I arrived in San Francisco yesterday, in preparation for the Web 2.0 Conference next week. I’m spending two weeks in Silicon Valley, kindly hosted by TechCrunch‘s Mike Arrington, Keith Teare and Frederico Oliveira. They’re having a great time with my accent (“yeeeeeaa”). I’m having a great time in general and looking forward to the conference! … Read more

I’ve written a few times now about being disappointed with Bloglines this year – and their lack of progress since they got bought by Ask Jeeves. Now Russell Beattie has come out and said it too – and he got a response from Bloglines chief Mark Fletcher in the comments. Mark said (excerpted): “You’re right … Read more

Next week is the last week of my sponsorship arrangement with Onfolio, so I’m putting feelers out for another Web 2.0-savvy company to sponsor my popular Weekly Wrap-up. I’ve been writing this weekly column since the beginning of January this year – never missed a week. It’s become the premium offering of my weblog and … Read more

The ‘What is Web 2.0?’ meme is everywhere and everyone seems to have a different interpretation. Here are some of the latest: Om Malik: “a “collection of technologies – be it VoIP, Digital Media, XML, RSS, Google Maps… whatever …. that leverage the power of always on, high speed connections and treat broadband as a … Read more

Phil Wainewright wrote an excellent post recently entitled The great Web 2.0 application (s)mash-up. He starts by quoting Mohan Sawhney, professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management: “Five years from now, the concept of an application will be obsolete,” Sawhney said. “They will all be services, combined, mixed, matched and reused as needed.” Phil goes … Read more

Fascinating post by John Blossom on the evolution of content in the Web world. It’s similar in theme to AP chief Tom Curley’s famous Content and Containers speech last year – and my own extensive thoughts on the matter. Riffing on GoogleNet, Blossom wrote: “As content and software services merge into common XML-based objects, the … Read more

Mike Arrington thinks Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 meme map should be simpler and Dave Winer responds, saying it’s a complicated self-serving meme and pointing out that the map doesn’t include RSS. I’ve been looking at the meme map closely, while working on the latest chapter of Josh’s and my O’Reilly book on Web 2.0 (so … Read more

NewsGator Technologies will be announcing “a MAJOR acquisition” at the Web 2.0 Conference on October 5-7. Hmmm, I wonder who it is. Looking at my RSS Spacespreadsheet, Newsgator is one of the leading vendors in the Reader Services category. They also have a presence in the Search space. I wouldn’t be surprised if they acquire … Read more

Just to let you know I’ve been re-arranging the furniture on Read/WriteWeb over the past couple of days. I went from a 3-column design to a 2-column one and tidied up the CSS. As well as keeping my web design chops up-to-date, I think the layout is a lot cleaner now. I feel like I … Read more

This week: Microsoft vs Google, Web 2.0 coverage galore, Web 2.0 Conference, The Real World: yoga blogging, Techie post of the week: Mini-Microsoft. The Wrap-up is proudly sponsored by: Microsoft vs Google Over the last week the number of stories about Microsoft vs Google has reached a crescendo. The best one was a story by … Read more

CNET takes an interesting look at Microsoft’s history in the Web era and suggests that MSN may now be a key part of Microsoft’s Web 2.0 strategy. They write that MSN is already being used as a platform for Windows software releases: “The search service in Windows Vista, for example, shipped earlier as MSN Desktop … Read more

Bud Gibson has a nice profile of FeedDigest, an RSS remix service created by Peter Cooper that I’ve had my eye on for a while. FeedDigest lets users “mix, filter and republish or syndicate feeds to HTML, JavaScript, WAP or PHP, or to a new feed.” Personally all I’ve used it for so far is … Read more

Darren Rowse (who earns nearly US$200k a year from blogging) has published an interview with fellow “six figure blogger” The Manolo. Here’s how The Manolo, who blogs about shoes, makes his/her money: “In the order of importance, the affiliate sales of the shoes and the fashion, the contextual ads like the google and the chitka, … Read more

Yahoo Mail, the beta Web-based email program, is better than Gmail – so says the WSJ’s Walt Mossberg. He notes: “The new Yahoo Mail is far superior to Gmail. Yahoo more closely matches the desktop experience most serious email users have come to expect. Gmail, by contrast, is quirky and limited.” He goes on to … Read more

Feedburner’s released more stats to celebrate reaching 100,000 managed feeds. They highlight some impressive growth in the number of subscribers to Feedburner feeds – over 4.2 million subscribers per day by end of August. Paul Kedrosky noted that the number of subscribers has doubled every 2 months during 2005. Dick Costolo also pointed out the … Read more