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
Bambi Francisco from MarketWatch has an interesting interview with Richard Rosenblatt of Demand Media. Rosenblatt was chairman of MySpace at the time it was sold to News Corp and it appears as if he’s aiming just as big with Demand Media. According to MarketWatch: “Rosenblatt has raised more than $200 million in the past few … Read more
Bill Gates spoke yesterday at the TechNet event at Stanford University. Here are his thoughts on what changes IT will make in society over the next 10 years: “Changes are now coming faster than ever. We’ll be seeing more and more students using tablets instead of stacks of books in schools and in online learning. … Read more
While I was in San Francisco, I met up with uGenie co-founder and President Harish Abbott. uGenie is a comparison shopping service that not only finds the best price on a single product, but on groups of products which it calls a ‘bundle’. uGenie computes the bottom-line price (including shipping, taxes, and discounts) and claims … Read more
While at the Web 2.0 Summit last week I caught up with About.com CEO Scott Meyer. About.com is the long-standing network of how-to websites, purchased in March 2005 by the New York Times Company for $410 Million. Since that time About.com has continued to flourish – it has 31 Million people visiting it each month … Read more
During the Web 2.0 Summit, I got a chance to sit down with the team at Ask.com and find out more about their search engine. This was straight after a Summit session entitled ‘Disruption Opportunity: Beating Google at Their Own Game’ – in which Ask CEO Jim Lanzone and Senior VP of the Online Services … Read more
I’ve just arrived back from another great trip out to Silicon Valley, for the Web 2.0 Summit last week. Now I have about a million emails to process and things to do. Plus I feel like I’m totally out of whack with the blogosphere right now – amazing how a couple of days travel, together … Read more
Read/WriteWeb’s Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo! It’s the end of a hectic week of conference-going for your R/WW correspondent – and so time for a wrap-up of my thoughts on the Web 2.0 Summit. Firstly, my overriding feeling is that this year’s conference was a lot different from last year’s. It was still … Read more
Read/WriteWeb’s Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo! This is the final session at the Web 2.0 Summit this year, a conversation with Yahoo co-founder David Filo and Bradley Horowitz (Yahoo’s head of innovation). John says there’s a vibe that Y! has slowed down somewhat in public perception, as opposed to Google. Bradley says that … Read more
Read/WriteWeb’s Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo! At last year’s Web 2.0 Conference, a much discussed panel was one featuring a group of teenagers telling everyone what Web products they use. This year the concept has been take an extra level, by inviting the parents of the teenagers as well. The panel was moderated … Read more
Read/WriteWeb’s Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo! Marissa Mayer from Google only has 10 minutes to speak at Web 2.0 Summit, so she gives a high level look at Google’s use of Ajax in applications. She notes that the key reason they created Gmail in Ajax was speed. This is a theme in Google … Read more
Read/WriteWeb’s Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo! Kevin Rose is on stage talking about what Digg knows. He says they have 600k editors that digg stories. Yesterday they set a record for fastest story to hit digg frontpage – the Rumsfeld resignation story took just 4 minutes to hit the homepage after it was … Read more
comScore has released some intriguing data about Web usage internationally. They say that 14 of the top 25 US Web properties now attract more visitors from outside the US than from within. That includes the top 5 US properties – Yahoo! Sites, Time Warner Network, Microsoft, Google Sites, and eBay. This is significant because it’s … Read more
Read/WriteWeb’s Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo! Today has already had a flurry of announcements and news. Here’s a brief wrap of them: Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth was introduced by Gary Flake at the conference. It’s an impressive 3D and photo analysis tool. Currently you can’t upload your own photos, so it’s more a … Read more
Read/WriteWeb’s Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo! In the final session of the day, John Battelle chats with Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. John starts with the now famous memo, which “leaked” (but it wasn’t leaked, according to Ray) – he asked Ray how it was progressing. Ray said the intent of the … Read more
Read/WriteWeb’s Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo! This session at Web 2.0 Summit reunites two old Ask.com execs, current Ask CEO Jim Lanzone and former and ex-CEO and now senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft Steve Berkowitz (whom I interviewed a couple of days ago). 60-70% of Ask’s revenue historically … Read more