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
Given that our post on Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps has generated so much discussion, we thought we’d ask you directly which one you prefer? Although almost everybody uses both types of apps, most people seem to have a preference for using one or the other. Tell us what you think, by clicking one … Read more
This week there’s been turmoil in the Digg world, as the Digg developers strive to reduce the influence of the top users – in other words make the system fairer. As Kevin Rose recently wrote, their aim is that “a more diverse pool of individuals will be need to deem the story homepage-worthy”. However this … Read more
A flickr clone; pic by izreloaded In an interview with AlwaysOn, Fox Interactive president Ross Levinsohn talks about innovation and wanting to be more than a company that clones other products. He takes a couple of swipes at Yahoo in the process, for example: “The world doesn’t need another Yahoo; Yahoo does a great job. … Read more
Pic: Vodafone 905SH, by jetalone Great article from MSNBC.com about how Japan’s mobile phone industry is 1.5 years ahead of America’s (and even more ahead of Aus/NZ I suspect). Judging from my series on international Web markets, Korea and China are just as advanced in mobile Web. MSNBC notes: “Thanks to early investments in high-speed … Read more
Already there’s some great discussion happening regarding Ebrahim Ezzy’s post on Read/WriteWeb entitled Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps. As I noted in the intro to that post, in some ways Ebrahim’s views contradict my own. I’m a big fan of the concept of the browser as a ‘lowest common denominator’ platform for the Web. … Read more
In a ZDNet Image Gallery, I’ve gone through 7 products that may become part of a future Google Web Office. Right now, Google doesn’t have a full web-based office suite on the market – but this year they’ve gradually been compiling Web Office parts. For example if you click on “all my services” in the … Read more
Over the next couple of months on Read/WriteWeb, I’ll be profiling the main Web Office suite candidates – such as Zoho, ThinkFree, gOffice, Zimbra, JotSpot, Goowy and Morfik. Plus of course Microsoft’s Office Live and Google’s current jigsaw puzzle of Web Office apps. Today I’m starting with Zimbra. Zimbra is an open source Web Office … Read more
Google has an upcoming Personalized Start Page for Enterprise, according to some sleuthing done by Garrett Rogers and Scott Smith at Google Blogoscoped. Here’s an example Dell start page and the official help page. The Personalized Start Page will be one of the options available in the beta Apps For Your Domain service. Currently email, … Read more
According to stats compiled by vnunet.com, China will overtake the US next year to become the world’s largest broadband internet market: “The number of broadband subscribers in China is growing at a staggering 79 per cent annually, and will reach 79 million in 2007, consulting firm Ovum predicted in research released today. Recent estimates from … Read more
Brad Neuberg has announced the release of HyperScope 1.0, a Web app based on tech legend Douglas Engelbart’s 1968 NLS/Augment (oNLine System). Engelbart and team have been working on Hyperscope since March this year, in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Its aim is to rebuild portions of Douglas Engelbart’s NLS system on … Read more
As well as being reigning world football champions, Italy has a number of world class web apps. Yes, Italy is the 10th country to be profiled in Read/WriteWeb’s Top International Web Apps series. The others so far have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, China and Turkey. For this post I have … Read more
Read/WriteWeb is growing. Last month was a record month in traffic, by a long shot. And after over 4 years of blogging, last month was also the first month I’ve managed to earn enough from R/WW to ‘pay’ for the time I spend writing and editing it. So R/WW is now a professional publication in … Read more
With the messy demise of PubSub, I’ve been looking for a decent keyword and topic subscription service to replace it. ZapTXT could very well meet my requirements, except for the odd fact that it doesn’t output in RSS (more on that below). You can currently only receive alerts as an email, IM or SMS. Other … Read more
There are a plethora of bookmarking sites out there and only a few of them have become very successful – del.icio.us and Stumbleupon are two that spring to mind. Trailfire is a bit different from your average bookmarking site, because they don’t just allow you to share bookmarks – they make it easy for you … Read more
Times Reader is an upcoming new application from The New York Times and Microsoft, which lets users read the NY Times electronically using advanced screen reading technology from Microsoft. The app is due to be launched as a free beta soon – an article about it is now available at the NY Times’ First Look … Read more