Friending usually means a two-way connection, whereas following is most often a one-way connection. Friending is inherently a strong connection, because it mimics how we operate in real life – friends socialize and share things together. But just how useful is it to have a follow connection with someone? I’m going … Read more

ReadWrite Turns 12

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12 years ago to this day, I started a blog called ReadWrite/Web. It’s now called ReadWrite. Twelve years is a long time in the Internet world. Back in 2003, Facebook had just been launched from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room, there was not yet a YouTube or Twitter, Apple’s most popular product was the iPod, and the height of mobile technology was … Read more

Emerging Markets: Social VR

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The virtual world Second Life launched in mid-2003 and from the start it was out of place. Its jerky and cartoonish graphics seemed to belong more to the 1990s than to the new era of social software. Nevertheless, Second Life enjoyed as much media attention in the 2000s as Web 2.0 darlings like Flickr and YouTube. Nowadays, in the … Read more

My New Book Project: A Novel About Virtual Reality

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I recently started work on a novel, on the theme of Virtual Reality. I think VR is the most promising consumer technology around right now. Products like the Facebook-owned Oculus Rift, Sony’s Project Morpheus and Samsung’s Gear VR are all early stage (Oculus hasn’t even released a version 1.0 for consumers). But VR is poised … Read more

Trackers eBook Now Available On Amazon & iTunes

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I’m pleased to announce that my book, Trackers: How Technology is helping us Monitor & Improve our Health, is now available on the Amazon Kindle Store for $7.99 and the Apple iTunes Store for $9.99. Click on one of the following links to purchase the book: Amazon Kindle Store Apple iTunes Store The ebook will also … Read more