Google to buy New Zealand

The Register investigates. [via] Full whiteboard image here I knew Google was up to something big. It’s always the quiet ones you need to watch… Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

Live.com Upgrade – New Pages and Gadgets, plus Integrated Windows Live Search

Live.com, Microsoft’s personalized start page, has just been upgraded with some impressive new features. Live.com program manager Sanaz Ahari sent me details of the release this evening. It was good timing, because earlier today I’d been using the old Live.com and having trouble! The new features are: Pages – you can have multiple pages for … Read more

Google Calendar – the Web Office Suite is nigh!

TechCrunch has obtained screenshots of the as yet unreleased Google Calendar, called CL2. The leak came via Google’s closed beta of about 200 participants. Apparently CL2 is a long way away from launch, but there are some meaty details in Mike’s post. CL2 looks to be a very strong product from Google (which has by … Read more

New Windows Live releases – plus Onfolio acquisition

Microsoft has just released (or is about to) a series of new products: Windows Live Search Beta, Windows Live Toolbar Beta and the next version of Live.com. Details on my ZDNet blog. One thing of personal interest to me is that a former Read/WriteWeb sponsor, web research product Onfolio, has been acquired by Microsoft and … Read more

Read/Write Web Filter: ETech special

ETech 2006 has started and it’s the one conference this year which people kept telling me I should be at (but oddly, no one offered to pay my airfare…). Oh well, luckily I have my finger on the blogosphere pulse and so I’m going to post updates of my virtual findings over the next few … Read more

The case for Digital Media open standards

Ian Rogers of Yahoo Music gave an interesting talk at BarcampLA entitled Media 2.0 Physics. I encourage you to pore over his presentation and notes. I liked the part about Yahoo and original content: “So Should Yahoo! be in the (Original) Content Business? Like HBO before us, Yahoo! should only create content in two cases: … Read more

Read/WriteWeb Filter

– 37Signals publish a PDF book (“DIY publishing: There’s a new sheriff in town.” — suggestion to 37Signals: create a product that enables other authors to DIY publish…) – Kottke on DIY book publishing (37Signals profit margin will probably be much higher than any royalties they would’ve got from a publishing company) – eBay’s Jason … Read more

NZ’s eBay sold for $700M

The big news in my part of the world today is that trademe.co.nz, a virtual clone of eBay that has risen to dominance in the eBay-less New Zealand market, has been sold to Aussie media company Fairfax for a staggering NZ$700 million [news via Dave]. Mr Barren thinks Fairfax would’ve been attracted by the 15.6 … Read more

News trackers: smart or snark?

Robert Scoble swears off tech.memeorandum for a week, due to excessive snark in the Sunday edition: “…it‚Äôs the little things in life that make you smarter. The little things don‚Äôt show up on Memeorandum. They do show up on RSS. Which is why I‚Äôm still subscribed to 847 smart people‚Äôs feeds.” I don‚Äôt think the … Read more

Store 100% – Google’s Golden Copy

The Google Analyst Day presentation makes for interesting reading. Thanks to Greg Linden for providing the early analysis and text from the now withdrawn powerpoint presentation (only available now as a 10MB PDF – sans the ppt notes unfortunately). Greg provided the notes to slide 19, which are fascinating for those of us interested in … Read more

Reuters and Media Nirvana

Some interesting reactions to Reuters CEO Tom Glocer’s speech at the Online Publishers Association. I thought it was encouraging news and in my previous post I (somewhat breathlessly) compared it to Associated Press CEO Tom Curley’s similar speech a year ago. Upon further reflection, it’s not quite at the level of Curley’s speech. Eran Globen … Read more

Reuters on the role of big media in the Read/Write Web

Jeff Jarvis is live-blogging the keynote of Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters, at the Online Publishers Association. I got pretty excited by a similar speech by Associated Press CEO Tom Curley just over a year ago, so this Reuters keynote is pressing my buttons too. I particularly liked this point, on the role of big … Read more

Read/WriteWeb Filter

– How would you spend VC money if you could? (Matt McAlister lists his virtual shopping list — publisher services is his top pick: “Understanding content and communities is the name of the game.”) – MobHappy: mobile will define Gen M (for under 20’s ” the mobile will take over from the PC as the … Read more

OPML: key for personalization in 2006

Dave Winer has announced OPML 2.0 (in public review status currently). OPML stands for Outline Processor Markup Language. In semi-laymens terms, OMPL is a common XML data format for outlines and subscription lists – just as RSS is a common data format for content syndication. So why is OPML significant? Its main claim to fame … Read more