For some reason, three of my favourite blogs posted self-referential reflection posts at pretty much the same time. An excuse for me to pay homage to them (and some other blogs I enjoy). In no particular order: a) PaidContent.org is the most professional blog that I know of and I’ve been an admirer for a … Read more

Jupitermedia analyst David Card thinks AOL is preparing for a big fattie splash into the RSS pool. He says: 1. The new version of MyAOL is “essentially an RSS reader”, albeit not as slick as how Apple does RSS in its Safari browser. 2. “AOL has a deal with Feedster to provide 7 million user-selectable … Read more

On 31 March 2005 a Google US patent was made public that reveals interesting data on how they rank your website. Patent number 20050071741 was actually filed on 30 September 2003, but it was only made public at the end of March. Darren Yates did some analysis on it – some of his observations (mixed … Read more

Now that Web 2.0 is all the rage and wholewebsites are being devoted to it, I feel it’s time to get my due as being the first blogger in this space. Therefore from now on, I’d like you all to refer to me as the “Father of Web 2.0” whenever you link to me. Now, … Read more

Ok, this morning’s post was silly. Now here’s a serious one. I will go to San Francisco this October, for two reasons. Firstly to attend the Web 2.0 Conference (why should I miss out on all the fun!). Secondly to get a job in America, so my family and I can live there. I’d made … Read more

John Battelle’s posted details of the second Web 2.0 Conference, to be held in San Francisco on October 5-7. This is something I’d really really love to attend, but it’s looking like the travel costs are going to be prohibitive – for a po’ kiwi looking to become self-employed this year. Sometimes I really really … Read more

This post by Matt Webb is worth pondering for those of us who are far away from all the Web 2.0 action. Matt wrote that “The Web is San Francisco circa 2001, writ large.” He explained: “The Web’s been coasting since 2001. It consists of that which started in SF and happened to adapt to … Read more

sponsored by: This week: 9-to-5 Web 2.0, Google Maps is where it’s at, Caught between two worlds, Web 2.0 spreading its wings, New apps on the block. Web 2.0 in the 9-5 World I found a couple of posts this week about using Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace – a worthy topic. In the … Read more

Bloglines latest press release left me a bit puzzled at first. In the press release Bloglines congratulates itself on having reached half a billion blog and news feed articles in their database, concluding that it makes them “the strongest blog resource on the Internet.” Fair enough, but I wonder why have they are suddenly re-focusing … Read more

Steve Rider is one of the developers of Microsoft’s Start.com and he gives us an insight to the development plans for Microsoft’s nascent Web-based RSS Aggregator / portal homepage. I think it’s fantastic btw that Steve is willing to share his thoughts – and more importantly, that Microsoft lets him. Google could learn a thing … Read more

My posts about RSS Ripoff Merchants stirred up a lot of controversy and, somewhat surprisingly, it seems I’ve come out of it as The Bad Guy. I kind of feel like Lars Ulrich of Metellica in the Napster case – defender of artists rights 🙂 Anyhow, I wanted my posts to specifically address the issue … Read more

sponsored by: This week: RSS Ripoff Merchants summary, Web 2.0 for teachers, Open Source Radio talks about Web 2.0, EPIC II, search engines with RSS output. RSS Ripoff Merchants summary Well my follow-up post about RSS Ripoff Merchants certainly struck a few raw nerves, including for me. It attracted 55 comments, before I was forced … Read more

The latest version of Microsoft’s Web-based RSS Aggregator, Start.com, has just been released. Microsoft first released a prototype in early March 2005 – my coverage here. Start.com is like a mix between MyYahoo and the new Google Personalized Homepage. It enables users to subscribe to RSS feeds and it is closely integrated with search. Here … Read more

To summarise the issue so far…

Excellent techie tips from O’Reilly Radar: “A longer-term solution is to build your business model into the API. In my mind the most successful APIs for the company providing the APIs are those from Amazon and eBay.” Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)