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
Zoho recently released a set of APIs that lets anyone write their own program to use Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet data [disclosure: Zoho is a sponsor of Read/WriteWeb]. As Matthew Ingram explained, it “means that other companies — online storage providers such as Box.net, Carbonite or Mozy, for example — can easily build support … Read more
John Milan’s latest article for Read/WriteWeb explores the evolving software environment, with particular focus on Microsoft and Google. The article gets us to thinking: is Google the latest manifestation of an Internet bubble, or is it really different this time? Although comparing two different decades is a little dangerous, perhaps even silly, we can’t help … Read more
Recently I came across a new magazine that is delivered via the Web – and utilizes a lot of Web native functionality in the process. It’s called Avantoure and the tagline is “life is a game”. The contents of the magazine appeal to me, but in this post I’ll focus mainly on the web technologies … Read more
Via Geekzone comes news of a 3D shopping mall, called The Mall Plus, that has just been released in New Zealand. After seeing this, memories of the mid to late 90’s came flooding back to me – a time when websites built on real world metaphors filled the Web landscape. For example the very first … Read more
An interesting update to our post earlier this week about fake Social Network user profiles, created for marketing purposes. A Flickr forum thread states that the Red Passion user (the one referenced in our post, representing a marketing campaign for a beverages company) has now been terminated. Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield made this comment in … Read more
Yahoo has announced an event around Predictive Markets, called confab.yahoo. It’s described as an “open micro-conference series” and is being run by Yahoo!’s Technology Development Group. The reason it caught my eye was this: “We started confab.yahoo because we want to push the web and its applications up to the next level. After slightly more … Read more
Recent Google acquisition JotSpot found itself the subject of unwanted attention this week, when an early customer complained of being shut out after the Google deal. A blog post by someone named Kevin (no last name supplied) had all the gory details, but Kevin then subsequently deleted it (note: I’d already read it before it … Read more
This week Yahoo has released some new initiatives and polished up the design of existing content properties. Here is R/WW’s summary of the action, along with some commentary… Yahoo TV re-design – and is Yahoo scaling back RSS? Yahoo TV has had a re-design, giving it a liberal sprinkling of Ajax and social Web features. … Read more
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced today the business availability of the Windows Vista operating system, the 2007 release of Microsoft Office, and other new business software offerings. Vista and Office 07 be available from 30 January. The OS and Office launches were described as “the beginning of the most significant product launch in company history”. … Read more
Orange Spain, a mobile operator, has two new music services – ‘New Talents’ and ‘Enjoy your Music’. Both are powered by Music Intelligence Solutions, a provider of AI (artificial intelligence) software for music recommendation and discovery. Music Intelligence Solutions is an intriguing company. It was founded in 2002 and is based in Spain and the … Read more
Blastfeed is the latest in RSS filter products to cross my virtual desk. Back in April I looked at this space and at the time noted that filtering would be a hot topic in 2006. Why? Because it’s the next step up from RSS aggregation, as many of us now have too much information coming … Read more
Searchfeed.com is one of a large group of so-called “second tier” PPC (Pay-Per-Click) search advertising networks – others include Kanoodle, InfoSeek, and Looksmart. SearchEngineWatch lists some more on this page (nb: it’s 3 years old, but I couldn’t find a more up-to-date list). The first tier services are Google AdWords and Overture – in which … Read more
Just a quick admin note about a few things. Firstly, Read/WriteWeb has been growing so well in recent months that I’m in the process of expanding the site. Key to this is continuing to provide premium content on web technology – and building a community around that. So I want to thank all the regular … Read more
Increasingly marketing firms are using popular social networks on the Web as part of their campaigns – creating fake user profiles to sell their products. On one hand this is not a good thing for social networks, because the last thing they want is to be clogged up with marketing campaigns masquerading as users in … Read more
It’s going to be a busy month or two for Microsoft, as the business launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007 is set for November 30 and there are a number of complementary initiatives that will see the light of day soon. One is the Expression suite of web design tools. Expression Web is part … Read more