Personalized Start Pages is a growing, but fiercely competitive, market. So what are they? Predominantly they’re homepages for Web information, gadgets and widgets. The difference from old-style web portals are: the user can personalize them much more (with RSS, inline email, etc), the content is more interactive and potentially much more useful (i.e. gadgets, widgets), … Read more

Jeff Clavier and Paul Kedrosky note that the chmod 777 definition of ‘web 2.0’ is coming back into fashion. As Jeff nicely put it: “Web 2.0 = chmod 777 web For those (non-geeks) who don‚Äôt get the reference, chmod is the Unix command allowing you to change the access control of a file or a … Read more

My buddy Ben Barren has just released his blog search engine, Gnoos. Even though recently I declared that the world doesn’t need another blog search engine, this is my second post about them this week! Techcrunch and Mashable, amongst others, have already gone over the feature set of Gnoos. No need for me to repeat … Read more

Ask.com is releasing a new blog search feature on their search engine, as well as integrating search more into their leading web-based RSS Reader Bloglines. You’ll recall that Ask.com (or Ask Jeeves as it was known then) acquired Bloglines in February 2005 – and ever since then a lot of us have been waiting for … Read more

Business 2.0 has an interesting write-up today on contenders in the mobile phone search industry. They point out that the Mobile Web is still a nascent technology. Well, to be frank it’s in the middle of a power struggle between telcos and standards bodies – which doesn’t help us users very much in the short-term. … Read more

Spotted on the blogosphere (via Ryan Stewart): Macromedia’s The Kiwi Project, which is about creating read/write web components for Flex. From the intro post: “With the rising interest in AJAX and RIAs, it became important for us to understand how to empower our Flex environment to create read/write web applications. This means developing Flex components … Read more

According to the Miniwatts Marketing Group’s Internet Usage and World Population Statistics (last updated March 31, 2006), worldwide Internet penetration is only 15.7%! So much for the World Wide Web… this is indeed sobering stuff for those of us obsessed with ‘web 2.0’ technology. Here’s the main table of stats: WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION … Read more

I’ve come across two nifty apps recently that demonstrate a couple of neat things: 1) mobile web utility, and 2) integration with other web services. Both of those things are becoming increasingly important on the Web. The first app is called Bitty Browser and you may’ve come across it recently on other blogs. It’s described … Read more

Well not really, but it seems you can’t get much attention these days without using a controversial headline 🙂 Yesterday I live-blogged the Webstock conference speeches of Ben Goodger (Lead Engineer on Firefox who also works for Google) and Tony Chor (Group Program Manager of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team). I published them on my ZDNet … Read more

Today I had the pleasure of attending a web conference in my own hometown, Wellington. The conference is the fantastically named Webstock, a two-day show finishing tomorrow. The Webstock organizers managed to secure some great talent from the other side of the world – including Joel Spolsky, Doug Bowman, Dori Smith, Kelly Goto and others. … Read more

Recently I posted a meta-list of Web 2.0 lists. My current favorite list is the eConsultant’s Web 2.0 Directory. It has “1007 Web 2.0 sites/services/links in 50+ categories”. Sacred Cow Dung’s is another easily-scannable catagorized list. As I scrolled through these lists today, I wondered which categories are currently underserved by products/services… We all know … Read more

The Microsoft VC Summit 2006 happened a week or two ago, but I’ve only just had a chance to review the posts that came out of it. If you’re interested in where Microsoft is headed with its product range and general Web strategy, there are some nuggets in the coverage. Don Dodge from the Microsoft … Read more

You know when Gartner and IBM pontificate on Web 2.0, that we’ve reached a point where the term has become generally acceptable – mainstream even. Well-known research firm Gartner has drunk the kool aid: “While Web 2.0 offers many new opportunities for companies to grow their business, few enterprises realize how to implement the full … Read more

Bit of admin: Stowe Boyd, Umair Haque and I have set up something called Advisory Capital Network. Stowe explained what it is in his intro post: “…a loose federation of strategists to help Web 2.0 start-ups and established players trying to move into the Web 2.0 arena. I’ll provide more details of my advisory roles … Read more

A few weeks ago it was revealed that Microsoft had acquired online gaming advertising platform Massive for “between $200-$400 million”. Now I’ve discovered that a kiwi (from Wellington of course!) was one of the co-founders. According to this NZ Herald story, 31-year-old Wellingtonian Claudia Batten founded Massive Inc four years ago with two expat Australians … Read more