Tonight I stumbled upon what appears to be a brand new User Interface for Ask.com. I was doing some searches on Ask.com, when I noticed a link in the top right asking me to try out something called Ask X. Screenshot below: When I clicked on the link, it regenerated my original query using a … Read more

Last week I was following the De-Portalization of the Internet thread, started by Fred Wilson and then extended by Keith Teare. I was struck by one observation in particular by Fred: “I don’t have the data to prove it, but my guess is if you looked at the percent of all pageviews that are generated … Read more

Popular social news site Digg has announced a number of new features in anticipation of the new year, including a beta podcasting service and enhanced video on the site. Digg says the aim of the new features is to make Digg a more inviting environment for new users, in line with Digg’s business imperative to … Read more

In a recent blog post, Wenzhi Lai of online listings company edgeio noted that their China operation – called mulu100 – has become the second largest source of traffic for edgeio. I was curious to know more about edgeio’s activities in China – and also to tap CEO Keith Teare’s brain about the Chinese Web … Read more

So Web 2.0 finally goes mainstream…. kind of. Time Magazine has named the Web-powered “You” as its coveted Person of the Year. In the accompanying articles, the term Web 2.0 is used and there’s talk of an Internet “revolution”. I think this is all great as a general recognition of the read/write Web – but … Read more

Next week we’ll publish Read/WriteWeb’s annual Best Web Companies and Innovators post. Also coming next week is the 2007 Web Trends post (I’d hoped to do it this week, but it’s now Saturday where I live and I’m exhausted!). Anyway I’d like to tap the minds of the R/WW community some more, before I write … Read more

I recently came across a web service called ZCubes, which is one of those browser-based portal apps that lets you do virtually everything under the sun – social networking, develop a website, browse the Web using a special built-in browser, create media (pictures, audio, video), add RSS feeds and gadgets, paint, handwriting, etc. It claims … Read more

This post is a short extract from the book Mobile Web 2.0, by Ajit Jaokar and Tony Fish. This week we’re focusing in on Mobile 2.0, which is basically the Mobile Web circa 2006. I’m much less familiar with the mobile world than the PC Web one, so I thought it’d be a good idea … Read more

While we’re on the subject of mobile 2.0 this week, one of my favorite web startups Sharpcast has just announced a new version of their Sharpcast Photos Mobile Edition. Sharpcast is a data sync service for consumers, allowing users to sync their data across PC, Web, mobile and other devices. Right now their flagship product … Read more

Last week I was briefed about a new product just released by Gotuit, called SceneMaker. It enables people to cut up and tag videos from platforms like YouTube or Metacafe. SceneMaker essentially allows users to embed e.g. a YouTube video in a Gotuit page, then add metadata around it. I was impressed with the usablity … Read more

Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus. We wrote recently about the renewed web browser war between Microsoft and Mozilla (and some other, smaller, usually very innovative players). Our theory is that in 2006 a lot of the ground work for a major battle was laid out. Microsoft launched a significant upgrade to … Read more

As a follow-up to our previous post covering the top Web Trends of 2006, we’d like to get your vote for Best Internet Bigco of 2006. Long-time R/WW readers will know that at the end of each year we write a post noting our top Web companies of the year. In 2005 the best bigco … Read more

It’s December already and so it’s about that time to reflect on what has happened in Web Technology during 2006 – and ponder what 2007 may bring. Over the next few weeks Read/WriteWeb is going to publish some in-depth posts analyzing the trends and new products we’ve seen in 2006, as well as musing on … Read more

Later today Firefox will begin broadcasting, for the first time, four “fan-produced” commercials on prime time television. Initially the ads will only run in the San Francisco and Boston regions, but this will be expanded over time. The 4 video ads are a sampling of approximately 300 clips which were submitted to Mozilla’s Firefox Flicks … Read more

Spotted on the Google homepage today, using the IE browser, was this blazing advertisement for Firefox: (click image for full screenshot) While Google has advertised Firefox on its homepage before, it was a co-promotion of Firefox with the Google Toolbar. This current advertisement is for Firefox alone. But what does “Optimized for Google” mean??! The … Read more