sponsored by: This week: Social tools in disasters, VC trends, Custom Web 2.0 Business Plans, Web-based Office, Techie post of the week – APIs and control. Social tools help in Katrina Hurricane First things first. We’ve all been shocked by the Hurricane Katrina devastation. Dina Mehta has a couple of great posts that show the … Read more

John Musser has started a promising new Web 2.0 resources website, focused on technical Web platform development. It features a list of Web 2.0 APIs, 54 of them already! The point of the site, John explains in the ProgrammableWeb blog, is to “create a home page for Web 2.0 developers.” That’s a very worthy aim … Read more

I recently finished a report on ‘The RSS Space’ for a client. In it I mapped out the current RSS vendor landscape, building on a blog post that Brad Feld wrote well over a year ago. I’ve decided to publish the vendor map onto a JotSpot Wiki as a kind of ‘Open Source’ gesture. Currently … Read more

Barb Dybwad posed an interesting question this week: “how many of you read some or all of your RSS feeds on your cellphone? If you do – which application or service do you find the best/easiest to use/most comprehensive and why?” Personally I don’t read feeds in my mobile phone, although I would like to. … Read more

This week I’ve been noticing a lot of Web 2.0-style Office apps coming out. Here’s a selection of some of them: AjaxOffice – “A complete office suite usable via your browser. Your documents are safely stored on a server…” Writely – “The Web Word Processor” (unfortunately the beta is full already). TechCrunch reviewed it and … Read more

Interesting podcast conversation today between Steve Gillmor and Rafat Ali (of paidcontent.org). Steve labelled paidcontent.org “an emerging force in the new media” and this theme was explored during the podcast. My ears pricked up when Steve talked about blogs like Om Malik’s, John Battelle’s and Engadget becoming media properties in their own rights. No mention … Read more

I have an Excel spreadsheet of data about RSS vendors that I want to share with the world. I recently did a report for a client, in which I defined and analysed ‘The RSS Space’. As part of that report, I created a spreadsheet that mapped RSS vendors to categories – with a lot of … Read more

Last night while looking at the new Feedburner design (well done guys!), I noticed that my subscriber stats figure has suddenly jumped. My current count of RSS subscribers in Feedburner is 3744. The main reason is that Rojo has just been added to Feedburner’s numbers – previously it was missing. What surprised me is the … Read more

I can imagine the movie trailer voiceover: “In a world where Thin Clients rule, one man (and a very large software company) is fighting back…” This is a movie starring Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s most famous blogger. It’s about the war against Web-based apps and the script is being written by Robert himself. First he said: … Read more

sponsored by: Onfolio is offering R/WW readers a coupon code entitling the bearer to $30 off a purchase of Onfolio Professional before August 31st (a 30% saving off the normal $99.95 price). To use the coupon, enter it at the time of purchase. Coupon Code: RM857202 This week: Google vs Skype, BBC puts TV on … Read more

Today is my first day as a full-time freelancer, doing Web analysis and writing. It’s also my birthday, so double reason to celebrate 🙂 I finished up at my day job yesterday, so as of today I’m working 100% virtually – with people and companies from Silicon Valley, Britain, perhaps even Australia. I do have … Read more

I’ve joined the 9rules Network, a community of high quality weblogs and websites. Here’s the announcement from Paul Scrivens, 9rules’ inspirational CEO. The 9rules Network is very similar to what I described as my ideal blog network a few weeks ago: “a group of niche bloggers, each with their own unique look n’ feel but … Read more

sponsored by: Onfolio is offering R/WW readers a coupon code entitling the bearer to $30 off a purchase of Onfolio Professional before August 31st (a 30% saving off the normal $99.95 price). To use the coupon, enter it at the time of purchase. Coupon Code: RM857202 This week: New apps on the block, Schools and … Read more

A bit of admin – just so you know, I’m testing out a new type of RSS advertising with Feedburner. I’m testing it because it’s pretty close to the type of RSS advertising I described in this post back in May. Speaking of advertising, Phil Ringnalda has noticed the O’Reilly Network is using a subtle … Read more

This is news to me. Apparently there’s a version 3 of RSS, which purports to be “a derivative work which is meant to replace the 2.0 version.” That’ll please Dave Winer, I’m sure. A guy called Jonathan Avidan is behind RSS 3.0 and he seems to be the only one contributing to the RSS 3 … Read more