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
YouTube continues to grow and on current Alexa figures, the online video site is now ranked number 4 web site in the world – behind only Yahoo, MSN and Google itself! The chart below shows YouTube well ahead of MySpace now and (on today’s data) now ahead of China’s biggest search engine Baidu. Just 6 … Read more
By Steve O’Hear, a Mac fan who runs a ZDNet blog called The Social Web. Steve was also the writer and director of the documentary In Search of the Valley: a personal journey into the psyche of Silicon Valley. Today’s Macworld keynote by Steve Jobs was possibly the most hyped since his return to the … Read more
With two conferences to keep track of (CES and Macworld), it’s easy to get lost in all the website coverage. One blog though is doing an outstanding job of covering both events – Engadget. I’m also enjoying the CNET CES coverage for down and dirty details on the products. Today I’ve been scanning through the … Read more
At the Steve Jobs keynote speech at Macworld this morning PST, he announced “three revolutionary new products”. An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator. But turns out it’s all one device: the fabled iPhone! We’ll have extended analysis about this later today, but for now let’s review the news. Here’s the feature list: Instead … Read more
After only 3-4 months of general release, distributed social network MyBlogLog has been bought by Yahoo for an estimated $10-12M. This adds to Yahoo’s collection of trendy Web 2.0 apps – they can pop the MyBlogLog folks in with Flickr and del.icio.us. When MyBlogLog initially came out in October 2006, I described it as “a … Read more
Yahoo issued a slew of press releases today, at CES, all about their mobile Internet services. The main news is the launch of Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 (now available for java-based handsets) and Yahoo! oneSearch. This comes on the back of recent initiatives by Google, which appears to be leading the Mobile Internet and … Read more
Web Security firm Finjan has just released their Q4 2006 report on web threats, which includes describing two cases of web 2.0 hacker attacks, on Wikipedia and MySpace. What’s more, the report says that hacking the Web is very much a commercial activity nowadays – which is keeping Web security companies like Finjan on their … Read more
Bill Gates’ keynote at CES was webcast live by Microsoft. This keynote was entitled ‘Connected Experiences’ and a relaxed-looking Bill Gates kicked things off by cracking a joke about how, at future CES appearances, he might talk about infectious diseases (referring to his increasing involvement in philanthropy work). The Digital Decade He starts off by … Read more
It’s going to be a big week of tech news, as Apple’s Macworld conference and expo in San Francisco goes head-to-head with the 40th annual CES (Consumer Electronics Association) show in Las Vegas. Both conferences kick off Monday 8 January and there will be no shortage of blogs and other websites covering the news. What … Read more
In the current Read/WriteWeb poll (see below), we’re asking what ‘search 2.0’ concepts you think stand the best chance of beating Google. The results so far are interesting, because Artificial Intelligence is currently top pick – despite having a history of underachievement in the tech industry and there being no real AI search contenders yet. … Read more
Metalink is a new technology that makes it easier and faster to get large files. It’s kind of like a playlist for such files (they can be FTP, HTTP, or P2P), because it stores multiple file locations in a single file – and then the download proceeds according to a set of rules. The Wikipedia … Read more
Interesting development from Microsoft – and one that makes perfect sense given their media device strengths (a.k.a. stranglehold over the OS). Microsoft has released a Windows Live for TV beta. The project is code-named “Orbit” and it is built on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Windows Live for TV will connect people via a Vista … Read more
div for entry content including hero As we all know, web statistics are an unreliable thing at the best of times. I posted on this issue back in March 2006, noting that Urchin and web server stats can be used by people to grossly exaggerate their statistics. Well now Nik Cubrilovic has posted on a … Read more
Forrester Research has done a usability comparison between RIA (Rich Internet Apps) and HTML apps, in a report entitled Smackdown: Rich Internet Applications Versus HTML. The result: “We looked for examples of rich Internet and HTML applications in each of four categories and compared how well they supported relevant user goals. We found that, on … Read more
When I was looking for submissions for Best Web Companies and Innovators of 2006, a R/WW commenter pointed to a non-profit site called kiva.org – calling it “web 2.0 meets the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize”. Kiva.org lets you loan money to an entrepreneur in the developing world. On the homepage there is a list of … Read more