Tech analyst, AI & the web
I founded the tech blog ReadWriteWeb in April 2003 and ran it until October 2012. During my time running the business, it was well known for its cutting edge content (“What’s next on the Web”) and its influential global audience. At its peak, RWW was ranked among the top ten blogs in the world by Technorati.
This category contains all of the articles I personally wrote for RWW, now archived on ricmac.org for easier browsing and search. If you’d like to explore the original context, you can also view a year-by-year archive with links to the Wayback Machine
Despite all of the great innovation happening in online music, there are 3 frustrating things for consumers that need to be addressed by Apple, Google, Facebook and others. It’s been an eventful week for online music, with the launch of Apple’s iTunes Match and the public unveiling of Google Music (along with a new MP3 … Read more
Yesterday we looked at the three leading “cloud locker” services for music: iTunes Match, Amazon Cloud Drive and Google Music. As a preface to that post, I mentioned that there are two main battles going on in the online music market. One is between the three cloud lockers, which are competing to be the online … Read more
Continuing our series about the Consumer Cloud, today we compare the three leading music cloud services: Apple’s iTunes Match (just launched today), Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Google Music. With these three highly competitive services, online music fans have never had it so good. There are two main battles going on in the online music market, … Read more
Last week Google+ introduced brand pages, an almost exact match for Facebook Pages. While Google now claims that Google+ is not a competitor to Facebook, the Pages products are so similar that they are bound to go head-to-head. Brands are going to end up getting more value out of one or the other. In this … Read more
Yesterday we started a new series about the Consumer Cloud, defined as an online repository for your content and applications. These services, such as Apple’s new iCloud and Amazon’s Cloud Drive, are becoming increasingly important in the multi-device world we live in. One of the applications for which the Consumer Cloud is particularly relevant is … Read more
Today we’re beginning a series exploring the world of cloud services from a consumer’s point of view. The word “cloud” refers to an online repository for your software, applications and data. Steve Jobs called this a “digital hub” and, as he explained to his biographer Walter Issacson, “over the next few years, the hub is … Read more
Google+ Pages for brands launched early today, with a select group of launch partners. Later in the day, G+ Pages were opened up to everyone. ReadWriteWeb, among others, immediately created a Page. I took point on developing RWW’s one and afterwards I was curious to see what other brands had done. While it’s very early … Read more
Today Google+ launched Pages for brands and organizations. We don’t know yet how brands will use Google+ Pages. But it’s a good bet that they will be conversational, given the traction that Google+ has shown with topic-based communities. We’ve dived right in and created a Google+ Page for ReadWriteWeb. Our brand is for engaged technologists … Read more
Over the weekend I finished reading the authorized biography of Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. It’s a hefty 650 pages and spans the entire life and career of Steve Jobs, the iconic Apple co-founder who sadly passed away a month ago. The biography is well worth reading, I gave the book 5/5 stars. I’ll even … Read more
Last week I questioned how many active, daily users Google+ really has. We know it has a huge user base – according to Google, it’s over 40 million users. But Google won’t talk about how many of those people are actually active on the service. All indications are that it’s a small percentage of the … Read more
Today Google Reader became the latest Google product to have Plus added to it. Now Google Reader users can +1 or share items to Google Plus, from within Reader. Google has made very clear over the past month that Plus will be integrated into all of Google’s products over time, so this wasn’t a surprising … Read more
3 key points you need to know about Facebook Timeline, gleaned from two previous “lifestreaming” products: FriendFeed and Memolane. Facebook’s new Timeline, currently in a limited developer release but set to be unveiled to its hundreds of millions of users any day now, is going to shake up the social networking landscape. It’s going to … Read more
There are now 800 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to Facebook’s own statistics. More than 350 million of those people access Facebook through their mobile devices, nearly 44% of its total active user base. In terms of traffic, 33% of Facebook traffic comes from mobile devices – according to data revealed by Mary … Read more
Real-time entertainment traffic dominates the Web now; and over half of it happens on devices other than a PC or laptop computer. This according to a new report by research company Sandvine. The report states that “by volume, 55% of Real-Time Entertainment traffic is destined for the television (either directly to a smart TV or … Read more
It’s been over a month since Facebook launched a “Developer Release” version its new profile page, the Timeline. The new design was supposed to have been made available to all of Facebook’s users in “a few weeks,” but it’s now almost two weeks overdue. There’s been no official word from Facebook on the delay, but … Read more