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
Google always has good April Fools jokes and this year is no exception…. More info here. Classic. Who needs a Web Office after all… But wait there’s more, Google has also ‘launched’ Project teaspoon. A.K.A. TiSP, which stands for “Toilet Internet Service Provider”. It’s described: “Introducing Google TiSP (BETA), our new FREE in-home wireless broadband … Read more
Like many other web 2.0 geeks, today I woke up to Mike Arrington’s elaborate April Fools joke that Techcrunch has acquired infamous dot com site F**kedCompany.com. It actually is 1 April where I live, but it wasn’t until I had finished reading the article that I realised it was probably an April Fools joke (thanks … Read more
Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. Analysis Posts This week Charles Knight released the March edition of his Top 100 Alternative Search Engines. As usual the list provoked a flurry of comments, with the Search Engine of the Month KoolTorch coming under a bit of scrutiny (mostly for being … Read more
Desktop On Demand (DOD) is the latest WebOS to come onto the market. It is a free “online desktop service” that lets you access your desktop remotely. DOD comes with 1GB of free disk space, with extra space available for a fee. DOD is aiming to go beyond simply being a virtual desktop – it … Read more
BlogRovr is an interesting new way of getting blog information, on the go while you’re surfing the Web. It is a download plugin for Firefox 2.0, which works cross-platform on Windows, Mac and Linux. There’s no IE plugin for now, but support for IE6 and IE7 is coming soon (a couple of weeks away). BlogRovr … Read more
The Yahoo Mail news is coming thick and fast this week. Yesterday they announced that Yahoo Mail now has free unlimited email storage space, and today Yahoo has announced an API for Yahoo Mail. Earlier today I spoke with Chad Dickerson, Head of Yahoo! Developer Network, and John Kremer, VP Yahoo! Mail, to find out … Read more
This is a point/counterpoint argument, with John Milan taking the position that online desktop apps are better, while Richard MacManus argues for offline web apps. Let us know what you think, in the comments. Point (John Milan) John Milan: ReadWriteWeb is currently running a poll asking which web apps should also work offline. Shouldn’t we … Read more
“Server Error We’re sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable. We’re currently working to fix the problem — please try logging in to your account in a few minutes.” And 1 hour later… “Server Error We’re sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable. We’re currently working to fix the problem — please try logging in to your … Read more
Later today Web previews product Snap is launching 8 new localized versions of their Snap Preview Anywhere product. They will support 9 languages in all: English (by Default) Japanese Korean Chinese – Simplified Chinese – Traditional French German Spanish Portuguese Web Previews – good or bad? But whatever the language, it’s up to end users … Read more
Microsoft today announced the launch of ZenZui, an independent Mobile Web company. ZenZui offers a patented (by Microsoft) “Zooming User Interface” for mobile phones. The technology was initially developed by the Microsoft Research lab in Redmond, then acquired by ZenZui – who also got venture capital funding from Microsoft IP Ventures to help launch its … Read more
MusicPlusTV.com launched a revamped website today. As well as a new look, it has doubled the resolution of its flagship 24/7 television broadcast stream, added social networking capabilities, and more. MusicPlusTV.com is an interesting blend of online video/music and a traditional TV network – only with a niche audience. It reminds me of Revision 3, … Read more
The hot topic today is offline web apps, with Zimbra having just released an offline version of its web collaboration suite. As Dan Farber noted, Zoho and ThinkFree are two other Web Office vendors to have either released offline access or have plans to. Also Stan at franticindustries has a nice post explaining how offline … Read more
Zimbra, one of the Web Office vendors we’ve been tracking for a while, will later today announce the launch of Zimbra Desktop – which enables offline access to Zimbra’s Ajax-powered collaboration suite. Zimbra will unveil Zimbra Desktop on stage today (Monday PT) at the ETech Conference in San Diego. It’s a growing trend amongst Web … Read more
I hope you’ll indulge me in thanking Read/WriteWeb’s excellent sponsors, for supporting quality content on Web Technology. Thanks also to R/WW’s super-smart authors and our community of readers, which continues to grow at a great rate! If you would like to explore sponsorship opportunities with Read/WriteWeb, one of the top 50 blogs in the world … Read more
sphereit start Charles Knight, Read/WriteWeb’s search engine authority, has provided another list of weird search engines. We’re interested in getting your opinion on this, as a bit of weekend geeky fun. So which one of these 10 really alt search engines do you think is the silliest/funniest/oddest? Here is the list, with the poll right … Read more