In our post entitled Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps, Sharpcast CEO Gibu Thomas left a comment saying that his company fulfils the ‘webified desktop’ vision: “At Sharpcast, we believe the right user experience is something closer to how in a corporate Exchange server environment, Microsoft Outlook works seamlessly with Outlook Web Access on any … Read more

Smartpox.com is an interesting crossover between the online and offline worlds. The technology allows users to encode URL links, phone numbers, email, and text into 2D barcodes. These codes can then be read using a cameraphone running the J2ME Smartpox reader. So a Smartpox is essentially a 2-dimensional barcode, which contains data that can be … Read more

So far in Read/WriteWeb’s Top International Web Apps series, we’ve covered countries in Europe (Germany, Holland, Poland, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Italy) and Asia (Korea, China). We may have some issues covering certain other regions, as worldwide Internet penetration is still very low – 16% at last count. That’s a concern too for the … Read more

The latest internetworldstats.com statistics show that worldwide Internet penetration has increased to 16.0%, largely thanks to Asia. About 3 months ago when I last posted on this, the worldwide penetration was 15.7%. Since then Asia has increased from 9.9 % population penetration to 10.4%. As a % of world Internet penetration, Asia increased from 35.6% … Read more

There has been a lot of great discussion on Read/WriteWeb recently, so I thought I’d pick out some highlights from a few of last week’s posts… Engelbart’s vision exists! Douglas Engelbart’s HyperScope 1.0 Launched: early this week saw the launch of HyperScope 1.0, an advanced browsing application based on tech legend Douglas Engelbart’s 1968 NLS/Augment … Read more

Given that our post on Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps has generated so much discussion, we thought we’d ask you directly which one you prefer? Although almost everybody uses both types of apps, most people seem to have a preference for using one or the other. Tell us what you think, by clicking one … Read more

This week there’s been turmoil in the Digg world, as the Digg developers strive to reduce the influence of the top users – in other words make the system fairer. As Kevin Rose recently wrote, their aim is that “a more diverse pool of individuals will be need to deem the story homepage-worthy”. However this … Read more

A flickr clone; pic by izreloaded In an interview with AlwaysOn, Fox Interactive president Ross Levinsohn talks about innovation and wanting to be more than a company that clones other products. He takes a couple of swipes at Yahoo in the process, for example: “The world doesn’t need another Yahoo; Yahoo does a great job. … Read more

Pic: Vodafone 905SH, by jetalone Great article from MSNBC.com about how Japan’s mobile phone industry is 1.5 years ahead of America’s (and even more ahead of Aus/NZ I suspect). Judging from my series on international Web markets, Korea and China are just as advanced in mobile Web. MSNBC notes: “Thanks to early investments in high-speed … Read more

Already there’s some great discussion happening regarding Ebrahim Ezzy’s post on Read/WriteWeb entitled Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps. As I noted in the intro to that post, in some ways Ebrahim’s views contradict my own. I’m a big fan of the concept of the browser as a ‘lowest common denominator’ platform for the Web. … Read more

In a ZDNet Image Gallery, I’ve gone through 7 products that may become part of a future Google Web Office. Right now, Google doesn’t have a full web-based office suite on the market – but this year they’ve gradually been compiling Web Office parts. For example if you click on “all my services” in the … Read more

Over the next couple of months on Read/WriteWeb, I’ll be profiling the main Web Office suite candidates – such as Zoho, ThinkFree, gOffice, Zimbra, JotSpot, Goowy and Morfik. Plus of course Microsoft’s Office Live and Google’s current jigsaw puzzle of Web Office apps. Today I’m starting with Zimbra. Zimbra is an open source Web Office … Read more

Google has an upcoming Personalized Start Page for Enterprise, according to some sleuthing done by Garrett Rogers and Scott Smith at Google Blogoscoped. Here’s an example Dell start page and the official help page. The Personalized Start Page will be one of the options available in the beta Apps For Your Domain service. Currently email, … Read more

According to stats compiled by vnunet.com, China will overtake the US next year to become the world’s largest broadband internet market: “The number of broadband subscribers in China is growing at a staggering 79 per cent annually, and will reach 79 million in 2007, consulting firm Ovum predicted in research released today. Recent estimates from … Read more

Brad Neuberg has announced the release of HyperScope 1.0, a Web app based on tech legend Douglas Engelbart’s 1968 NLS/Augment (oNLine System). Engelbart and team have been working on Hyperscope since March this year, in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Its aim is to rebuild portions of Douglas Engelbart’s NLS system on … Read more