In developing news, the NY Times is reporting that The Federal Trade Commission has “opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google’s planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company DoubleClick”. Ironically two of the companies that called for this were Microsoft and AT&T, both of whom have colorful histories battling antitrust suits. According to … Read more

The Times of England reports that founders of UK dot com ‘star’ Lastminute.com, Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, have teamed up again with a new business called Mydeco.com, which aims to help people decorate their homes. The new website is still in ‘enter your email address’ mode right now, but it will no doubt … Read more

The R/WW Weekly Wrapup is sponsored by: Another busy week of Web Tech, including big news from Facebook and rumors of a Feedburner acquisition. This week also marked the launch of the first Read/WriteWeb Network blog, last100 – which will provide news, reviews and analysis on the digital lifestyle. last100 is edited by Steve O’Hear, … Read more

Today in San Francisco social networking site Facebook officially announced their much talked about open platform, for companies wanting to hook into the Facebook network. There’s plenty of blog coverage of this event, so in this post I hope to synthesize it all and explore what it means… What has Facebook announced? Today Facebook launched … Read more

Today Facebook is going to formally announce its plans to become an open platform. We know that the platform will allow companies to offer their products and services to Facebook users, but the details haven’t yet been ‘exposed’. So all of us bloggers are waiting for the news to be announced today, on the edges … Read more

Over on our new network blog, last100, Steve O’Hear has covered two interesting developments in the ‘digital home’ space. Firstly Steve posted that there has been quite a bit of development activity around AppleTV – but not by Apple itself, rather by hackers. Wrote Steve: “…[the hackers] have been hard at work building plug-ins and … Read more

Today AdaptiveBlue released a new version of its BlueOrganizer product, a Firefox extension that aims to provide extra contextual information to you while browsing the Web. Basically after you install BlueOrganizer in your Firefox, it enables you to discover all kinds of relevant content while you’re browsing – such as books, music, links, related information, … Read more

At the end of January, we reported on a new “preview product” called Zoho Notebook. Well tonight it has launched as a beta product. In the office software space nowadays, comparisons must be made not only to the equivalent Microsoft Office product – but also the equivalent Google Web Office product. Not forgetting of course … Read more

The BBC reports that EMI Group has agreed to be bought by private equity firm Terra Firma for £3.2bn including debt, which is around US$6.3B. The deal isn’t confirmed yet, because it is subject to shareholder approval. As BBC noted, EMI’s sales have been in decline of late – the company reported a £260m loss … Read more

USAToday has an article today discussing the recent trend for startups to sell themselves on eBay. USAToday starts off with a joke: “What do Beanie Babies, Pez Dispensers and troubled Internet companies have in common? They’re all for sale on eBay.” eBay has become known as a quick and easy way to sell your startup, … Read more

Phil Wainewright has a compelling article on his ZDNet blog, arguing that the recent acquisitions of online advertising companies by the bigcos (Google, Microsoft, et al) is evidence that the current era of the Web is in a bubble. He notes: “Today, we’re starting to understand that the Internet is going to fundamentally alter the … Read more

I’m pleased to announce the first network blog to launch under the Read/WriteWeb banner – last100. We have more network blogs launching soon, all with the aim of leveraging Read/WriteWeb’s reputation for quality news and analysis about Web technology. last100 will provide news, reviews and industry analysis on products and services related to the digital … Read more

Thank you to our sponsors, for supporting Read/WriteWeb and helping us grow. Keep an eye out for some news on that front later tonight… Wild Apricot offers Web-based Membership Management Software for clubs, associations and other non-profits. Zoho is a leading Web Office suite, which continues to add to and enhance its impressive product range. … Read more

As noted in the Weekly Wrapup, one of the 2 big news announcements this past week was Google rolling out “Universal Search”, where they integrate search results from across their properties (news, video, etc) into the main search. (the other big news was Microsoft acquiring aQuantive). Read/WriteWeb has two analysis pieces on the Google news … Read more

The R/WW Weekly Wrapup is sponsored by: Another busy week of Web Tech. And you may’ve noticed a new daily voice on Read/WriteWeb – Josh Catone is now a lead writer here, so welcome aboard Josh! OK, here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. Note that you can subscribe to … Read more